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Radical Skepticism and Epistemic
Intuition Michael Bergmann

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Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition
Radical Skepticism and
Epistemic Intuition
M IC HA E L B E R G M A N N
1
1
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OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 27/05/21, SPi
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction 1
1. The Importance of Radical Skepticism 2
2. An Overview of the Book 4
3. Clarifications of Some Key Concepts 6
3.1 Skepticism 7
3.2 Justification 8
3.3 Evidence 10
PA RT I : U N D E R D E T E R M I NAT IO N A N D
I N F E R E N T IA L A N T I -SK E P T IC I SM
2. Underdetermination and Perceptual Skepticism 15

1. Arguments and Responses: Narrowing the Focus 16
1.1 Rightly Discerning Skepticism’s Appeal 16
1.2 Arguments and Responses that Overestimate Skepticism’s Appeal 17
1.3 Responses that Underestimate Skepticism’s Appeal 22
2. An Underdetermination Argument against Perception 26
2.1 The Argument 27
2.2 The Appeal of Premise 1 30
2.3 The Appeal of Premise 5 33
2.4 A Misguided Response 34
3. Inferential Anti-skepticism about Perception 35
1. Deductive Anti-skeptical Arguments 36
2. Some Not-so-popular Nondeductive Anti-skeptical Arguments 38
3. Anti-skeptical Arguments Relying on IBE 42
4. Is the Standard Hypothesis the Best Explanation? 47
5. Is the Standard Hypothesis Sufficiently Good? 54
4. Global and Memory Skepticism 57
1. The Direct Case for Global Skepticism 58
1.1 The Self-undermining Objection to Arguments for Global Skepticism 59
1.2 The Regress Argument 60
1.3 The Prior Verification Argument 62
2. The Piecemeal (Underdetermination-based) Case for
Global Skepticism 64
2.1 The Aim of Discussing the Piecemeal Case 65
2.2 The Self-undermining Objection Again 65
viii Contents
2.3 Responding to the Self-undermining Objection 68

2.4 Developing the Piecemeal Case in Light of the Self-undermining
Objection72
3. Underdetermination Worries about Memory 73
3.1 The Basis of and Evidence for Our Memory Beliefs 75
3.2 An Underdetermination Argument against Memory 77
3.3 Inferential Anti-skepticism about Memory 79
5. A Priori, Introspective, and Inferential Skepticism 83
1. Underdetermination Worries about A Priori Belief 84
1.1 The Basis of and Evidence for Our A Priori Beliefs 84
1.2 An Evidence–Truth Gap for A Priori Belief 86
1.3 An Underdetermination Argument against A Priori Intuition 90
1.4 Inferential Anti-skepticism about A Priori Belief 93
2. Underdetermination Worries about Introspection 95
3. Underdetermination Worries about Nondeductive Reasoning 103
PA RT I I : PA RT IC U L A R I ST N O N I N F E R E N T IA L
A N T I -SK E P T IC I SM
6. Intuitionist Particularism: An Introduction 111

1. Particularism Explained 112
2. Some Varieties of Particularism 119
3. Particularism and Epistemic Intuitions 122
4. Moderate Intuitionist Particularism 126
7. Intuitionist Particularism: Elucidations and Defenses 131
1. Seemings and Epistemic Intuitions 131
2. Concerns about Seemings 136
3. Two Ways of Addressing Radical Skepticism 145
4. The Respectability of Intuitionist Particularism 147
8. Ecumenical Noninferential Anti-skepticism 151
1. Noninferential Anti-skepticism 151
1.1 Responding to Perceptual Skepticism 151
1.2 Responding to Skepticism about our Core Faculties 156
1.3 Intuitionist Particularist Noninferential Anti-skepticism 159
2. Ecumenism 159
2.1 Internalism, Externalism, and Intuitionist Particularism 160
2.2 Internalism, Externalism, and Noninferential Anti-skepticism 162
3. We’re All “Externalists” Now 164
3.1 A Misguided “Internalist” Temptation 165
3.2 The Incoherence of “Internalism” 167
3.3 “Externalism” is the Only Escape from Skepticism 169
Contents ix
9. Easy Knowledge and Epistemic Circularity 171

1. The Problem Explained 171
2. Epistemic Circularity 173
3. Arguments in Defense of Epistemic Circularity 176
3.1 The “Bad Reason for Atheism” Argument 177
3.2 The “Disjunctive Skepticism” Argument 178
4. Intuitions in Defense of Epistemic Circularity 182
5. Responding to the Problem of Easy Knowledge
(and Epistemic Circularity) 186
6. Why the Problem Seems Threatening Even Though it Isn’t 190
10. Ridiculous Beliefs, Irresponsible Beliefs, and
Anti-skeptical Evidence 191
1. The Problem of Ridiculous Beliefs 191
1.1 The Problem Explained 192
1.2 Responding to the Problem of Ridiculous Beliefs 193
2. The Problem of Irresponsible Beliefs 196
2.1 The Problem Explained 196
2.2 Responding to the Problem of Irresponsible Beliefs 197
2.3 Worries about the Noninferential Anti-skeptic’s Response
to this Problem 199
3. The Problem of Anti-skeptical Evidence 202
3.1 Rea’s Reason 203
3.2 Cohen’s Reason 206
4. Taking Stock 208
PA RT I I I : SK E P T IC I SM A B OU T E P I S T E M IC
I N T U I T IO N
11. Epistemic Intuition and Underdetermination 213

1. Difficulties for Skepticism about Epistemic Intuition 214
2. Responding to Underdetermination Worries 220
3. Benign Epistemically Circular Epistemic Intuition 222
4. Epistemic Intuition and the Problems of the Demon-victim Twin 226
4.1 The Demon-victim Twin Example 226
4.2 The First Problem: Underdetermination Worries (Again) 227
4.3 The Second Problem: NED-intuition Worries 229
4.4 The Third Problem: Anti-disjunctivism Worries 230
12. Epistemic Intuition and Disagreement 233
1. Internal and External Rationality 233
2. Disagreement in Epistemic Intuition 234
3. Disagreement as a Defeater 239
4. Responding to Disagreement about Epistemic Value 243
5. Disagreement about Disagreement 250
x Contents
13. Epistemic Intuition and Experimental Philosophy 254

1. The Skeptical Objection from Experimental Philosophy 254
2. How Strong Must the Objection Be to be Successful? 258
3. Responding to the Skeptical Objection from
Experimental Philosophy 260
4. Conclusion 264
References 267
Index 279
Acknowledgments
Work on this project was supported by the following sources: a 2011 Center for
Humanistic Studies Fellowship and a 2018 Engage Fellowship (the latter of which
funded a 2019 workshop on the book manuscript), both provided by Purdue
University; a grant from The John Templeton Foundation for the 2010–13
Knowing in Religion and Morality Project; a 2015–16 research fellowship from
The Experience Project funded by The John Templeton Foundation in partner-
ship with the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame
and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and the University of Notre
Dame, which funded a 2018 workshop on the book manuscript. Although some
of the themes and ideas discussed in this book have been touched on in earlier
work of mine, all of the chapters are previously unpublished.
I’ve been working on this manuscript for a long time and, partly for that rea-
son, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’ve forgotten to acknowledge at least
some of the many people whose assistance and input has enabled me to get the
book into its present form. Apologies to all such people whose names I neglect to
mention here. I owe a special debt of gratitude to the following people who read
and provided very helpful feedback on the entire manuscript: Nathan Ballantyne,
Jeff Brower, Oliver Crisp, Hud Hudson, Kevin McCain, Andrew Moon, John
Pittard, Mike Rea, and Chris Tucker. In addition, I would like to thank Dave
Anderson, Robert Audi, Max Baker-Hytch, Matthew Benton, Rebecca Chan,
Nevin Climenhaga, Jan Cover, John Hawthorne, Jinhua He, Perry Hendricks,
Daniel Immerman, Liz Jackson, Mike Jacovides, Anne Jeffrey, Gideon Jeffrey, Pat
Kain, Maria Lasonen-Aarnio, Jack Lyons, David Moore, Tom Señor, Declan
Smithies, Jeff Tolly, Fritz Warfield, and Josh White for helpful comments on or
conversations about various portions of the manuscript.
This book is dedicated, with gratitude and great respect, to William Alston and
Alvin Plantinga. Their work in epistemology and their entire philosophical
careers have been enormously influential on my thinking and very inspiring for
me personally.
1
Introduction
Radical skepticism won’t go away. Despite the fact that it is widely dismissed, the
best arguments for it are still strangely seductive. Even though it raises philosoph-
ical questions that are, by now, completely familiar and perhaps, in some ways,
old hat, it remains highly intriguing. It is not a problem that worries many of us
and yet we can’t agree on how best to deal with it.
Radical skepticism is extreme insofar as it involves serious doubts about large
swaths of beliefs that almost everyone takes for granted. Perceptual skepticism,
which questions all of our perceptual beliefs, is one kind of radical skepticism.
Memory skepticism, which questions all of our memory beliefs, and a priori
skepticism, which questions all of our a priori beliefs, are other kinds. These kinds
and more besides feature prominently in the pages that follow.
This is a book about various kinds of radical skepticism and different ways of
responding to them. Two of its initial goals are to identify the best arguments for
radical skepticism and to reject responses to them that don’t pass muster. But its
main task is to develop and defend an account of what, in my view, is the best
response to radical skepticism—one that is inspired by the great eighteenth-
century commonsense philosopher, Thomas Reid, and that consciously relies
heavily on epistemic intuitions.1 In carrying out this main task, this book offers
something that is at once both familiar and new.
On the one hand, a Reidian-style response to radical skepticism is, as a matter
of actual practice, one of the most common responses to such skepticism, among
philosophers and non-philosophers alike. For this reason, the position I will
defend fits well with what many people already do. On the other hand, this kind
of response to radical skepticism has never before been developed in this overtly
epistemic-intuition-based manner, nor has it ever been presented with as much
detail or defended as extensively against so many objections, in a way that is
friendly to both internalist and externalist perspectives.2 While it is fairly com-
mon for those reflecting on skepticism to respond to it in something like the way
1 Epistemic intuitions are intuitions about the requirements for and the presence or absence of
epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality. Although I would say that Reid himself also relied
heavily on epistemic intuitions, he did not (as far as I can tell from his writings) do so consciously or
explicitly.
2 However, Noah Lemos (2004a) provides an excellent book length treatment of similar themes,
unpacking and defending the views held by the pillars of the commonsense tradition: Thomas Reid,
G. E. Moore, and Roderick Chisholm.
Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition. Michael Bergmann, Oxford University Press (2021). © Michael Bergmann.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898487.003.0001
2 Introduction
I advocate in this book, this typically occurs without much understanding of what
this sort of response involves. I suspect that, in at least some cases, this is partly
due to a reluctance to subject this very natural response to critical scrutiny, per-
haps over concerns that it won’t stand up well in the cold light of day. But the
Reidian has no reason to be bashful or timid about her view. So I will be working
to expose and make explicit what is (or should be) going on in commonsense
responses to radical skepticism and then to consider and reply to a wide array of
challenges that responses of this kind face. The result will be an answer to radical
skepticism that is, in important respects, both unfamiliar and fresh.
In this opening chapter, I will do three things. First, I’ll explain why I think it
is worthwhile to devote our time to thinking about radical skepticism. Second,
I’ll provide an overview of the book’s contents. And third, I’ll clarify a few key
concepts that will play an important role in the chapters that follow.
1. The Importance of Radical Skepticism
Despite its familiarity, perceptual skepticism is rarely embraced. Few people, even
among professional philosophers, find it plausible or even consider it a live
option. It is sometimes simply dismissed as being unworthy of serious attention,
even if it might provide an interesting premise for a novel or a movie. So why
spend time, as I will be inviting readers to do in this book, thinking about radical
forms of skepticism such as perceptual skepticism?
Three reasons. The first is that, because it is a paradigm case of a kind of skepti-
cism that is both tempting and yet very commonly resisted, it provides us with an
instructive pattern for thinking about other kinds of skepticism that are tempting
and yet possibly (we aren’t always so sure) worth resisting. All of us are skeptical
about the moral, political, philosophical, and religious views of at least some
people, while holding positions of our own on these same topics—positions about
which others are skeptical. How should we think about our skepticism of the
views of others on such topics? How should we respond to their skepticism
regarding our own views on these matters? These are questions of broad interest
that matter a great deal to a significant percentage of the world’s population.
A helpful starting point for our reflections on all such queries is the example pro-
vided by a careful and well-considered reaction to radical skepticism. Radical
skepticism is widely recognized—even by those whose views on more controver-
sial matters differ markedly from each other—to be, on the one hand, seductive
and yet, on the other, well worth resisting. Because of this shared attitude to radi-
cal skepticism, discussions of it enable us jointly to make substantial progress on
getting clearer about good and bad ways of defending and resisting radical skepti-
cism; and this, in turn, provides us with helpful models of good and bad ways of
The Importance of Radical Skepticism 3
defending and resisting skepticism about more contentious views (e.g. in morality,
politics, philosophy, and religion). Even if we conclude that our thinking about
skepticism on these controversial matters should differ from our thinking
about radical skepticism, that in itself (if plausibly defended and explained) can
yield illuminating insights into how we should think about moral, political,
philosophical, and religious skepticism.
A second reason it is worthwhile to think about radical skeptical challenges and
how best to respond to them is that so much of contemporary epistemology is, to
one degree or another, influenced and shaped by perspectives taken on radical
skepticism. Even though epistemologists are quick to resist radical skepticism,
they differ in their views about the best way to do so.3 And these differences have
myriad implications for other positions within epistemology and, to some extent,
in other areas of philosophy as well. Perspectives on radical skepticism have
played a significant role in the shaping and development of views on knowledge,
justification, contextualism, closure principles, “relevant alternatives” theories,
disjunctivism, contrastivism, the internalism–externalism debate, and the
foundationalist–coherentist controversy. Views on radical skepticism have also
influenced attitudes among epistemologists towards knowledge-first epistemol-
ogy, evidentialism, phenomenal conservatism, the epistemology of disagreement,
and experimental philosophy, to name just a few other important connections
within epistemology. Positions on radical skepticism have also become entwined
with discussions in other areas of philosophy, such as the philosophy of percep-
tion, realism and anti-realism, and the nature of mental and propositional con-
tent. As a result, having a clearer understanding of the good and bad options for
defending and responding to radical skepticism will help one arrive at what
amounts to a pivotal position within one’s worldview—a position with numerous
consequences for other elements of one’s overall perspective on reality.4
A third reason for focusing on radical skepticism is just the intrinsic interest of
this perennial philosophical issue. The question “How do you know you are not
being tricked—by illusory perceptual experience—into thinking you are perceiv-
ing a physical world?” is fascinating. On the one hand, it’s tempting to think that
there must be some way we can know this—otherwise the very foundations of
our ordinary perspective on the world would be completely undermined, a pros-
pect that is very hard to take seriously. (Perhaps no one takes this seriously enough
to refrain from holding any of the usual commonsense beliefs we tend to have
3 Thus, although there is more agreement that radical skepticism (vs., say, moral or religious skep-
ticism) should be resisted, disagreement remains over how best to resist it. (This sort of disagreement
is also emphasized in the next paragraph where I lay out a third reason it is worthwhile to focus on
radical skepticism.) It’s important to keep in mind that this lack of unanimity about how best to
respond to radical skepticism is perfectly compatible with the point made in the previous paragraph
about there being significant agreement that radical skepticism should be resisted.
4 Dodd and Zardini (2014: 1–2) make some points similar to those made in this paragraph.
4 Introduction
about the physical world around us and about other people.) On the other hand,
it has proven to be exceedingly difficult to give a satisfying non-skeptical answer
to that question (not just to skeptics, but even to ourselves). Each of the answers
that have been given face their own challenges. The attraction of digging into the
debates on this very stimulating question has been the siren call that has drawn
many to philosophy in the first place, and it has inspired many ingenious ideas by
mature philosophers both in recent decades and in centuries past. Coming up
with a plausible response to radical skepticism is a goal worth pursuing for its
own sake.
2. An Overview of the Book
So what is the best response to the challenge of radical skepticism? We can divide
responses to it into three categories (not including those that embrace it). First,
there are concessive responses, which concede that we don’t know that we aren’t
radically deceived but insist that (contrary to radical skepticism) much of our
assumed ordinary knowledge of the external world remains intact.5 Second, there
are inferential anti-skeptical responses, which are non-concessive responses (i.e.
ones that do not concede that we don’t know we aren’t radically deceived) that say
our ordinary beliefs about the external world are (often) justified even though
such justification requires that these beliefs are defensible inferentially via good
arguments. Third, there are noninferential anti-skeptical responses, which are
non-concessive responses that say our ordinary beliefs threatened by the chal-
lenge of radical skepticism (including our perceptual, memory, and introspective
beliefs) are justifiedly held noninferentially, even if they aren’t based on or defen-
sible via any available good arguments.6 I’ll be defending a Reid-inspired version
of noninferential anti-skepticism and objecting to competing responses.
What is distinctive about the Reidian version of noninferential anti-skepticism
presented in this book? Two main things. First, it explicitly and consciously relies
on epistemic intuitions—which are seemings about epistemic value or goodness—
in a way that is introspectively plausible and fully defensible. Most or all of the
usual approaches to radical skepticism, including attempts to defend it, also rely
on epistemic intuitions. The difference is that they rarely show any recognition of
this reliance.7 Second, the Reidian approach of this book is ecumenical across the
internalist–externalist divide in epistemology. What this means is that, in general
5 Concessive responses include contextualism, contrastivism, closure denial, and certain

Wittgensteinian responses.
6 More careful accounts of these three types of response will be given in Chapter Two.
7 Further discussion of this wide but often unacknowledged reliance on epistemic intuition will be
postponed until Chapters Six and Seven.
An Overview of the Book 5
outline, the main ingredients of the anti- skeptical position proposed and
defended in this book can be adopted by both internalists (including evidentialists,
mentalists, and phenomenal conservatives)8 and externalists like myself. For this
reason, I hope the view will have wide appeal: it is moderate and adaptable to
various perspectives within epistemology.
The book is divided into three parts. In Part I, Underdetermination and
Inferential Anti-Skepticism, I focus on underdetermination arguments for radical
skepticism and inferential anti-skeptical responses to them. (These underdeter-
mination arguments highlight the fact that our evidence underdetermines the
truth of the beliefs based on it and conclude from this that, apart from good argu-
ments showing that the evidence in question makes these beliefs true or at least
probable—arguments we seem not to have—these beliefs are not justified.) I begin
by explaining why I will be setting aside certain skeptical arguments (i.e. all those
other than underdetermination arguments—including closure arguments) and
certain responses to skeptical arguments (especially the concessive responses
noted above and those—given by disjunctivism and knowledge-first epistemology—
that deny the phenomenon of underdetermination). In each case, the reason for
setting aside these arguments and responses is that they either underestimate or
overestimate the appeal of radical skepticism. I then develop a series of underde-
termination arguments for radical skepticism about not only perception and
memory but also, more surprisingly, about a priori intuition and introspection
(and even in support of global skepticism9), and I argue that the inferential anti-
skeptic’s responses to these skeptical arguments are unsuccessful.
This leaves us with noninferential anti-skeptical responses, which are taken
up in Part II. I begin in Chapter Six by explaining the particularist tradition,
starting with Thomas Reid in the eighteenth century and continuing through
G. E. Moore and Roderick Chisholm in the twentieth century.10 Particularism
embodies the methodology I employ in working out my own noninferential
anti-skeptical response to skepticism. Then, in the remainder of Chapters Six
through Eight (the core chapters of the book), I do two things. First, I lay out my
favored version of this particularist method of dealing with radical skepticism—a
version I call ‘intuitionist particularism’ because it is spelled out in terms of epi
stemic intuitions (both those employed by skeptics in support of their skeptical
8 I am here going along with the standard categorizations of these views and ignoring disputes
over whether all versions of mentalism and evidentialism count as internalist views. For some discus-
sion of these disputes, see Bergmann (2006: ch. 3) and Bergmann (2018).
9 Global skepticism is skepticism about everything. Local skepticisms—such as perceptual skepti-
cism or memory skepticism—are narrower in scope.
10 In brief, particularists in epistemology (not to be confused with moral particularists) use our
natural assumption that most of our ordinary beliefs are rational and instances of knowledge as a
starting point in evaluating skeptical arguments and epistemic principles about what is required for
rationality and knowledge.
6 Introduction
arguments and those employed by anti-skeptics in support of ordinary knowledge

claims). Second, I use this intuitionist particularist methodology to develop a
noninferential anti-skeptical response to the underdetermination arguments for
radical skepticism from Part I. In presenting this response to radical skepticism,
I highlight its advantages over other responses as well as the ways in which it can
be adopted by both internalists and externalists alike. I conclude Part II by
defending this response against several challenging objections.
In the last part of the book, Part III, I take up skeptical challenges to epistemic
intuition—the belief source that plays such a significant role in my particularist
noninferential anti-skeptical response in Part II to the underdetermination
arguments for radical skepticism developed in Part I. In addition to facing some
of the same challenges that are directed at my response to radical skepticism
about perception and memory, my response to radical skepticism about episte
mic intuition also faces challenges from disagreement and from experimental
philosophy. All of these challenges to epistemic intuition will be dealt with in the
final part of the book.
The overall narrative of the book can thus be summarized succinctly as follows.
In Part I we learn two things. First, the tempting intuitions supporting underde-
termination arguments for radical skepticism tell us that we are forced to endorse
radical skepticism unless inferential anti-skepticism provides an effective means
of escape. Second, although inferential anti-skepticism seems to offer a means of
escape, that way turns out to be a hopeless dead end. In Part II we see that partic-
ularist epistemic intuitions rationally assure us that radical skepticism is a mis-
take and, therefore (in light of Part I), that (i) the seductive intuitions in support
of underdetermination arguments are (surprisingly) incorrect and that (ii) the
right response to those arguments is noninferential anti-skepticism. In addition,
we see that various alleged problems with this noninferential anti- skeptical
response turn out not to be problems after all. In a similar way, we discover in
Part III that skeptical concerns about epistemic intuition as a belief source are
overblown and, in the end, not a sufficient basis for any lingering worries about
the conclusions of Part II.
3. Clarifications of Some Key Concepts
One final preliminary task to be handled in this chapter is that of clarifying three
crucial concepts that I’ll be employing frequently throughout this book—the
concepts of skepticism, justification, and evidence.11
11 Because the concept of epistemic intuition, briefly introduced earlier in this chapter, features
heavily in Parts II and III of the book, but is not emphasized in Part I, it will not be unpacked further
until Chapters Six and Seven.
Clarifications of Some Key Concepts 7
3.1 Skepticism
The topic of this book is radical skepticism of various kinds: perceptual skepti-
cism, memory skepticism, global skepticism, and others as well.12 But what is
skepticism? Skepticism about the existence of the physical world is the view
that we can’t or don’t know (or hold justified beliefs about) whether there exists
a physical world. Skepticism is different from the view that denies the existence
of a physical world. Instead of saying it isn’t there, skeptics say we don’t know
whether it’s there. Similarly, atheists say there is no God and moral error theo-
rists say there are no moral facts, whereas religious and moral skeptics say we
don’t know whether God exists or whether there are moral facts.13
Knowledge- skepticism can be distinguished from justification- skepticism.
Knowledge-skepticism about the external world says we don’t or can’t know
whether there is an external world; justification-skepticism about it says we don’t
or can’t justifiedly believe that there is (or that there isn’t) an external world. If, as
most epistemologists think, knowledge entails truth and justification doesn’t (i.e.
we can justifiedly believe what is false though we can’t know what is false), then
it’s easier to have a justified belief that p than it is to know that p, in which case
justification-skepticism is a bolder position than knowledge-skepticism. Or at
least this is so if knowledge requires justified belief (another thing that most
epistemologists think). For then justification- skepticism entails knowledge-
skepticism: if you aren’t justified in believing that p, you don’t know it either. The
focus of this book will mainly be on justification-skepticism, mostly because it
12 It’s true that global skepticism includes local skepticisms such as perceptual skepticism or mem-
ory skepticism. The point here is just that global skepticism as well as these more local skepticisms are
kinds of radical skepticism, and that I’ll be discussing each of these kinds (and others) in this book.
For a helpful and concise overview of the varieties of local skepticism, categorized conveniently and
neatly along four dimensions, see Hudson (2014: 113–4). The four dimensions of local skepticism that
he highlights are:
• propositions: singling out—by subject matter or (sole) route to belief—a subclass of propositions
subject to skeptical challenge,
• properties: focusing on one or another epistemic property that is under threat, such as rationality or
knowledge,
• subjects: identifying a subgroup of beings confronted with skepticism, such as humans or any
actual or possible reasoning beings who perceive spatiotemporally, and
• modality: saying whether the epistemic property in question merely hasn’t been exemplified or,
more strongly, that it couldn’t—in some sense or other of ‘couldn’t’—be exemplified.
13 One might think that strong reasons for thinking there are no physical objects or moral facts are
strong reasons for skepticism about physical objects or morality. After all, given that knowledge
entails truth, strong reasons for the falsity of p count as strong reasons for thinking we don’t know p.
(Sinnott-Armstrong (2006: 11) endorses this way of thinking about moral skepticism.) But this line
of reasoning is plausible only if not knowing that p counts as skepticism about p. And that is doubtful.
All of us agree that we don’t know simple mathematical falsehoods such as 1+1=3. Does that make
us skeptics about these simple and obvious mathematical falsehoods? That doesn’t seem right.
What’s more plausible is that we are skeptics if we don’t know whether p.
8 Introduction
will simplify our discussion (since lack of knowledge might be due not to lack of
justification but to other problems instead).
Is skepticism about p the view that we can’t justifiedly believe that p or that p
is false? Or is it the view that we don’t justifiedly believe p (or that p is false),
even when we do believe p? Some skeptical arguments aim to establish that we
can’t justifiedly believe certain propositions (which, of course, implies that we
don’t justifiedly believe them). But other skeptical arguments aim to establish
only that we don’t justifiedly believe these propositions; they refrain from say-
ing that we are incapable of doing so, or that doing so is literally impossible.
Because it is worth including both kinds of justification-skepticism in our
discussion, I will be thinking of skepticism about p as the view that either we
can’t justifiedly believe that p (or that p is false) or we don’t justifiedly believe that
p (or that p is false), even if we can.
3.2 Justification
Justification-skepticism denies that our beliefs are justified. But what is it for a
belief to be justified? There is a huge literature on this topic and much contro-
versy. As much as I can, I want to steer clear of the details of those controversies.
My hope is that the discussion of justification-skepticism in this book can be as
non-partisan as possible in what it says about justification. It might seem overly
optimistic or naïve to think that we can talk about justification and justification-
skepticism in a book like this while ignoring the major disputes among contem-
porary epistemologists concerning the nature of justification. After all, some
philosophers think that opponents in such disputes are not even talking about the
same thing when they talk about justification. I think that matters are not quite so
hopeless. I grant that it will be helpful for me to say more about these disputes,
and I will do some of that in the remainder of this subsection (and elsewhere in
the book). But I will try to keep it to a minimum.
Perhaps the main divide separating theories of justification is the divide
between internalism and externalism. Internalists think a belief is justified only
if a person is (or can, on reflection, easily become) aware of what the belief has
going for it; externalists deny that such awareness (or easy access to it) is
required, thinking that a belief is justified so long as it is, in fact, appropriately
formed. I agree that there is a genuine and important disagreement between
internalists and externalists over the nature of justification, and my sympathies lie
with externalists.14 Nevertheless, internalists and externalists can talk together
fruitfully about justification (and justification- skepticism) while bracketing
14 See the first two chapters of Bergmann (2006).

some of the things about which they disagree.15 In what follows, I will explain
how I’m thinking of justification and I will aim to do so in a way that is amena-
ble to both internalists and externalists.
The first thing to say is that the sort of justification under discussion in this
book is doxastic justification, not propositional justification. Doxastic justification
is a property that certain beliefs (understood as token mental states)16 have, and it
is importantly different from propositional justification, which is a property
propositions have relative to a person. In order for a particular belief to be doxas-
tically justified, it must be formed or held in the right way. But whether a belief is
formed or held in the right way is irrelevant to propositional justification. A prop-
osition truthfully saying which books are on my desk right now is propositionally
justified for me but not for you, because I have good evidence for believing it but
you don’t. In fact, that proposition can be propositionally justified for me even
if I don’t believe it (perhaps because I’m too distracted to form a belief on that
topic). But only an actually held belief can be doxastically justified. Moreover, it
may be that, although I have good evidence for a proposition, I believe it for some
silly reason. In that case, my belief ’s content would still be propositionally justi-
fied for me, because of the evidence I have for it, even though that belief isn’t
doxastically justified, because it isn’t formed or held in the right way—it is based
on a silly reason instead of on the good evidence that I have.
When I say a belief is (doxastically) justified, I’m saying, roughly, that it is rea-
sonable or rational; I will try to steer clear of making fine distinctions between
these types of positive epistemic appraisal. Thus, when I speak of justification-
skepticism with respect to a certain class of beliefs, I have in mind the view that
those beliefs are not justified or reasonable or rational. I am also thinking of justi-
fication as something that is compatible with falsity, in the sense that false beliefs
can be justified. Justification is, therefore, distinct from and insufficient for
knowledge (which entails truth). Moreover, as I’m thinking of it, justification is
required for knowledge and—as was noted in Gettier (1963)—justified true belief
is insufficient for knowledge. Internalists and externalists can easily agree on all of
the points about justification mentioned in this paragraph and the previous one.
A further feature of justification as I’ll be thinking of it in this book is that a
belief is (doxastically) justified when it is a fitting response to the input leading to
that belief. Even on this point, internalists and externalists can agree, although
they will disagree about what fittingness depends on and perhaps also about what
counts as a belief input. Consider first the different perspectives that epistemolo-
gists of various stripes have on belief inputs. Evidentialists speak here of evidence,
15 In fact, they can talk together fruitfully about justification even if they explicitly focus on these
points of disagreement, which is what often happens when they are arguing against each other’s views
on the nature of justification.
16 My focus throughout the book will be on ordinary belief, not on credences or degreed belief.
10 Introduction
saying that justification requires that the belief is a fitting response to one’s
evidence. If the evidentialist is a mentalist (thinking that justification is deter-
mined by one’s mental states), she will say that justification requires that the belief
is a fitting response to one’s mental states. If the evidentialist is an internalist
(thinking that justification is determined by one’s accessible mental states), she
will say that justification requires that the belief is a fitting response to one’s acces-
sible mental states.17 Externalists will think that what matters for justification is
that the belief is a fitting response to some circumstance or trigger, but that this
circumstance or trigger needn’t be a mental state, accessible or otherwise (although
it could be). It might be some other event in the body of the believer, or perhaps
even a triggering circumstance in the believer’s environment. As for fittingness,
externalists would say that a belief is a fitting response to belief input if it is a
proper functioning response to it or a reliable (truth-promoting) response to it, in
which case this relation of fittingness holds contingently between a belief response
and belief input, depending on the relevant facts about reliability or proper
function.18 Internalists, on the other hand, would tend to say that the fittingness
relation is an epistemic relation (possibly a sui generis one) that holds of necessity
between a belief response and one’s evidence, in virtue of some of the intrinsic
features of these relata.19
Moreover, if internalists and externalists can agree that a belief response is
justified when it is a fitting response to belief input, then they can also agree on the
following point, which also applies to justification as I will be thinking of it in this
book: being subjectively epistemically blameless is not sufficient for justification.
This is because it’s possible for a person innocently and helplessly to believe
something that isn’t a fitting response to her belief input. Perhaps—due to no fault
of her own but rather to some brain malfunction or to the intervention of some
malevolent powerful being with control over her mind—a person is prevented
from believing what fits her belief input, no matter how hard she tries to believe
in an epistemically respectable manner. In such a case, she would (plausibly) be
epistemically blameless in holding this belief even though the belief would remain
unjustified because it does not fit her belief input.
3.3 Evidence
The last concept that I want to clarify is one already used numerous times in this
chapter. It is perhaps more in need of clarification than the concepts of skepticism
and justification given that there are a few significantly different understandings
17 For more on internalism and mentalism, see the first three chapters of Bergmann (2006).
18 See the fifth chapter of Bergmann (2006) for a comparison of proper functionalist and evidentialist
accounts of fittingness. For a reliabilist account of fittingness, see Alston’s (1985: 105–11) discussion of Jeg.
19 For more discussion, see Conee and Feldman (2004: 101–2) and Bergmann (2006: 50–61, 111–13).
of evidence employed in the contemporary epistemological literature and yet

these differences often go unacknowledged or unrecognized. The most distinctive
(though, of course, not the only) feature of evidence as I’m thinking of it is that it
is what our paradigmatic justified beliefs are based on. These justified beliefs are
based on things such as other beliefs, memory impressions, and perceptual
experiences.20 Thus, while evidence (so understood) can consist of beliefs, it
needn’t; it can consist of other nondoxastic mental states as well.
Unfortunately, as I’ve already indicated, the term ‘evidence’ is ambiguous and
there are other related uses of the term at work in epistemology. For example,
‘evidence’ can refer to an object or event, such as a bloody knife or expert testi-
mony presented at trial in a court of law. The term ‘evidence’ is also very com-
monly used to refer to propositions that confirm or best explain hypotheses for
which they are evidence (Williamson 2000: 194–7). Although those are perfectly
acceptable ways to use the term, the sense of ‘evidence’ that I am employing in
this chapter—where it refers to the grounds (or basis) of our beliefs, especially
our justified beliefs—is also a standard one.21 Importantly, evidence thought of as
propositions and evidence thought of as objects or events presented at trial in a
court of law are not what our beliefs are based on. This is because part of what it is
for a belief to be based on something is for the belief to be responsive, in the rele-
vant sense, to that thing.22 And our beliefs don’t seem to be responsive to proposi-
tions, especially if propositions are necessarily existing abstract objects. Nor do
they seem to be responsive, in the relevant sense, to objects or events presented in
a court of law.23 So these other kinds of evidence are not the sort of thing I’m
20 This isn’t to say that unjustified beliefs can’t also be based on evidence. After all, not all evidence
is good evidence.
21 It’s what evidentialists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee seem to have in mind when
saying that justification is determined by one’s evidence. See Conee and Feldman (2004: 2–4, 92–3,
104–5) where they make it clear that they think of evidence as including experiences and feelings, and
as being that on which justified beliefs are based.
22 It’s no easy task to give an illuminating full analysis of the basing relation and I won’t try to do so
here (see Korcz (1997), Evans (2013), and McCain (2012b) for some discussion). But as a start, we can
say that if S’s belief B is based on E, then E is a mental state of S’s that causally contributes to the for-
mation of B in virtue of S (or S’s belief-forming mechanisms) treating E as evidentially supportive of
B. Note that S’s belief can be based on E (in this way) even if S has no thoughts at all about E, not even
thoughts about E being evidentially supportive of B (and even if “treating E as evidentially supportive”
is not something S intentionally does).
23 To see this point, notice that if in place of perceiving the object presented in court, the believer
experienced a perfectly vivid hallucination as of the object in question (a hallucination that was iden-
tical phenomenologically to a non-hallucinating believer’s normal perceptual experience of the
object), then the believer would, presumably, still hold the belief, even in the absence of the object.
Likewise, if, while hallucinating a scene that appeared not to include the object in question, the object
were placed in the person’s vicinity (but the person’s perceptual faculties were prevented from working
normally during the hallucination, thereby keeping the person from having a sensory experience of
the object), then the person would not hold the belief that the object was present, despite the fact that
light waves from the object would causally affect the person’s retinas. These considerations suggest
that the belief is responsive, in the relevant sense, not to the object but to the experience as of such an
object (whether that experience is a genuine perception or a vivid hallucination). For more on this
point, see Section 1.3 in Chapter Two.
12 Introduction
speaking of when I speak of evidence in this book. That said, these other kinds of
evidence can be understood in terms of the kind of evidence I have in mind. For
example, evidence in the sense of propositions that confirm or best explain a
believed hypothesis consists of propositions that either (i) are the content of beliefs
that are evidence in my sense or (ii) describe things, beliefs about which or expe-
riences of which can be evidence in my sense. And evidence in the sense of objects
or events that can be presented in a court of law consists of things such that beliefs
about them or experiences of them can be evidence in the sense I have in mind in
this book.
So skepticism, in this book, is justification-skepticism. And the points on
which internalists and externalists can agree—the points highlighted in the last
four paragraphs of Section 3.2—capture something of the way I’m thinking of
justification. Moreover, evidence is the sort of thing on which justified beliefs are
typically based (and it doesn’t consist of propositions or ordinary physical objects
or events). With these clarifications in mind, we can now turn our attention to
arguments for perceptual skepticism and responses to them.
PART I
UNDE R DET E R MINAT ION A ND
IN F ER E N T IA L A N T I -SK E P T ICI SM
2
Underdetermination and
Perceptual Skepticism
The subject of this chapter and the next is perceptual skepticism, which will
provide a convenient doorway into the topic of global skepticism, to be broached
in different ways in Chapters Four and Five.1 The main goal in this chapter is to
motivate a narrowing of our focus to a particular kind of skeptical argument—
namely, an underdetermination argument—and to two main kinds of responses
to it—inferential anti-skepticism and noninferential anti-skepticism. In Chapters
Three through Five, I will be objecting to inferential anti-skepticism, thereby
paving the way for a presentation and defense of my version of noninferential
anti-skepticism in Chapters Six through Ten. In Section 1 of this chapter, I explain
why I will set aside a number of skeptical arguments and a variety of responses to
skeptical arguments. In Section 2, I present and motivate the underdetermination
argument against perception that will provide the framework for our discussion
in this book and focus our attention on the kinds of responses to skepticism that
will be considered at length in the following chapters.
But first, a word about the approach I’ll be taking. I’ve indicated that the main
purpose of this book is to defend a certain kind of response to radical skepticism.
One way this can be done is by highlighting the virtues of the response I favor
and defending it against objections. It can also be done by using argument by
elimination—i.e. by identifying all competitors to my favored response and show-
ing that they’re false, thereby leaving my favored response as the only live option.
While I will be raising some objections to alternative responses to skepticism, the
majority of the book will be devoted not to attacking such alternatives but to
defending the response I think is best. This might seem unhelpful to readers
whose preferred responses to skepticism are not considered (or not considered at
length) in this book. But it’s worth noting that some responses to skepticism are
endorsed not because they’re intuitive or unproblematic but because they seem to
their proponents to be the least problematic among the available options. If a
competitor to such a response—especially a competitor that seems in some ways
intuitive and plausible—can be shown not to be so problematic after all, it can
thereby come to be viewed as a better choice than all the rest. In this way,
1 As I noted in the previous chapter, both perceptual skepticism and global skepticism are kinds of
radical skepticism.
Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition. Michael Bergmann, Oxford University Press (2021). © Michael Bergmann.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192898487.003.0002
16 Underdetermination and Perceptual Skepticism
alternatives to my response to skepticism can in some sense be dealt with even if

they aren’t explicitly considered or attacked at length. For these alternatives can
cease to be the preferred option just in virtue of coming to appreciate my defense
of the response to skepticism that I prefer.
Despite the fact that I will proceed mainly by defending my own response to
skepticism, I will be looking at a number of alternative responses. And in some
cases—particularly in Chapters Three through Five—I will be arguing at length
against one particular alternative response. However, in other cases, I will be
setting aside alternative responses for reasons that will be mentioned only
briefly, without providing extensive arguments against them. This is in part
because I don’t think that argument by elimination is the best approach to take
in support of my favored response to skepticism. It’s also because I don’t have
the time or space in this book to adequately engage all alternatives at length.
1. Arguments and Responses: Narrowing the Focus
The task in this section will be to explain how and why I will narrow our focus in
discussing radical skepticism. As I already noted, our topic in this chapter and the
next is perceptual skepticism. But the rationales to be discussed in this section for
narrowing our focus will also help us to narrow our focus when, in Chapters Four
and Five, we are thinking of other kinds of radical skepticism, such as memory
skepticism and global skepticism.
Two main questions will help us to narrow our focus: (i) Which skeptical argu-
ments best avoid the extremes of overestimating and underestimating the force of
skeptical premises? (ii) Which responses to skepticism best avoid the extremes of
overestimating and underestimating the force of skeptical premises? In what fol-
lows, I will set aside certain skeptical arguments and certain responses to them
after explaining why I think that they don’t avoid these extremes as well as other
arguments and responses.
1.1 Rightly Discerning Skepticism’s Appeal
Some versions of radical skepticism have a certain appeal, which explains why
they have persistently captured the attention of philosophers for generation after
generation over many centuries. More precisely, some of the ways radical skepti-
cism can be defended seem quite impressive, thereby lending a degree of credence
to the view. Ignoring this, or dealing with it too quickly and easily, underestimates
skepticism’s appeal. But it’s also the case that anti-skeptical stances, which reject
radical skepticism, seem to be extremely reasonable. Ignoring this fact, by
Arguments and Responses: Narrowing the Focus 17
conceding too much too quickly to defenders of radical skepticism, overestimates

skepticism’s appeal. What is required, for our purposes, is to avoid each extreme
and, thereby, rightly discern skepticism’s appeal.2
Obviously, judgments will have to be made about what counts as underesti-
mating, overestimating, and rightly discerning skepticism’s appeal. I’ll be making
such judgments and offering brief rationales for them. But I won’t take the time
to defend them at length. My hope is that the reader will be able to appreciate
the rationales given for these judgments, viewing them as understandable and
within the realm of what’s reasonable, even if the reader disagrees with them
(although I hope and expect that many readers will agree with my judgments).
I’ll be using these judgments as a partial basis (in addition to limitations of time
and space) for setting aside certain skeptical arguments and certain responses
to skepticism. So the main work these judgments will do is to help us narrow
our focus. The thought isn’t that the arguments and responses that are set aside
deserve no attention or that they are clearly hopeless. Instead, the thought is
that we have at least some understandable reasons, for the purposes of this
book, to focus on other arguments and responses.
1.2 Arguments and Responses that Overestimate

Skepticism’s Appeal
I’ll begin by setting aside some arguments and responses that overestimate skepti-
cism’s appeal.3 Let’s start with arguments for skepticism. Some have, as premises,
statements of very high standards concerning what is required for a belief to be
justified. For example, there are skeptical arguments with premises saying that, in
order to be justified, our beliefs must be impossible to doubt, maximally certain,
or infallible. While it would be desirable for our beliefs to have these features,
requiring them for justified belief seems to be overkill. This is especially clear
when we consider how obvious it is that very few of our perceptual beliefs meet
such standards. Given how plausible it is to think that more perceptual beliefs
2 Chisholm (1982: 62), Sosa (1999: 147), and others also emphasize the importance of being careful
to avoid the extremes of overestimating or underestimating skepticism’s appeal.
3 There are two arguments for global skepticism that are worthy of our attention but which I will
not discuss here because this chapter and the next are concerned with perceptual skepticism.
Instead, I will postpone a discussion of them until Section 1 of Chapter Four, where I will eventually
set them aside as well. Each of these two arguments for global skepticism concludes that knowledge
and justified belief are impossible. According to the Regress Argument, every justified belief needs a
justified reason; but we can’t have a justified reason for each of our beliefs, including those that are
our reasons. And according to the Prior Verification Argument, a belief is justified only if the one
holding it first justifiedly believes it was formed in a reliable way; but we can’t have, for each of our
beliefs, a prior justified belief about its proper formation.
than these are in fact justified, premises imposing these standards on justified
belief are not very compelling. At the very least, skeptical arguments that do not
have premises asserting such requirements for justified beliefs—and there are
such arguments—are in that way more plausible and worthy of our attention.
Because skeptical arguments with premises that impose implausibly high standards
on justified belief lead too easily—on a weak basis—to skeptical conclusions,
there is a sense in which they overestimate skepticism’s appeal.4 For this reason,
I will set aside skeptical arguments with premises imposing these sorts of high
standards on justification.
The two kinds of arguments for radical skepticism that have received the most
attention in the epistemological literature in the last few decades are closure argu-
ments and underdetermination arguments. In what follows, I will be proposing
that we set aside closure arguments and focus on underdetermination arguments.
Both kinds of argument focus on a skeptical scenario, such as a brain-in-a-vat (or
BIV) scenario in which a disembodied brain is kept alive in a vat of nutrients and
deceived via a computer connected to it into thinking it’s a fully embodied human
living an ordinary life. In the case of underdetermination arguments, the worry is
that our perceptual evidence underdetermines the truth of the beliefs we typically
base on it because that evidence fits with both the skeptical scenario and the
hypothesis that our ordinary perceptual beliefs are true. In the case of closure
arguments, the worry goes something like this:5
Closure Argument for Skepticism

1. For any person S and any propositions p and q, if S knows that p and S knows
that p entails q, then S knows that q.
2. Therefore, if I know that I have hands and I know that my having hands
entails that I’m not a handless BIV, then I know that I’m not a handless
BIV. (From 1)
3. I don’t know that I’m not a handless BIV.
4. Therefore, the following conjunction is false: I know that I have hands and
I know that my having hands entails that I’m not a handless BIV. (From 2 and 3)
5. I know that my having hands entails that I’m not a handless BIV.
6. Therefore, I don’t know that I have hands. (From 4 and 5)
4 Although these arguments overestimate skepticism’s appeal, in the sense just mentioned, those
who rely on these weaker arguments can be thought of as underestimating (or at least not properly
highlighting) skepticism’s appeal, given that they focus on these weaker arguments rather than limit-
ing their emphasis to the stronger arguments for skepticism that are available.
5 Although, as noted in Chapter One, my focus will be mainly on justification-skepticism, this
argument is most conveniently stated in terms of knowledge-skepticism, which is why I present it
that way here. Moreover, knowledge-skepticism is not irrelevant or unrelated to my concerns in
this book.
The first premise asserts a closure principle.6 It is widely believed to require some
modification in order to be true.7 But it is also widely (though not universally)
believed to be true once so modified.8 The unmodified version above is often used
as a premise in closure arguments for skepticism because it makes for a clearer
statement of the argument. There is some discussion in the literature about the
relationship between closure arguments and underdetermination arguments,
with some philosophers suggesting the closure principle used in the former is
simply a variant of the underdetermination principle used in the latter.9 But none
of this is important for our purposes. What matters isn’t the closure principle
(which, when suitably modified, strikes me as extremely plausible) but step 3 in
the Closure Argument for Skepticism—the premise saying that we don’t know the
falsity of skeptical hypotheses (I’ll symbolize this premise as ~K~SK).
To accept the premise that ~K~SK is to endorse a kind of semi-skepticism. That
premise is itself a partial but still significant kind of skepticism and the remainder
of the Closure Argument aims to take us from there to a full-fledged skepticism.
Why accept ~K~SK? Is this just obvious, or do we need arguments to see that this
view is true? I would say that some argument is needed for this skeptical premise.
For one thing, many people think (initially at least) that it is plain that we do
know that skeptical hypotheses (such as the BIV hypothesis) are false.10 That an
argument is needed for this premise becomes even more plausible when one con-
siders that (i) the full-fledged skeptical conclusion is something that we should resist
in the absence of a strong argument for it (if we’re rightly discerning skepticism’s
appeal) and (ii) the remainder of the Closure Argument, taking us from ~K~SK to
the conclusion, seems extremely compelling. In other words, once we see that the
skeptical premise (i.e. ~K~SK) leads to a very strong case for radical skepticism, we
shouldn’t just accept that skeptical premise without argument.
6 So called because the principle asserts that the set of things known by a person S is closed under
the operation of known entailment. A set is closed under an operation just in case any performance of
that operation on members of the set results in a member of the same set (i.e. applying that operation to
members of the set does not yield results that open the door beyond that set’s boundaries, which is why
the set is said to be closed under that operation). For example, the set of even numbers is closed under
the operation of doubling, because whenever you double a member of the set of even numbers, the result
is a member of the set of even numbers. But the set of even numbers is not closed under the operation of
halving, because it is not the case that whenever you halve an even number, the result is a member of the
set of even numbers. The epistemic closure principle says that whenever a member of the set of things
known by a person S is known by S to entail a proposition q, q is a member of the set of things known by S.
7 A typical amendment changes the closure principle as follows (see Luper 2016):
For any person S, and any propositions p and q, if, while knowing p, S believes q by competently
deducing q from p, then S knows q.
8 Dretske (1970; 2005) and Nozick (1981) famously deny closure. Most other epistemologists
affirm it. See Luper (2016) for further discussion.
9 Brueckner (1994) argues that the two principles are equivalent. Cohen (1998), Pritchard
(2005), and McCain (2013) argue that they aren’t (or, in McCain’s case, that it’s not unreasonable to
think they aren’t).
10 See, for example, Greco (2008: 211).
But what sort of argument could support ~K~SK? A very natural answer to this
question is: an underdetermination argument. Consider this discussion by
Duncan Pritchard (2016: 11) of why ~K~SK is compelling:
The initial plan in the case for skepticism comes from the contention that one
cannot know that one is not a BIV. Such a claim seems entirely compelling. After
all, since the BIV scenario is ex hypothesi subjectively indistinguishable from
normal perceptual conditions, it is hard to see how one might come to know
such a thing. What kind of rational ground might one have for such a belief,
given that there is no subjective basis on which one can discern that one is not in
a radical skeptical scenario?
The thought here is that the grounds we have for our perceptual beliefs underde-
termine their truth—i.e. instead of enabling us to rule out skeptical scenarios,
those grounds are compatible with such scenarios, leaving us without a rational
basis for thinking these skeptical scenarios are false. It looks, therefore, like the
Closure Argument has a skeptical premise that is itself in need of support by an
underdetermination argument. This is a good reason to set aside the closure argu-
ment until after first examining the underdetermination argument. To accept the
closure argument’s premise that ~K~SK without an argument for that premise is to
overestimate skepticism’s appeal. Only if the underdetermination argument for
~K~SK is deemed to be strong and successful is it worthwhile to move on to con-
sider the closure argument.11
We’ve set aside some skeptical arguments that overestimate skepticism’s appeal
(the closure argument and the arguments that take for granted that justified
beliefs must be impossible to doubt, maximally certain, or infallible). Let’s turn
now to some responses that overestimate skepticism’s appeal. The responses I have
in mind are all concessive responses to radical skepticism insofar as each of them
concedes that there is an important sense in which ~K~SK. Four of the most prom-
inent types of proponents of such concessive responses are concessive contextual-
ists, contrastivists, closure-deniers, and concessive Wittgensteinians. Concessive
contextualists (e.g., Lewis 1996) say that the knowledge-attributor’s context deter-
mines the meaning of the word ‘knows’ and that when skeptical scenarios are
salient (e.g. when the content of the knowledge attributed mentions them, as in
“Alexandra knows that the skeptical scenario is false”) the standards that must be
met in order for the knowledge attribution to be true are so high that the attribution
11 Others have made this same sort of point. Feldman (2003: 127–8) mentions that the closure
argument starts with a skeptical premise, which itself needs defending. Conee and Feldman (2004:
290) use this as a reason to say that the closure argument is “a derivative argument and not in need of
independent assessment.” Likewise, Greco (2008: 111) says that ~K~SK is not plausible at all in the
absence of arguments supporting it and that, as a result, the closure argument is “parasitic on other
skeptical arguments.” He concludes that “we should focus our attention on those other arguments.”
Byrne (2004: 303–4) is clearly also sympathetic with this attitude to the closure argument (for some
discussion of Byrne and this question more generally, see DeRose (2017: 53–5, 253–62).
is false.12 Contrastivists (Schaffer 2004, 2005; Morton 2011) say that ‘knowledge’
is a ternary relation between a knower, a content proposition, and a contrast
proposition and that when the contrast proposition is a skeptical scenario (as in
“Noah knows that the skeptical scenario in which he is a BIV is false rather than
true” or “Noah knows that he has hands rather than BIV-images of hands”) the
knowledge attribution is false.13 Those who deny closure (Nozick 1981; Dretske
2005) say that you can know you have hands and know that if you have hands you
aren’t a brain in a vat, and yet fail to know the obvious implication that you are
not a brain in a vat (so they deny that knowledge is closed under known entail-
ment). Pritchard (2016: 89–103) defends a concessive Wittgensteinian version of
anti-skepticism and he too denies that we know or justifiedly believe that radical
skeptical hypotheses (such as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis) are false, saying
instead that we have (at best) arational commitments to the falsity of skeptical
hypotheses.14 According to Pritchard, denials of radical skeptical hypotheses
aren’t the kinds of things we are able to believe, nor are they open to epistemic
evaluation.15
Much ink has been spilt developing and defending these kinds of responses to
skepticism; much additional ink has been spilt objecting to these views. I won’t be
adding significantly to any explicit discussion of these concessive responses to
skepticism. Although I have concerns about many of the details of these positions
12 Some contextualists (Cohen 1999: 85, n. 27 and DeRose 2017: 121–3, 188–92) are not concessive
in this way. They say that, on some occasions, claims such as “Alexandra knows that the skeptical sce-
nario is false” are true. It’s true that Cohen and DeRose think such claims are often false, which makes
them somewhat concessive. But given that they think such claims can also be true, they aren’t conces-
sive in the sense I have in mind. Lewis, on the other hand, seems to be concessive insofar as he thinks
that all such claims (i.e. to know that a skeptical scenario is false) are false. For a discussion of Lewis’
views on this, see (DeRose 2009: 136–8).
13 Contrastivists think that even though it’s false that “Noah knows that he has hands rather than
BIV-images of hands” it can be true that “Noah knows that he has hands rather than mere arm
stumps.” Thus, contrastivists are committed to affirming the possible truth of puzzling claims such as
“Although Holmes knows that Mary killed Peter rather than Tom, Holmes doesn’t know whether
Mary or Jane killed Peter” (which strikes me as a problematic feature of contrastivism).
14 Pritchard (2016: 63–88) identifies several different Wittgensteinian views, one of which allows
that we can have a rational belief that ~K~SK, and another of which denies that we can have any propo-
sitional attitude at all to ~K~SK. Pritchard’s Wittgensteinian view differs from these in that he affirms
that we can have a propositional attitude to ~K~SK although he denies that we can believe it (which
means that we can’t rationally believe it). Penelope Maddy (2017: 193–4) maintains that Wittgenstein
himself offers a skeptical response, or at least a response that is quite concessive to skepticism.
15 You might think that you understand the proposition that you are not a massively deceived BIV
and that you believe it. Pritchard (2016: 92) grants that you understand that proposition, but denies
that you believe it. As he puts it, “thinking that you believe something does not entail that you do
believe it.” He goes on to say:
this commitment [to the falsity of a skeptical hypothesis] may feel like a belief to the
person concerned in that its phenomenology may be identical to other, more mundane,
beliefs that the subject holds. But the import of this point is moot once we remember
that the phenomenology of a propositional attitude does not suffice to determine what
propositional attitude is in play. (Pritchard 2016: 102, emphasis added)
I confess that I find Pritchard’s remarks here entirely unpersuasive—I’m convinced that I do believe
I’m not a massively deceived BIV (and that many others believe similar things about themselves).
But I won’t take the time here to discuss his remarks further.
and I find each to be implausible, the main concern I want to register here is that,
insofar as these four views concede that ~K~SK without a compelling argument,
they are overestimating skepticism’s appeal. Many proponents of these views seem to
be too willing to accept this skeptical claim—the same skeptical claim that served as
a premise in the closure argument discussed above. As I noted in that earlier
discussion, if we rightly discern skepticism’s appeal, we will not accept ~K~SK without
first carefully examining the underdetermination argument to see how compelling it
is. I will be examining that argument in detail in this book and arguing that, although
it deserves our careful attention, it is ultimately not compelling and that the Reidian
noninferential anti-skeptical response I endorse is a plausible and satisfying one.
In light of that, there is no need to accept ~K~SK, nor is there a need to adopt any of
the four “~K~SK”-endorsing concessive responses mentioned above, along with the
(to my mind) implausible commitments attached to them.
I realize that, on its own, what I’ve said won’t be convincing to proponents of
these four concessive views. They probably don’t share my view that conceding
~K~SK is overestimating skepticism’s appeal. Instead, they are likely to think this is
a part of rightly discerning skepticism’s appeal. And many of them have consid-
ered Reidian responses to underdetermination arguments for radical skepticism
and found these responses unsatisfying. So even if they grant that their own views
force them to bite some bullets, they think the implausible consequences of their
views aren’t as bad as (what they think of as) the implausible consequences of
Reidian responses to radical skepticism. In response to such concerns, I’ll simply
mention again two points noted earlier. First, my approach (i.e. insisting that
rightly discerning skepticism’s appeal involves taking into account our anti-
skeptical leanings and, in light of them, resisting ~K~SK until we discover a good
argument for it that survives critical scrutiny) will, I hope, strike proponents of
concessive responses to skepticism as, at the very least, understandable and
within the realm of what’s reasonable. Second, although I won’t be examining
these concessive responses any further, I will be examining in some detail under-
determination arguments for radical skepticism and defending my favored
Reidian response to them. If this can be done successfully, it could help propo-
nents of concessive responses to see that, contrary to what they previously
thought, the problems with Reidian responses to skepticism aren’t as bad as the
problems associated with their own favored responses. This will weaken the moti-
vation for endorsing these concessive responses, along with their implausible
consequences, which have been highlighted by those who object to these responses.
1.3 Responses that Underestimate Skepticism’s Appeal
I’ve set aside some responses to skepticism—concessive responses—because they

overestimate skepticism’s appeal. I now want to set aside some other responses to
skepticism that underestimate its appeal. What these latter responses have in
common is the way in which they deny the widely held New Evil Demon intu-
ition. An early objection to reliabilism (the view, roughly, that beliefs are justified
just in case they’re reliably formed) highlighted the New Evil Demon Problem,
which points out that reliabilism conflicts with the New Evil Demon (NED) intu-
ition. This intuition has to do with a comparison between you and your demon-
victim twin—someone just like you whose mental states are phenomenologically
the same as yours but whose beliefs, which are influenced by a demon, are mostly
false. The NED intuition is that your demon-victim twin’s evidence is the same as
your evidence, and hence that your twin’s beliefs are as justified as your beliefs.16
This is a problem for reliabilism because that view says that your twin’s beliefs
would be unjustified (given their unreliability) even if yours were completely jus-
tified. In short, the NED problem objects to reliabilism by saying that it misclassi-
fies many of your demon-victim twin’s beliefs as unjustified.17
Those who deny the NED intuition include most prominently disjunctivists (e.g.
Pritchard 2012, 2016) and “knowledge-first” epistemologists (e.g., Williamson
2000, forthcoming).18 According to them, evidence in the bad case (the case of
your demon-victim mental twin) is different from evidence in the good case (the
case of your ordinary justified beliefs). In the good case, your evidence for your
belief that p will consist of something like your seeing that p, which is factive
insofar as it entails the truth of p. Clearly, in the bad case, your twin doesn’t see
that p (where this is understood factively). So, according to this view, you don’t
have the same evidence as your twin, in which case it’s plausible to think that
you and your twin aren’t equally justified. In the good case, your belief that p is
justified because of your factive evidence while, in the bad case, your demon-
victim twin’s belief that p is not justified because that belief doesn’t have the
16 One relevant question here is whether your demon-victim twin has the same design plan as you
(via evolution or divine creation or both). As I’m understanding the NED intuition, your demon-
victim twin does have the same design plan as you. It’s a distinct question whether the beliefs of a
demon-victim with mental states phenomenologically the same as yours but with a design plan differ-
ent from yours are guaranteed to be as justified as your beliefs are. For reasons given in Bergmann
(2006: 134–7, 149–51) and Lyons (2013: 16–18), the answer is “no.” Thus, if we understand the NED
intuition so that your demon-victim twin needn’t share your design plan—as Lyons (2013) does—
then the points I am making in this section won’t hold. But, again, I am thinking of the NED intuition
as talking about a demon-victim twin that shares your design plan, so these points do hold.
17 See Cohen and Lehrer (1983) and Cohen (1984) for early discussions of this problem. The New
Evil Demon Problem differs from Descartes’ Evil Demon Problem in that the latter was raised as a
skeptical challenge, whereas the former was raised as an objection to reliabilism—an objection that
makes an anti-skeptical assumption (i.e. that both you and your demon-victim twin have lots of justi-
fied beliefs).
18 According to “knowledge-first” epistemology, championed by Williamson (2000), knowledge is
not a mental state to be analyzed in terms of other mental states, such as belief that is true, justified,
and de-gettierized. (To be de-gettierized is to satisfy whatever conditions a justified true belief must
satisfy to count as knowledge and avoid the Gettier problem. See Shope (1983) for discussion.)
Instead, knowledge is an irreducible and fundamental mental state in terms of which other epistemic
and psychological states, including evidence and justified belief, are to be analyzed.
same evidence (even though the two of you have mental states that are phenome-
nologically the same).19
This response (i.e. rejecting the NED intuition) has the potential to help tre-
mendously in dealing with the challenge of skepticism. After all, one of the key
moves in pressing the skeptical challenge is to highlight the fact that—as the NED
intuition tells us—your current evidence is just what it would be if a skeptical
scenario were true. And this fact is then used to raise various worries about how
you could possibly know that you aren’t in a skeptical scenario or that things are
as they seem. Thus, if we reject the NED intuition, a crucial step in the case for
skepticism is removed from play.
The problem is that, by denying the widely held NED intuition, disjunctivists
and knowledge-first epistemologists are underestimating skepticism’s appeal, a
significant component of which is attributable to the widespread and strong
appeal of the NED intuition. Rejecting the NED intuition makes it unrealistically
and implausibly easy to deal with radical skepticism; it seems not to take the
skeptical challenge as seriously as it deserves to be taken. Responses to skepticism
that accept the NED intuition, including the Reidian response I will defend, do a
better job of taking the skeptical challenge as seriously as it deserves to be taken.
They thereby do a better job of rightly discerning skepticism’s appeal.20
There is much to be said for and against this “NED-intuition-denying” aspect
of disjunctivism and knowledge-first epistemology.21 The main thing I want to
say on behalf of the NED intuition is that when we think of evidence in the way
I am in this book, we have very good reason to endorse the NED intuition. In
Chapter One (Section 3.3), I emphasized that evidence is the kind of thing on
which our beliefs are based. For a belief to be based on something is, in part, for it
to be responsive to it in the right sort of way. Hence, if we learn that our beliefs
are not responsive to something in that way, that suggests that our beliefs aren’t
based on that thing. Consider a case where you are looking at a table right in front
of you with an upside-down box on it in good light and someone lifts the box and
reveals a basketball. Suppose that upon the basketball being revealed you come to
believe that there is a roughly spherical object about 10″ in diameter just in front
of you. Now imagine that, a little later, a powerful deceptive demon instantly
19 Pritchard more often talks about knowledge than justification, and about rational support rather
than evidence. But in Pritchard (2011: esp. 240–5) he makes it clear that the disjunctivist thinks that
one’s evidence in the good case is factive and therefore different from one’s evidence in the bad case,
which is why one has justification in the good case and not in the bad case.
20 Interestingly, Pritchard’s (2016) response to skepticism combines the concession that we don’t
know or rationally believe ~K~SK with a denial of the NED intuition. As a result, it both overestimates
skepticism’s appeal (by conceding the skeptical premise that ~K~SK) and, in another way, underesti-
mates it (by denying the NED intuition).
21 In support of these views, see the works by Pritchard and Williamson cited three paragraphs
back. For challenges to Williamson’s views on this matter, see Brueckner (2005), Molyneux (2007),
and Brown (2018). For objections to Pritchard’s disjunctivism, see Goldberg (2016).
annihilates the basketball but at the same moment produces and sustains in you a
hallucinatory visual experience as of a basketball—an experience that is phenom-
enologically the same as you were undergoing moments ago when looking at the
basketball (and suppose this change happens seamlessly so that you aren’t able to
detect it). Finally, imagine that, after a few moments, the demon gets you to hallu-
cinate the removal of the basketball from your visual field. It’s plausible to think
that you will continue to believe there is a roughly spherical object just in front of
you after the ball is annihilated, right up to the point that you cease to have the visual
experience of the basketball, at which point you will cease to hold that belief.22
These considerations suggest that your belief that there is a spherical object just
in front of you is not responsive (solely) to whether or not you are seeing that p,
since you maintain that belief even when you cease to see that p (factively under-
stood). Instead, your belief is responsive more generally to what your seeing that
p and your hallucinating that p have in common—i.e. your visual experience as of
a basketball. After all, you formed the belief upon coming to have that experience,
you continue to have the belief when the basketball is removed but that experi-
ence persists, and you cease holding the belief when that visual experience of a
basketball ceases.23 Because we’re thinking of evidence as the kind of thing on
which your belief is based, it’s plausible to think that your evidence consists of
your non-factive mental states (your visual experience as of seeing a basketball),
not your factive mental states (such as seeing that p).24 It’s also plausible to think
that your evidence (that on which your belief is based) is the same just before and
just after the basketball is annihilated. For similar reasons, it’s plausible to think
that, in the example discussed in the opening paragraph of this section
(Section 1.3), your evidence is the same as the evidence had by your demon-
victim mental twin.
22 All of this takes for granted that, during this time, you are concentrating on what sorts of objects
with what geometrical shapes are before you. If you’re distracted from doing this, things might be
otherwise. We can stipulate that you aren’t distracted from doing this.
23 A similar point can be made about Williamson’s (2000: 62) example of a thief who risks discov-
ery by spending all night fruitlessly searching a house for a diamond he’s been told is there (by a
source whom he knows to be reliable). Contrary to what Williamson suggests, this risky behavior is
not best explained by the fact that the thief knows there is a diamond in the house (even supposing he
does in fact know this via that reliable testimony). We can see that this is so by imagining what would
happen if, just as the thief was about to enter the house with the well-hidden diamond, a demon dis-
creetly annihilated the diamond. In that scenario, the thief ’s risky behavior would be the same, and it
would presumably be best explained in the same way—namely, by pointing out that the thief felt as if
he knew that the diamond was in the house. The behavior and beliefs of the thief are responsive not to
factive mental states (such as knowing the diamond is in the house) but to non-factive ones (such as
feeling as if he knew the diamond was in the house). See Molyneux (2007: esp. 268) for further related
discussion.
24 If this is right, then it undercuts the disjunctivist’s response to skepticism (e.g. Pritchard 2012:
128–30), which highlights the fact that the evidence for one’s belief entails its truth, with the result that
our evidence conclusively rules out skeptical scenarios. The problem is that even if we are in factive
mental states, these are not the mental states that constitute our evidence because our beliefs are not
(in the appropriate sense) responsive to them and therefore aren’t based on them.
These considerations in support of the NED intuition aren’t intended as a

knockdown argument against the NED-intuition-denying component of disjunc-
tivism and knowledge-first epistemology. I’ve already noted that there is much to
be said on behalf of those views and much to be said in reply. I haven’t really
engaged with that literature here because I don’t have the space to do so.
Nevertheless, it remains true that in opposing the NED intuition, one is fighting
an uphill battle against a very widely held view, something both Williamson and
Pritchard recognize.25 Moreover, the considerations in the previous two para-
graphs still constitute a good reason for thinking that denying the NED intuition
underestimates skepticism’s appeal (insofar as that intuition itself is appealing and
lends support to skepticism). Insofar as we want to deal with skepticism while
rightly discerning its appeal, we do better to try first to deal with it while accepting
the force of the NED intuition. If we can, in this way, offer a plausible response to
skepticism, that kind of response to skepticism is to be preferred. For this reason,
I will be setting aside the disjunctivist and the knowledge-first responses to skep-
ticism. Again, my hope is that my defense in this book of my own Reidian
response to skepticism will make such a response seem more plausible to those
currently opposed to it, with the result that—at least in terms of how it responds
to skepticism—it comes to be viewed as preferable to responses (such as those
offered by disjunctivists and knowledge-first epistemologists) that have the draw-
back of denying the NED intuition.
2. An Underdetermination Argument against Perception
In Section 1 of this chapter, we set aside (for the purposes of this book) responses
to skepticism that underestimate the appeal of radical skepticism. This includes
the responses of those who deny the NED intuition, such as disjunctivists and
knowledge-first epistemologists. We also set aside responses to skepticism that
overestimate skepticism’s appeal—in particular, the concessive responses offered
by contrastivists, closure- deniers, concessive contextualists, and concessive
Wittgensteinians. In addition, we set aside a number of skeptical arguments that
overestimate skepticism’s appeal, such as the closure argument and arguments
that take for granted that justified beliefs must be impossible to doubt, maximally
certain, or infallible. In this section, I will present and motivate the kind of skepti-
cal argument that will be the main focus of this book, namely underdetermina-
tion arguments for perceptual skepticism.26 I will explain why I think this kind of
25 This is evident in their attempts to minimize the costs of the bullets they have to bite. See
Pritchard (forthcoming) and Williamson (2013a; 2013b; forthcoming).
26 I’ve spoken about both perceptual skepticism and skepticism about the external world (by which
I mean the physical or material world, including my body). Strictly speaking, these are different. One
could, perhaps, come up with an argument for the existence of the external world that didn’t in any
An Underdetermination Argument against Perception 27
argument presents us with a serious intellectual challenge—one that is puzzling,

difficult to sort through, and worthy of extended philosophical reflection and dis-
cussion (insofar as it neither underestimates nor overestimates skepticism’s
appeal). This argument will also serve to highlight the kinds of response to radical
skepticism that will be discussed in the chapters that follow.
2.1 The Argument
The main argument for perceptual skepticism that I’ll be focusing on begins by
highlighting the gap between the evidence for our perceptual beliefs and their
truth.27 In forming our perceptual beliefs, the input or evidence on which we
rely—i.e. what those beliefs are based on—seems to consist mainly of sensory
experience. But as the NED intuition28 reminds us, our having the sensory evi-
dence we do is consistent with the falsity of the perceptual beliefs that we base on
that evidence.29 It’s possible for a person to have the kind of perceptual evidence
we typically have, believing the kinds of things we typically do on the basis of
such evidence, and for all of her external (physical) world beliefs to be false.
Another way to put the point is that our evidence, consisting mainly of sensory
experience, underdetermines the truth of the perceptual beliefs based on that evi-
dence. The possibility of this sort of error has been highlighted in many different
ways: the sensory experience we think of as evidence for our perceptual beliefs
could be the result of a (rather extraordinary) dream;30 or it could be caused by a
powerful evil demon who can induce such sensory experience in us in the absence
of a physical world; or it could be artificially produced by a computer as in movies
like The Matrix. The point is the same whether we consider the Dream Hypothesis,
the Evil Demon Hypothesis, or the Computer Hypothesis: there is a gap between
way rely on perception, or perhaps one could receive a nonperceptual revelation from God providing
knowledge of the existence of the external world; then one could endorse perceptual skepticism with-
out being a skeptic about the external world. Likewise, a certain kind of Berkeleyan idealist could,
perhaps, manage to be a skeptic about the external world without being a skeptic about perception
(she might argue that neither perception nor anything else tells us there is an external—i.e. physical or
material—world). Nevertheless, I will be treating these two kinds of skepticism as pretty much the
same thing. I’ll assume that perceptual skepticism results in skepticism about the existence of the
external world (because we don’t in fact have any nonperceptual way to justify our belief in the exter-
nal world). And I’ll assume that if our perceptual beliefs are justified, we’re justified in believing there’s
an external world (since, contra idealists who suggest otherwise, perception really does tell us that
there’s an external world).
27 In so doing, I follow Fumerton (1995: 31–6; 2006: 120–8).
28 See the discussion in Section 1.3 of this chapter for a defense of this intuition.
29 To be clear, I am thinking of sensory experience non-factively.
30 Penelope Maddy (2017: 30–40) distinguishes ordinary dreaming—with which we’re all familiar
(and which, in hindsight at least, seems quite different from waking life)—from extraordinary dream-
ing, which involves experiences that are indistinguishable from waking life. Although the latter are
rare or perhaps nonexistent, they aren’t impossible. For our purposes in this book, extraordinary
dreaming is the kind of dreaming that is of interest.
our evidence for our perceptual beliefs and their truth; our evidence, therefore,
underdetermines the truth of what we might call ‘the Standard Hypothesis,’
according to which there is a world of physical objects that stimulate our sense
organs and thereby cause our sensory experience, which, in turn, produces in us
mostly accurate beliefs about those physical objects.
One natural thought in response to these reflections is that in cases where one
noninferentially bases31 a belief on evidence that is compatible with the belief ’s
falsity, that belief isn’t justified unless one can see how it is that such evidence
makes the belief ’s truth likely. And in order to be able to see how it is that the
evidence on which one’s noninferential perceptual belief is based makes that
belief ’s truth likely, one must be able to see how to reason one’s way to that belief ’s
likely truth, starting from that evidence. This seems to be a guiding idea animat-
ing much of the literature in the history of external world skepticism, from
Descartes and Hume all the way through to contemporary philosophers such as
Laurence BonJour and Jonathan Vogel. They are looking to defend the epistemic
legitimacy of our perceptual beliefs by coming up with arguments from our per-
ceptual evidence to the likely truth of those beliefs. An underdetermination prin-
ciple (UP) encapsulating this influential thought is the following:
UP: If the existence or occurrence of the evidence E on which S’s belief B is

noninferentially based does not entail B’s truth, then S’s belief B is justified in a
way that is dependent on E only if S is able to infer B via good reasoning from the
existence or occurrence of E.
Principle UP is weaker than infallibilist principles that require that our evidence
guarantees or entails the truth of our beliefs. This is because UP allows that such
non-guaranteeing evidence can, under the right conditions, still play a role in the
justification of the beliefs based on it. What UP requires for justification of nonin-
ferential beliefs (via the evidence on which they’re based) is that if that evidence
doesn’t entail the belief ’s truth, the believer must be able to infer the belief ’s truth
or likely truth via good reasoning from the existence or occurrence of that
evidence.32
31 When the evidence on which a belief is based is nondoxastic—which is to say it doesn’t consist
of beliefs—then the basing of our perceptual beliefs on this evidence is noninferential basing, rather
than inferential basing of the sort that occurs when one belief is based on (inferred from)
another belief.
32 What if you’re among those who don’t find UP appealing or plausible? Ultimately, I don’t find it
plausible either, for reasons that will become clear in this book. But I can see that it is tempting to
many, and I think I can see why (I say more about why in Section 2.2). If you’re among those who
don’t find UP even the slightest bit tempting, I’d say you should count yourself fortunate, in one sense,
for this means you aren’t susceptible to what I consider to be an illusion (one that is and has been very
tempting to many). In another sense, though, you are missing out, because you aren’t able to appreci-
ate first-hand why so many have been attracted to this line of skeptical argument.
UP can be employed in an underdetermination argument (UA) for perceptual

skepticism as follows:
UA Against Perception
1. UP: If the existence or occurrence of the evidence E on which S’s belief B is
noninferentially based does not entail B’s truth, then S’s belief B is justified in a
way that is dependent on E only if S is able to infer B via good reasoning from the
existence or occurrence of E.
2. Our perceptual beliefs are noninferentially based on sensory- experience
evidence.33
3. Therefore, if the existence or occurrence of the sensory-experience evidence
on which our perceptual beliefs are noninferentially based does not entail the
truth of our perceptual beliefs, then our perceptual beliefs are justified in a way
that is dependent on our sensory-experience evidence only if we are able to infer
their truth via good reasoning from the existence or occurrence of our sensory-
experience evidence. (From 1–2)
4. The existence or occurrence of the sensory-experience evidence on which
our perceptual beliefs are noninferentially based does not entail the truth of our
perceptual beliefs.34
5. None of us is able to infer the truth of our perceptual beliefs via good reason-
ing from the existence or occurrence of our sensory-experience evidence.
6. Therefore, our perceptual beliefs about the external world are not justified in
a way that is dependent on our sensory-experience evidence. (From 3–5)
7. If our perceptual beliefs about the external world are not justified in a way
that is dependent on our sensory- experience evidence, then our perceptual
beliefs about the external world are not justified.
8. Therefore, our perceptual beliefs about the external world are not justified.
(From 6–7)
The argument is valid: the conclusion really does follow from the five premises: 1,
2, 4, 5, and 7. Premise 2 is not in doubt. And given the NED intuition and how
we’re thinking of evidence in this book, premise 4 is not in doubt either.
Moreover, premise 7 is also not in doubt. Even if it is theoretically possible that
God (or some other source) can somehow inform us, without our relying in any
way on our sensory-experience evidence, that our perceptual beliefs are true, this
is not what in fact happens with any of us, nor are we able to justifiedly form
perceptual beliefs in a way that doesn’t rely on sensory experience. And even if we
33 I.e. the evidence, consisting of our sensory experiences.

34 An assumption of this argument is that the perceptual belief in question is not a necessary truth.
That sort of assumption could be set aside in underdetermination arguments, and it will be set aside in
Chapter Five, where I propose an underdetermination argument for skepticism about a priori beliefs.
did form beliefs in this non-standard way, these beliefs would no longer count as
perceptual beliefs, which are based on sensory-experience evidence (e.g. if they
were formed completely independently of sensory experience via divine testi-
mony, they’d be divinely inspired beliefs, not perceptual beliefs). In light of these
points, the only way to escape the conclusion of this skeptical argument is to rea-
sonably resist either premise 1 (i.e. UP—which provides key support for step 3) or
premise 5.
I will call the response that resists premise 1 ‘noninferential anti-skepticism’
because it denies that the justification of our perceptual belief requires us to be
able to infer those beliefs via good reasoning from the evidence on which we
typically base them. And I will call the response that resists premise 5 ‘inferen-
tial anti-skepticism’ because it defends the justification of our perceptual beliefs
by insisting that we are able to infer those beliefs via good reasoning from the
evidence on which we typically base them. Each response will be discussed at
considerable length in the remainder of this book. Indeed, the goal of the book
is to argue that inferential anti-skepticism is an unsuccessful response to under-
determination arguments for radical skepticism and to defend a version of non-
inferential anti-skepticism.
But first, it is important to get clearly before our minds what these responses
are up against. The UA Against Perception is an important and challenging argu-
ment for radical skepticism—one that is not easily set aside. We can see why by
considering the significant appeal of the two premises that are resisted by inferen-
tial and noninferential anti-skepticism.
2.2 The Appeal of Premise 1
Why think premise 1 (UP) is true? Well, for starters, as premise 4 of the UA
Against Perception suggests, our evidence for our perceptual beliefs seems to be
consistent with each of the following hypotheses: the Dream Hypothesis, the Evil
Demon Hypothesis, the Computer Hypothesis, and the Standard Hypothesis (all
of which were briefly described above). In light of this, it is tempting to think that
one needs to be able to see some reason for connecting that evidence with the
Standard Hypothesis rather than one of the other three. But this is just to say that
one needs to be able to infer the Standard Hypothesis (or the truth of one’s per-
ceptual beliefs) via good reasoning from one’s sensory experience, which is what
premise 1 implies is required under the specified conditions in order for one’s
perceptual beliefs to be justified.
Suppose I acknowledge that each of the four hypotheses mentioned above
is consistent with my sensory evidence and, when challenged to give a reason
for thinking that the Standard Hypothesis (rather than one of the three
skeptical hypotheses) was indicated by that evidence, I said I had no line of
reasoning to give, nothing that enabled me to infer the Standard Hypothesis

(or the truth of my perceptual beliefs) via appropriate reasoning from my
sensory experience. Moreover, suppose I also acknowledge, quite reasonably,
that my perceptual beliefs are not justified completely independently of my
sensory experience. Shouldn’t that raise concerns about whether my perceptual
beliefs are justified?
The fact is that there seems to be a gap between our evidence for our perceptual
beliefs and their truth—an evidence–truth gap. Because we want to be rational,
we’d like to have that gap bridged. In particular, we want to bridge that gap by
seeing how it is that our evidence for these beliefs implies their truth (or likely
truth). It’s tempting to think that we could deal with our felt need to bridge this
gap—to see how it is that our evidence for these beliefs implies their truth—by
being able to provide arguments (i.e. good reasoning) for the conclusion that our
perceptual evidence makes our perceptual beliefs true or probably true. It is,
after all, quite natural to think that if anything could demonstrate that we can see
how one thing implies another, being able to provide good arguments to that
effect would.
Consider an analogy intended to highlight the appeal of UP. Suppose I’m a
witness to a murder and, while testifying in court, I’m reminded that Bill, whom
I claim to have seen commit the murder, has an identical twin brother Phil. I’m then
asked if I can visually distinguish Bill from Phil. Suppose I admit that (i) my
visual evidence (what I had when I witnessed the murder) is consistent with it
being Phil rather than Bill who committed the murder, and that (ii) I have no
evidence that is independent of that visual evidence on which I’m basing my
belief that Bill is the murderer. At that point, it would be natural to ask, in light of
my admissions, what reason I have for connecting my visual evidence, when
I witnessed the murder, with Bill rather than Phil. If my reply is that I know of no
line of reasoning that connects that visual evidence with Bill rather than Phil, the
jury members (if they’re sensible) will be unimpressed by my testimony against
Bill. They will conclude that my belief that Bill is the murderer is unjustified.
(We can imagine cases where my belief that Bill is the murderer is justified, but
they involve either my having some reason for connecting my visual evidence
with Bill rather than Phil or my having some evidence that is independent of my
visual evidence for thinking Bill rather than Phil was the murderer.) According to
the UA Against Perception, our perceptual beliefs are as unjustified as this belief
that Bill is the murderer, if we have no reason that connects our sensory evidence
with the Standard Hypothesis rather than some competing skeptical hypothesis.
This is because in each case (the Bill and Phil case and the perceptual skepticism
case) there is a gap between my evidence and the truth of the perceptual beliefs
based on it. And, in each case, if there is no available line of reasoning to connect
my evidence with the belief ’s truth and no independent evidence for the belief,
then the belief is unjustified.
The version of UP used in the UA Against Perception is inspired by Richard

Fumerton’s work.35 Others have proposed weaker underdetermination principles
along the following lines:
UP†: If the existence or occurrence of evidence E on which S’s belief B is nonin-

ferentially based does not entail B’s truth, then S’s belief B is justified in a way that
is dependent on E only if E provides better reason for B than for B’s falsity.36
The important difference between UP and UP† is that UP† requires not that the
believer is able to infer B via good reasoning from the existence or occurrence of
E, but only that there is some good reasoning for B from the existence or occur-
rence of E. Richard Feldman (2003: 150–1) worries about this difference. He con-
siders Novice and Expert, both of whom have the same sort of visual experience
of a hornbeam tree. In each case, that visual experience provides a good reason
for the belief that the tree is a hornbeam because that particular look is strongly
correlated with hornbeam trees. Thus, UP† suggests that both Novice’s belief
and Expert’s belief are or may be justified. But Novice has no idea that this
visual experience is a good reason for that belief whereas Expert does. Expert
is able to infer that it’s a hornbeam via good reasoning from the existence of
that evidence (the visual experience), whereas Novice is not. This suggests that
Expert’s belief is justified whereas Novice’s belief is not. But that fact suggests
that UP† is mistaken and needs to be replaced with something like UP. As
Feldman (2003: 150) puts it, what is needed for justification is “not merely that
[the belief ’s truth is] the best explanation but that the believer [has] reason to
believe that it is the best explanation” of that visual experience. The same point
can be made in a broader way by focusing on reasoning in general (rather than
just reasoning via inference to the best explanation): justification requires not
merely that E provides better reason for B than for B’s falsity but that S is able
to infer B via good reasoning from the existence or occurrence of E. In making
these points, Feldman is here joining Fumerton in favoring a principle like UP
over one like UP†.37
As will become clear in the following chapters, I don’t endorse UP. But for now,
my goal is to emphasize the appeal of UP (i.e. premise 1 of the UA Against
Perception, which provides key support for step 3 of that argument) in light of the
preceding remarks about the case of Bill and Phil and the case of Novice
and Expert.
35 Again, see Fumerton (1995: 31–6; 2006: 120–8).

36 See the underdetermination principles identified by Brueckner (1994), Cohen (1998), Pritchard
(2005), Feldman (2003: 142), and Conee and Feldman (2004: 280), all of which are similar to UP†.
37 Feldman (2003: 151) acknowledges some potential worries for UP’s requirement that S herself
have reason to believe or be justified in believing that E provides a good reason for favoring B over B’s
falsity. But in the end he claims that requiring this of S is the “best option.”
2.3 The Appeal of Premise 5
Let’s turn next to premise 5, which says that none of us is able to infer the truth of
our perceptual beliefs via good reasoning from the existence or occurrence of the
sensory-experience evidence on which they are based. The main reason for think-
ing this is that, as far as we can tell, none of us is aware of any good deductive or
nondeductive reasoning enabling us to make such an inference. This seems to be
one of the most important lessons to be learned from a review of the history of
philosophy since the time of Descartes. Descartes thought he had provided a
good argument (that doesn’t rely on perception) starting with our sensory experi-
ence and concluding that our perceptual beliefs are mostly true. But his argument
is widely viewed as a failure, both by his contemporaries and by others since.
Time and again since Descartes, others have tried to provide better arguments in
the place of his. And time and again, these arguments have been viewed by other
philosophers as failures. In the late eighteenth century, Kant expressed his dismay
at the attempts over the previous 150 years to develop such arguments:
it still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the
existence of things outside us (from which we derive the whole material of
knowledge, even for our inner sense) must be accepted merely on faith, and that
if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his
doubts by any satisfactory proof.38
This view of Kant’s, about the failure of actually proposed arguments from the
existence of our sensory experience to the conclusion that our perceptual beliefs
are true, has persisted up to the present. In a book devoted entirely to considering
whether there are any good noncircular arguments for the reliability of sense per-
ception, William Alston (1993: 115) draws the following conclusion:
I have examined a large number of attempts to show in a noncircular fashion

that sense perception is a reliable guide to the external environment. I have, in
fact, examined all the more impressive-looking attempts known to me. None of
them have survived scrutiny. Unless and until someone comes up with a more
successful alternative we will have to conclude that we are unable to give a non-
circular demonstration, or even a strong supporting argument, for the reliability
of SP [i.e. sense perception].
This long track record of failed attempts to adequately defend the reliability of
perception has contributed to widespread and long-lasting pessimism about
38 Kant (1985 [1787]: B xxxix).

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Title: Il tallone di ferro
Author: Jack London
Translator: Gian Dàuli
Release date: November 16, 2023 [eBook #72139]
Language: Italian
Original publication: Milano: Modernissima, 1925
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IL TALLONE

DI FERRO ***
IL TALLONE DI FERRO
JACK LONDON
IL
TALLONE DI FERRO
ROMANZO DI PREVISIONE SOCIALE
A cura di GIAN DÀULI
MODERNISSIMA
MILANO — Via Vivaio, 10
PROPRIETÀ LETTERARIA RISERVATA
Stab. Tipo-Lit. FED. SACCHETTI & C. — Via Zecca
Vecchia, 7 — Milano (7)
INDICE
«E io so che un terzo di tutto il
genere umano sulla terra perirà
nella Grande Guerra, e un terzo
perirà nella Grande Distruzione,
ma l’ultimo terzo vivrà nel Grande
Millennio, che sarà il Regno di Dio
sulla Terra».
Selma Lagerfel
Jack London scrisse il Tallone di ferro nel 1907 [1]. Dopo un attento
esame del disordine economico del secolo XIX e delle condizioni di
lotta tra plutocrazia e proletariato egli, seguendo i maggiori uomini di
scienza e statisti del suo tempo, comprese come un inesorabile
dilemma si dibattesse nella coscienza della Società contemporanea
oppressa dagli armamenti e da una produzione inadeguata,
eccessiva ed artificiosa insieme: la rivoluzione, o la guerra.
Davanti a questo terribile dilemma, la sua grande anima di poeta, di
sognatore e di ribelle previde l’avvenire, e visse, con le creature
immortali della immaginazione, parte del grande dramma che
culminò, sette anni dopo, nella guerra mondiale.
Ma più che la guerra, il London previde la rivoluzione liberatrice, per
successive rivolte di popolo, delle quali egli descrisse una, così
sanguinaria e feroce, che fu accusato, nel 1907, di essere «un
terribile pessimista». In realtà il London anticipò con l’immaginazione
ciò che accadde negli Stati Uniti ed altrove tra gli anni 1912 e 1918;
così che oggi, nel 1925, noi possiamo giudicarlo profeta di sciagure,
se si vuole, ma profeta.
Infatti, nell’autunno del 1907, mentre il mondo s’adagiava nelle più
rosee e svariate ideologie umanitarie, Jack London, osservatore
acuto e chiaroveggente, anticipando e descrivendo gli avvenimenti
che sarebbero accaduti nel 1913, scriveva: «L’oligarchia voleva la
guerra con la Germania, e la voleva per molte ragioni. Nello
scompiglio che tale guerra avrebbe causato, nel rimescolìo delle
carte internazionali e nella conclusione di nuovi trattati e di nuove
alleanze, l’oligarchia aveva molto da guadagnare. Inoltre, la guerra
avrebbe esaurito gran parte dell’eccesso dì produzione nazionale,
ridotto gli eserciti di disoccupati che minacciavano tutti i paesi, e
concesso all’oligarchia spazio e tempo per perfezionare i suoi piani
di lotta sociale.
«Tale guerra avrebbe dato all’Oligarchia (si parla di quella degli Stati
Uniti) il possesso del mercato mondiale. Inoltre, avrebbe creato un
esercito permanente in continua efficienza, e nello stesso tempo
avrebbe sostituito nella mente del popolo l’idea di «America contro
Germania» a quella di «Socialismo contro Oligarchia». In realtà, la
guerra avrebbe fatto tutto questo se non ci fossero stati socialisti.
Un’adunanza segreta dei capi dell’Ovest fu convocata nelle nostre
quattro camerette di Pell Street. In essa fu esaminato prima
l’atteggiamento che il partito doveva assumere. Non era la prima
volta che veniva discussa la possibilità d’un conflitto armato; ma era
la prima volta che ciò si faceva negli Stati Uniti. Dopo la nostra
riunione segreta, ci ponemmo in contatto con l’organizzazione
nazionale, e ben presto furono scambiati marconigrammi attraverso
l’Atlantico, fra noi e l’Ufficio Internazionale del Lavoro. I socialisti
tedeschi erano disposti ad agire con noi... Il 4 dicembre (1913),
l’Ambasciatore americano fu richiamato dalla capitale tedesca. La
stessa notte una flotta da guerra tedesca si lanciava su Honolulu
affondando tre incrociatori e una torpediniera doganale e
bombardando la città. Il giorno dopo, sia la Germania che gli Stati
Uniti dichiararono la guerra, e in un’ora i socialisti dichiararono lo
sciopero generale nei due paesi. Per la prima volta il Dio della
Guerra tedesco si trovò di fronte gli uomini del suo impero, gli uomini
che facevano funzionare il suo impero. La novità della situazione
stava nel fatto che la rivolta era passiva: il popolo non lottava. Il
popolo rimaneva inerte; e rimanendo inerte legava le mani al Dio
della Guerra... Neppure una ruota si muoveva nel suo impero,
nessun treno procedeva, nessun telegramma percorreva i fili, perchè
ferrovieri e telegrafisti avevano cessato di lavorare, come il resto
della popolazione».
La guerra mondiale preconizzata da Jack London pel dicembre del
1913 ebbe inizio, invece, otto mesi dopo, nell’agosto del 1914, ma
l’azione delle organizzazioni operaie per impedire il conflitto, benchè
tentata, non ebbe buon successo per colpa del proletariato
tedesco [2].
Se Jack London avesse potuto prevedere la sconfitta del socialismo
nella guerra, avrebbe certamente mutato corso allo svolgimento del
suo racconto, pur lasciandone immutata la sostanza, ma non è da
pensare — dato il carattere sociale e ideale di tutta la sua opera —
che egli potesse seguire l’illusione di quelli che accettarono la guerra
come una soluzione tragica, ma definitiva della crisi mondiale, o dei
sognatori wilsoniani che credettero di aver combattuto e vinto la
guerra contro la guerra, e di poter ottenere il disarmo mediante la
Società delle Nazioni, o di coloro che vanno ripetendo che la guerra
ha trasformato la società e iniziato un’êra nuova.
Non c’è menzogna maggiore e peggiore di questa, e, a volerle
credere, più fatale ai destini umani.
La guerra non fu la soluzione di una crisi, ma tragico inevitabile
risultato delle condizioni della Società di prima della guerra, per
amoralità, immoralità, egoismo, ignoranza, avidità di ricchezza e di
piacere, squilibrio economico, ingiustizia sociale, e un’infinità di altri
mali nascosti dall’ipocrisia, svalutati dall’ottimismo, giustificati con
sofismi. La crisi perdura tuttora, perchè gli uomini, anzichè
ravvedersi degli errori passati che causarono la guerra, sembrano
quasi compiacersene e gloriarsene, giudicando la grande strage
come un fenomeno meraviglioso, e vanto non vergogna
dell’Umanità.
La spaventosa esperienza collettiva, che dovrebbe essere
considerata come un’esperienza di colpe comuni o, almeno, come
una dura e crudele necessità imposta da colpe altrui, e tale da far
ravvedere e rendere, comunque, pensosi delle cause che recarono
tanti lutti e tante rovine, pare, infatti, che faccia perdere ai più
coscienza del bene e del male, e li imbaldanzisca come se fossero
tutti trionfatori e salvatori della Patria e dell’Umanità. Ed è di oggi il
triste spettacolo dei pusillanimi, degli imboscati e intriganti di ieri,
che, sorretti dagli arricchiti di guerra, dòminano la piazza e tentano di
usurpare la gloria dei pochi veri benemeriti della Nazione, per
creare, a proprio e totale beneficio, l’ingiusto privilegio del governo
del proprio paese e dell’amministrazione della cosa pubblica.
Ma ritorniamo a Jack London, a proposito del quale questa
digressione non può considerarsi oziosa. Vien fatto di pensare,
infatti, che se le condizioni della Società prima del 1914 crearono la
Grande Guerra, il perdurare e l’aggravarsi delle stesse condizioni
non possa che preparare quella catastrofe anche maggiore, a breve
scadenza, e cioè quella Grande Distruzione prevista e
magistralmente descritta dal London. La Grande Distruzione sarà
inevitabile e vicina se gli uomini di buona volontà non agiranno
prontamente, con coraggio, e perseveranza.
Ma come agire, come evitare la nuova sventura?
***
Anatole France scrisse che è necessario che coloro che hanno il

dono prezioso e raro di prevedere, manifestino i pericoli che
presentono. Anche Jack London «aveva il genio che vede quello che
è nascosto alla folla degli uomini, e possedeva una scienza che gli
permetteva d’anticipare i tempi. Egli previde l’assieme degli
avvenimenti che si sono svolti nella nostra epoca». Ma, ahimè! chi
gli diede ascolto? Le sue previsioni furono lette prima della guerra da
centinaia di migliaia di uomini sparsi in tutto il mondo. Forse qualche
pensatore solitario gli credette, ma i più lo considerarono pazzo o
visionario, molti lo chiamarono pessimista, e i suoi compagni di fede
l’accusarono di seminare lo spavento nelle file del proletariato.
Pertanto, l’ottimismo di prima della guerra non dovrebbe essere più
possibile.
Chi non vede che la guerra ha reso più selvaggio l’urto degli
interessi, accresciuto smisuratamente l’avidità del potere, della
ricchezza e del piacere, fra contese sociali e politiche esasperate e il
terrore delle continue minacce fra nazioni, e classi, segni tutti del
rapido processo di decomposizione della società contemporanea?
Mai nella storia dell’Umanità fu vista una maggiore miseria spirituale
e morale, mai l’anima umana fu così offesa e degradata da tanti
delitti!
Perciò il Tallone di ferro riappare oggi, dopo quasi vent’anni dacchè
fu scritto, come specchio di dolorosa attualità, riflette fedelmente i
mali che travagliano la vita e la coscienza degli individui e delle
nazioni, mostra i pericoli del nostro disordine sociale. Però, mentre
vediamo quello che in realtà fu ed è il tallone di ferro della
plutocrazia, non possiamo non meditare sulle deformazioni del
movimento operaio che, incapace, ieri, per insufficiente preparazione
morale e spirituale, d’impedire la guerra, minaccia oggi la società col
terribile tallone di ferro della demagogia e dell’ignoranza. Se
volessimo generalizzare, dovremmo ricordare un infinito numero di
talloni di ferro! Ma già il quadro è troppo fosco e pauroso nel suo
assieme per attardarci nei particolari. Lasciamo anzi che la speranza
rientri nei cuori, sia pure per un istante, con le immagini delle
creature che raddolciscono e rendono caro questo libro di orrori: con
l’immagine di Ernesto Everhard, il rivoluzionario «pieno di coraggio e
di saggezza, pieno di forza e di dolcezza», che tanto somiglia allo
scrittore che l’ha creato: con quella della moglie di Everhard,
dall’anima grande e innamorata e dallo spirito forte; con quelle del
vescovo Morehouse e del padre di Avis, indimenticabili, l’uno per
l’ingenua anima evangelica, l’altro per l’amore della scienza, che lo
rende immune dalle cattiverie degli uomini e superiore alle traversie
della vita. Creature buone e sublimi come queste creature del
London esistono pure nella vita reale e mantengono accesa, anche
nelle epoche più buie, con la fiamma dell’amore, la lampada della
civiltà.
È da sperare comunque che se la società contemporanea dovrà
precipitare, con tutte le passate ideologie e gli antichi ordinamenti,
nell’abisso approfondito dalla guerra, sia almeno rapida la rovina per
una più rapida rinascita, e che non occorreranno i tre secoli di tallone
di ferro preconizzati dal London perchè l’umanità rinnovata riprenda
il cammino verso altitudini mai toccate. È certo intanto che il
problema, da economico e politico qual era nel secolo scorso, è
divenuto oggi essenzialmente morale; e sarà domani semplicemente
religioso. Ormai sappiamo che non trionferanno nè le idee di Carlo
Marx, nè quelle di Guglielmo James, nè del Sorel, nè del Bergson. Vi
sarà probabilmente un ritorno alla morale cristiana, e si considererà
nuovamente la vita come una prova di rinuncia e di dolore; ma
dovranno alla fine cadere le barriere tra classe e classe, tra nazione
e nazione, scomparire le diversità di lingua e di religione, perchè gli
uomini possano riconoscersi membri di un’unica famiglia umana.
Abbandonate le discordie, i vivi ascolteranno la voce dei morti, si
caricheranno con lietezza la loro parte di lavoro per il progresso
umano, e comprendendosi ed amandosi, prepareranno un mondo
migliore per le future generazioni. Allora le antiche verità degli
Evangeli avranno una nuova interpretazione e, soprattutto, una
nuova pratica; sarà, in altre parole, il trionfo dell’amore, della
Religione, dell’Umanità secondo una nuova disciplina morale,
coscientemente accettata in regime di libertà Universale; e la
devozione del forte per il debole, la venerazione del debole per il
forte diventeranno norma di vita veramente civile. Jack London ha
previsto e auspicato tutto ciò, con grandezza di cuore.
La certezza di una Umanità riconciliata, unita, concorde, solidale
davanti al dolore ed al mistero illumina, appunto, e riscalda come un
chiarore di sole, tutte le opere di Jack London; il quale ci appare
come un Cavaliere della Verità, e poeta e profeta dell’amore
universale.
Rapallo, gennaio del 1925.
GIAN DÀULI.
Questa traduzione è
dedicata allo spirito
formidabile di GIOVANNI
ANSALDO.
G. D.
IL TALLONE DI FERRO
(THE IRON HEEL)
CAPITOLO I.
LA MIA AQUILA.
La brezza d’estate agita i pini giganteschi, e le onde della Wild Water

rumoreggiano ritmicamente sulle pietre muscose. Numerose farfalle
danzano al sole e da ogni parte freme ed ondeggia il ronzio delle
api. In mezzo ad una quiete così profonda, io me ne sto sola,
pensierosa ed agitata.
È tale e tanta la mia serenità, che mi turba, e mi sembra irreale.
Tutto è tranquillo intorno, ma è come la calma che precede la
tempesta. Tendo l’orecchio e spio, con tutti i sensi, il minimo indizio
del cataclisma imminente. Purchè non sia prematuro, o purchè non
scoppi troppo presto [3].
La mia inquietudine è giustificata. Penso, penso continuamente, e
non posso fare a meno di pensare. Ho vissuto così a lungo nella
mischia, che la calma mi opprime, e la mia immaginazione prevede,
istintivamente, quel turbine di rovina e di morte che si scatenerà
ancora, fra poco. Mi pare di sentire le grida delle vittime, mi pare di
vedere, come pel passato, tanta tenera e preziosa carne contusa e
mutilata, tante anime strappate violentemente dai loro nobili corpi e
lanciate verso Dio [4]. Poveri esseri noi siamo: costretti alla
carneficina e alla distruzione per ottenere il nostro intento, per far
regnare sulla terra una pace e una felicità durature!
E poi sono proprio sola! Quando non penso a ciò che deve essere,
penso a ciò che è stato, a ciò che non è più. Penso alla mia aquila
che batteva l’aria colle sue instancabili ali, e prese il volo verso il suo
sole, verso l’ideale radioso della libertà umana.
Non potrei starmene inerte ad aspettare il grande avvenimento, che
è opera sua, un’opera della quale egli non può più vedere il
compimento. È lavoro delle sue mani, creazione della sua mente.
Egli le ha dedicato gli anni migliori, l’ha nutrita della sua vita [5].
Perciò voglio consacrare questo periodo di attesa e di ansia al
ricordo di mio marito. Io sola, al mondo, potrò far luce su quella
personalità così nobile, che non sarà mai abbastanza nota.
Era un’anima immensa! Quando il mio amore si purifica di ogni
egoismo, rimpiango sopratutto che egli sia scomparso e che non
veda l’aurora vicina. Non possiamo fallire! Egli ha costruito troppo
solidamente e con troppa sicurezza. Dal petto dell’umanità atterrata,
strapperemo il maledetto Tallone di Ferro! Al segnale della riscossa
insorgeranno, ovunque, le legioni dei lavoratori, così che mai, nella
storia, si sarà veduto alcunchè di simile. La solidarietà delle masse
lavoratrici è assicurata; per la prima volta scoppierà una rivoluzione
internazionale, in tutto il mondo [6].
Vedete bene, sono così assillata da questo pensiero, che da lungo
tempo vivo, giorno e notte, persino i particolari del grande
avvenimento. E non posso disgiungerli dal ricordo di colui che ne era
l’anima.
Tutti sanno che ha lavorato molto e sofferto crudelmente per la
libertà; ma nessuno sa meglio di me che, durante i venti anni di
tumulto nei quali ho condiviso la sua vita, ho potuto apprezzare la
sua pazienza, il suo sforzo incessante, la sua totale dedizione alla
causa per la quale è morto, or sono appena due mesi.
Cercherò di raccontare semplicemente come mai Ernesto Everhard
sia entrato a far parte della mia vita, come il suo influsso su me sia
cresciuto al punto di farmi diventare parte di lui stesso, e quali
mutamenti meravigliosi abbia operato sul mio destino; così, potrete
vederlo con i miei occhi e conoscerlo come l’ho conosciuto io, a
parte certi segreti troppo intimi e dolci per essere rivelati.
Lo vidi la prima volta nel febbraio del 1912, quando, invitato a pranzo
da mio padre, [7] entrò in casa nostra a Berkeley; e non posso dire
che ne ricevessi una buona impressione. C’era molta gente in casa;
e nella sala dove aspettavamo l’arrivo degli ospiti, egli fece
un’entrata molto meschina. Era la sera dei «predicatori», come mio
padre ci diceva confidenzialmente, e certo Ernesto non era a suo
agio fra quella gente di chiesa.
Prima di tutto, era mal vestito. Portava un abito di panno oscuro,
acquistato già fatto, che gli stava male. Veramente, anche in seguito,
non riuscì mai a trovare un vestito che gli stesse bene addosso.
Quella sera, come sempre, quando si moveva, i suoi muscoli gli
sollevavano la stoffa, e, a causa dell’ampio petto, la giacca gli si
aggrinziva in una quantità di pieghe fra le spalle. Aveva il collo d’un
campione di boxe [8], grosso e robusto. Ecco dunque, dicevo fra me,
quel filosofo sociale, ex maniscalco, che papà ha scoperto. Infatti,
con quei bicipiti e quel collo, ne aveva l’aspetto. Lo definii
immediatamente come una specie di prodigio, un Blind Tom [9] della
classe operaia.
E quando, poi, mi strinse la mano; era la sua, una stretta di mano
sicura e forte, ma mi guardò arditamente con i suoi occhi neri...
troppo arditamente, anzi, secondo me. Capirete, ero una creatura
nata e vissuta in quell’ambiente, ed avevo, a quel tempo, istinti di
classe molto forti.
Quell’ardire mi sarebbe sembrato imperdonabile in un uomo della
mia stessa classe. So che dovetti abbassare gli occhi, e che quando
me ne liberai, presentandolo ad altri, provai un vero sollievo nel
voltarmi per salutare il Vescovo Morehouse, uno dei miei prediletti,
uomo di mezza età, dolce e serio, dall’aspetto buono di un Cristo, e
di un sapiente.
Ma quell’ardire, che io attribuii a presunzione, fu, in realtà, il filo
conduttore per mezzo del quale mi fu possibile conoscere il carattere
di Ernesto Everhard, ch’era semplice e retto, non aveva paura di
nulla, e non voleva perdere il tempo in forme convenzionali. «Mi
siete subito piaciuta», mi disse molto tempo dopo. «Perchè, dunque,
non avrei dovuto riempire i miei occhi di ciò che mi piaceva?». Ho
detto che nulla lo intimoriva. Era un aristocratico per natura, sebbene
combattesse l’aristocrazia; un superuomo, la bestia bionda descritta
da Nietzsche [10], e, nonostante ciò, un democratico appassionato.
Occupata com’ero ad accogliere gli altri invitati, e forse anche per la
cattiva impressione avuta, dimenticai quasi del tutto il filosofo
operaio. Attirò la mia attenzione una o due volte, durante il pranzo,
mentre ascoltava la conversazione di alcuni pastori. Gli vidi brillare
negli occhi una luce strana, come se egli si divertisse; e conclusi che
doveva essere pieno di umorismo, e gli perdonai quasi il modo
ridicolo di vestire.
Ma il tempo passava: il pranzo era inoltrato, ed egli non aveva
aperto bocca una volta sola mentre i pastori discorrevano
animatamente della classe operaia, e dei suoi rapporti col clero, e di
tutto ciò che la chiesa aveva fatto e faceva per essa. Osservai che
mio padre era seccato di quel mutismo, e approfittò di un momento
di calma per chiedergli quale fosse il suo parere. Ernesto si limitò ad
alzare le spalle, e dopo un secco: «non ho niente da dire», riprese a
mangiare delle mandorle salate.
Ma mio padre non si dava tanto facilmente per vinto, e dopo pochi
secondi, disse: «Abbiamo in mezzo a noi un membro della classe
operaia. Sono certo che egli potrebbe presentarci le cose da un
punto di vista nuovo e interessante. Alludo al signor Ernesto
Everhard».
Tutti manifestarono il loro interesse, e sollecitarono Ernesto ad
esporre le sue idee, con un atteggiamento così largo, tollerante,
benevolo, che pareva condiscendenza. E vidi che anche Ernesto
osservò questo con una specie di allegria, perchè girò lentamente gli
occhi intorno, lungo la tavola, e io scorsi in quegli occhi uno
scintillare di malizia.
— Non sono tagliato per le cortesi discussioni ecclesiastiche, —
cominciò modestamente: poi esitò.
Si udirono delle voci di incoraggiamento:
— Avanti, avanti!
E il Dottor Hammerfield aggiunse:
— Non temiamo la verità da chiunque sia detta, purchè in buona
fede.
— Voi separate dunque la sincerità dalla verità? — chiese vivamente
Ernesto, ridendo.
Il Dottor Hammerfield rimase un momento perplesso e finì col
balbettare:
— Il migliore fra noi può sbagliare, giovanotto, il migliore.
Un mutamento improvviso apparve in Ernesto. In un attimo, sembrò
un altro uomo.
— Ebbene, allora lasciatemi cominciare col dirvi che vi sbagliate
tutti. Voi non sapete niente, meno che niente della classe operaia. La
vostra sociologia è errata e priva di valore come il vostro modo di
ragionare.
Più che le parole, mi colpì il tono con cui le diceva, e fui scossa alla
prima parola. Era uno squillo di tromba che mi fece vibrare tutta. E
tutti ne furono scossi, svegliati dalla solita monotonia e dal solito
intorpidimento.
— Che c’è dunque di così terribilmente falso e privo di valore nel
nostro modo di ragionare, giovanotto? — chiese il Dottor
Hammerfield, con voce che rivelava dispetto.
— Voi siete dei metafisici, potete provare ogni cosa con la
metafisica, e naturalmente qualunque altro metafisico può provare,
con sua soddisfazione, che avete torto. Siete degli anarchici nel
campo del pensiero. E avete la passione delle costruzioni cosmiche.
Ognuno di voi vive una concezione personale, creata dalla sua
fantasia, e secondo i suoi desiderii. Ma non conoscete nulla del vero
mondo nel quale vivete, e il vostro pensiero non ha posto nella
realtà, se non come fenomeno di squilibrio mentale.
«Sapete che cosa pensavo sentendovi parlare a vanvera?
Ricordavo quegli scolastici del Medio Evo che discutevano

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Radical Skepticism and Epistemic

Intuition Michael Bergmann

2. Underdetermination and Perceptual Skepticism 15

2.3 Responding to the Self-­undermining Objection 68

6. Intuitionist Particularism: An Introduction 111

9. Easy Knowledge and Epistemic Circularity 171

11. Epistemic Intuition and Underdetermination 213

13. Epistemic Intuition and Experimental Philosophy 254

1. The Importance of Radical Skepticism

2. An Overview of the Book

5 Concessive responses include contextualism, contrastivism, closure denial, and certain

arguments and those employed by anti-­skeptics in support of ordinary knowledge

3. Clarifications of Some Key Concepts

14 See the first two chapters of Bergmann (2006).

of evidence employed in the contemporary epistemological literature and yet

alternatives to my response to skepticism can in some sense be dealt with even if

1. Arguments and Responses: Narrowing the Focus

1.1 Rightly Discerning Skepticism’s Appeal

conceding too much too quickly to defenders of radical skepticism, overestimates

1.2 Arguments and Responses that Overestimate

Closure Argument for Skepticism

1.3 Responses that Underestimate Skepticism’s Appeal

I’ve set aside some responses to skepticism—concessive responses—because they

These considerations in support of the NED intuition aren’t intended as a

2. An Underdetermination Argument against Perception

argument presents us with a serious intellectual challenge—one that is puzzling,

2.1 The Argument

UP: If the existence or occurrence of the evidence E on which S’s belief B is

UP can be employed in an underdetermination argument (UA) for perceptual

33 I.e. the evidence, consisting of our sensory experiences.

2.2 The Appeal of Premise 1

reasoning to give, nothing that enabled me to infer the Standard Hypothesis

The version of UP used in the UA Against Perception is inspired by Richard

UP†: If the existence or occurrence of evidence E on which S’s belief B is nonin-

35 Again, see Fumerton (1995: 31–6; 2006: 120–8).

2.3 The Appeal of Premise 5

I have examined a large number of attempts to show in a noncircular fashion

38 Kant (1985 [1787]: B xxxix).

Title: Il tallone di ferro

Author: Jack London

Translator: Gian Dàuli

Release date: November 16, 2023 [eBook #72139]

Original publication: Milano: Modernissima, 1925

Credits: Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed Proofreading

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IL TALLONE

A cura di GIAN DÀULI

Anatole France scrisse che è necessario che coloro che hanno il

La brezza d’estate agita i pini giganteschi, e le onde della Wild Water

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2. Underdetermination and Perceptual Skepticism 15

2.3 Responding to the Self-undermining Objection 68

6. Intuitionist Particularism: An Introduction 111

9. Easy Knowledge and Epistemic Circularity 171

11. Epistemic Intuition and Underdetermination 213

13. Epistemic Intuition and Experimental Philosophy 254

arguments and those employed by anti-skeptics in support of ordinary knowledge