scholarly journals Cavell on Outsiders and Others

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Moran
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds ◽  
External World Skepticism ◽  
Similarities And Differences

Part IV of Stanley Cavell’s The Claim of Reason is an extended meditation on the similarities and differences between external world skepticism and skepticism about other minds. One contrast between the two forms of skepticism is the irreducible duality of perspectives with respect to minds (“inside” and “outside”) and the fact that the skeptical inquirer necessarily occupies both perspectives. Another aspect of this relation character of the problem of other minds is what Cavell calls the possibility for both “Active” and “Passive” directions for skepticism here; that is, skepticism with respect to the knowability of other minds, and skepticism with respect to the possibility of being known by any other mind. This paper argues that a lesson of this part of Cavell’s discussion is the importance of seeing these two directions for skepticism as comprising one single phenomenon which requires understanding them in terms of each other.

Meaning and verification

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
W.D. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Intuitionistic Logic ◽  
General Public ◽  
External World ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Semantic Holism ◽  
Theory Of Meaning ◽  
Empiricist Theory ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds

The verifiability theory of meaning says that meaning is evidence. It is anticipated in, for example, Hume’s empiricist doctrine of impressions and ideas, but it emerges into full notoriety in twentieth-century logical positivism. The positivists used the theory in a critique of metaphysics to show that the problems of philosophy, such as the problem of the external world and the problem of other minds, are not real problems at all but only pseudoproblems. Their publicists used the doctrine to argue that religion, ethics and fiction are meaningless, which is how verificationism became notorious among the general public. Seminal criticism of verification from around 1950 argues that no division between sense and nonsense coincides tidily with a division between science and metaphysics, as the positivists had claimed. Quine later developed verificationism into a sort of semantic holism in which metaphysics is continuous with science. In contrast, Dummett argues from a reading of Wittgenstein’s claim that meaning is use to a rejection of any sort of truth surpassing the possibility of knowledge, and thence to a defence of intuitionistic logic. But the claim that all truths can be known yields in an otherwise innocuous setting the preposterous consequence that all truths actually are known. There are ways to tinker with the setting so as to avoid this consequence, but it is best to conclude by reductio that some truths cannot be known and that verificationism is false. That in turn seems to show that the prospects for an empiricist theory of meaning are dim, which might well shake a complacent confidence in meaning.

scholarly journals The Appearance of Skepticism: Possibility, Conceivability and Infinite Ascent

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-107
Author(s):  
Sorin Bangu
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Skeptical Argument ◽  
External World Skepticism ◽  
Novel Strategy

AbstractThe paper articulates a novel strategy against external world skepticism. It shows that a modal assumption of the skeptical argument cannot be justified.

scholarly journals Skeptical Arguments and Deep Disagreement

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Melchior
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Deep Disagreement ◽  
Different Types ◽  
External World Skepticism ◽  
Agrippa’S Trilemma

AbstractThis paper provides a reinterpretation of some of the most influential skeptical arguments, Agrippa’s trilemma, meta-regress arguments, and Cartesian external world skepticism. These skeptical arguments are reasonably regarded as unsound arguments about the extent of our knowledge. However, reinterpretations of these arguments tell us something significant about the preconditions and limits of persuasive argumentation. These results contribute to the ongoing debates about the nature and resolvability of deep disagreement. The variety of skeptical arguments shows that we must distinguish different types of deep disagreement. Moreover, the reinterpretation of skeptical arguments elucidates that deep disagreement cannot be resolved via argumentation.

Descartes, Divine Veracity, and Moral Certainty

Dialogue ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Pierre Schachter
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Moral Certainty

AbstractThis article explores the relation between Descartes's appeal to God's veracity and his connected notions of “metaphysical” and “moral” certainty. I do this by showing their roles in his proof of the external world, his position on other minds, and his position on the “beast-machine.” Descartes uses God's veracity in the first proof, but not in the second or third. I suggest that the reason for this is that extending his appeal to God to other minds would have placed his beast-machine doctrine in jeopardy. I conclude by accounting for some Cartesian passages that might seem incompatible with my reading of moral certainty's important role in his philosophy.

Wittgenstein on Other Minds

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Kailashkanta Naik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Private Language Argument ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Other Minds Problem ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds

When philosophy of mind goes into every detail in explaining about consciousness and its every aspect, the problem of other minds being its part is not spared. In such context going against the traditional way of giving justification Wittgenstein novel approach to other minds is remarkable and is close to the phenomenological understanding. The analysis of the sensation of pain as one of its important factors in solving the other minds problem is unique and it is this that proves how Wittgenstein dissolves the problem rather than giving a solution. This article focuses Wittgenstein’s two important factors: Private Language Argument and the concept of the sensation of pain in dissolving the issue. And in this I have made an attempt to show how his novelty in approaching this problem gains importance even today.

Dissolving the problem of other minds

2021 ◽  
pp. 120-128
Author(s):  
Diana I. Pérez ◽  
Antoni Gomila
Keyword(s):  
Other Minds ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds

The Internal World

2021 ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
Mark Siderits
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Behavior ◽  
External World ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
The Status ◽  
Satisfactory Account

Just as some Buddhists deny that the external world is ultimately real, so other Buddhists deny the ultimate reality of consciousness. This chapter examines the debate among different Buddhist schools over the status of cognition. This grows out of a debate over the problem of meta-cognition: if there is no self, then what is it that cognizes cognition? Momentariness and the irreflexivity principle pose obstacles to a satisfactory account. This leads the Yogācāra-Sautrāntika philosophers Dignāga and Dharmakīrti to develop the theory that every cognition is self-cognizing, but that irreflexivity is not violated since noetic and noematic poles of a cognition are non-distinct. Their reflexivity account is challenged by a higher-order thought account developed in the Madhyamaka school. According to this account, cognition is posited as a useful way of explaining bodily and verbal behavior, and so is not to be thought of as ultimately real. There is also some discussion of the difficulty for the reflexivist of explaining the existence of other minds.

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