Skepticism And Externalism

In this paper I will argue for an externalist view that I consider to be the strongest rebuttal to skepticism. Before I present the argument I think it is important that we define skepticism and externalism.

The type of skepticism that we will be discussing, is the view that we don’t know anything about the external world. That is, we don't have any prima facie justification or reason to believe anything about the external world. The skeptic argues that even if we think a belief is justified, its just an illusion. For example the skeptic might use the brain-in-a-vat argument which claims something like:
(1) I don’t know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat.
(2) If I don’t know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat, then I don’t know anything about the world.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) I don’t know anything about the world.

The first premise of the skeptics argument claims that we can’t distinguish or perceive any difference about being a brain-in-a-vat, and not being a brain-in-a-vat. In the second premise she claims that if we don’t know (1) is false, then we don’t know anything about the world, because everything we believe is wrong if her argument is true. That is, if we are brains-in-vats then you don’t know you’re reading this right now.

To evade the skeptic, we have two options. Option 1: We can try and deny hypothesis (1). That is, we argue that we do know that we are not brains-in-vats. Option 2: We deny (2) and argue that even if we don't know that we are not brains-in-vats it doesn't follow that we don't know anything about the world.
For the purposes of this paper and from this point forward, we will focus on deflati...

... middle of paper ...

... as a counter example we don't need to get evidence, or prove that our senses are reliable. We don’t need to worry about that. It is enough that our senses are reliable. If you have arms, you know that you have them because your senses have reliably given you that information. That is, if its true that our senses are a reliable process, then you know that you have arms.

In response to the second objection - The particular process that justifies a belief is the ‘reliable kind’ of process. An appeal to common sense can tell us what the ‘reliable kind’ of process is for a given belief. The ‘reliable kind’ of process statistically produces true beliefs more frequently than false beliefs. Furthermore the ‘reliable kind’ of process is not unreliable. For example - Guessing is not a ‘reliable kind’ of process because guessing is generally erroneous.