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How is Scepticism Possible?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Oswald Hanfling
Oswald Hanfling
Affiliation:
The Open University
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Extract

Philosophy unties the knots in our thinking, which we have tangled up in an absurd way; but to do that, it must make movements which are just as complicated as the knots.1 A claim to know can be contradicted in various ways. Which of them does the sceptic have in mind when he denies that we can know—for example, that the sun will rise tomorrow? Does he mean, perhaps, that the proposition is false—that the sun will not rise tomorrow? The sceptic is in no position to make such a claim. Does he mean that no one can feel certain of the proposition? No; the fact that people feel certain of it is not in dispute. The sceptic's argument is essentially about justification. He claims that we do not have the right to feel certain, nor, therefore, to claim to know. But how can he arrive at this conclusion?

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 62 , Issue 242 , October 1987 , pp. 435 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1987

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References

1 Ludwig, Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1975), 52.Google Scholar

2 L., Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, II (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 289.Google Scholar

3 Barry, Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984).Google Scholar

4 Cf. O., Hanfling, ‘A Situational Account of Knowledge’, The Monist (January 1985).Google Scholar

5 The Philosophical Works of Descartes, I, translated by Elizabeth Haldane and G. R., J. Ross (Cambridge University Press, 1931), 145-146.Google Scholar

6 Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), 42, 48.Google Scholar

7 C., E. Green, Lucid Dreams (Institute of Psychophysical Research, 1968).Google Scholar

8 This example is adapted from E., H. Wolgast, Paradoxes of Knowledge (Cornell University Press, 1977), 34.Google Scholar Although my use of it is not the same as hers, I have benefited from her discussion. See also F. Dretske, ‘Epistemic Operators’, Journal of Philosophy (1970), and the reply by G. Stine in the same journal, 1971; I. Thalberg, ‘Is Justification Transmissible Through Deduction?’, Philosophical Studies (1974); Peter Unger, Ignorance (Oxford University Press, 1975), 7; P. D. Klein, Certainty (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), and the debate between Klein and D. Odegard in Philosophical Books (1982); R. Nozick's discussion of ‘Nonclosure’ in Philosophical Explanations (Oxford University Press, 1981), and Barry Stroud, op. cit.

9 Cf. Peter Klein, op. cit., 30.

10 P. Klein, op. cit., 36.

11 11 Cf. Wolgast, op. cit., 33.

12 Keith, Lehrer, in G., S. Pappas and M., Swain, Essays on Knowledge and Justification (Cornell University Press, 1978), 361.Google Scholar

13 David, Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 25-26.Google Scholar

14 Op. cit., 219.

15 Lehrer, op. cit., 353; see also Lehrer's Knowledge (Oxford University Press), 114-119.Google Scholar

16 An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, 1946). The passage is quoted with approval by Stroud, op. cit., 65.

17 Op. cit., 219-220.

18 Cf. my paper ‘Does Language Need Rules?’, Philosophical Quarterly (July 1980).

19 I am grateful to members of the Institut für Philosophic, University of Salzburg, for discussions of earlier drafts.