scholarly journals The Indeterminacy of Translation: Fifty Years Later

Disputatio ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (32) ◽  
pp. 385-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. White
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Stimulus Meaning ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Epistemological Skepticism

Abstract The paper considers the Quinean heritage of the argument for the indeterminacy of translation. Beyond analyzing Quine’s notion of stimulus meaning, the paper discusses two Kripkean argument’s against the Quinean claim that dispositions can provide the basis for an account of meaning: the Normativity Argument and the Finiteness Argument. An analogy between Kripke’s arguments and Hume’s argument for epistemological skepticism about the external world will be drawn. The paper shows that the answer to Kripke’s rule-following skepticism is analogous to the answer to Humean skepticism: our use of concepts is more basic than, and presupposed by, the statement of the skeptical problem itself.

R L Gregory and Others: The Wrong Picture of the Picture Theory of Perception

Perception ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Katz
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Infinite Regress ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Picture Theory

It is the position of R L Gregory and other cognitive theorists that perceptual knowledge conceived as an inner picture leads to an infinite regress, but that perceptual knowledge conceived as an abstract or coded representation does not. It is argued here that this view is mistaken. All inner representations, whether pictorial or abstract, lead to the regress because all representations, inner or outer, require interpretation, and hence an interpreter. The problem will not disappear, furthermore, by formalizing the representation because rule-following is not equivalent to interpretation. The regress can only be avoided if the whole organism is made the interpreter, and representations are given their appropriate place: in the external world, not inside heads.

On What Does Rationality Hinge?

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 246-257
Author(s):  
Yuval Avnur
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Specific Material ◽  
Main Components

The two main components of Coliva’s view are Moderatism and Extended Rationality. According to Moderatism, a belief about specific material objects is perceptually justified iff, absent defeaters, one has the appropriate course of experience and it is assumed that there is an external world. I grant Moderatism and instead focus on Extended Rationality, according to which it is epistemically rational to believe evidentially warranted propositions and to accept those unwarrantable assumptions that make the acquisition of perceptual warrants possible and are therefore constitutive of ordinary evidential warrants. I suggest that, even though Extended Rationality might be true, it cannot do the work that Coliva wants it to do. Although my objections do not show that it is false, they can serve to clarify what sorts of problem a theory of justification or rationality could possibly address. This provides an alternative to Coliva’s view of the skeptical problem and the question, on what does rationality hinge?

scholarly journals Why Wittgenstein Doesn’t Refute Skepticism

Discurso ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Albieri Krempel
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
On Certainty ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Truth Value

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein formulates several criticisms against skepticism about our knowledge of the external world. My goal is to show that Wittgenstein does not here offer a convincing answer to the skeptical problem. First, I will present a strong version of the problem, understanding it as a paradoxical argument. In the second part, I will introduce and raise problems for two pragmatic responses against skepticism that appear in On Certainty. Finally, I will present some of Wittgenstein’s logical criticisms against skepticism, which may initially be considered strong, because they seem to refute some skeptical assumptions. They concern Wittgenstein’s ideas that it is logically impossible to doubt and to be mistaken about Moorean propositions, and that these propositions don’t have a truth-value. But even these, I intend to show, do not really challenge skepticism, for they are not well grounded.

scholarly journals Contemporary Approaches to the Problem of Cartesian Skepticism. Open Lecture: Does the External World Exist? Part I. Solving or Dissolving the Skeptical Problem

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-194
Author(s):  
Igor E. Pris
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Epistemological Disjunctivism ◽  
Hinge Epistemology ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Successful Approach ◽  
Frame Work ◽  
Hinge Proposition

We consider some newcontemporary approaches to solving or dissolving the problem of skepticism regarding the existence of the external world, in particular, disjunctivism, Duncan Pritchard’s biscopic approach and Timothy Williamson’s knowledge first approach. We argue that resolving the skepticalproblem within the framework of epistemological disjunctivism is problematic because it does not take into account the Wittgenstein's notion of a hinge proposition. In fact, a successful approach to the skepticalproblem requires a revision of the metaphysical premises of traditional epistemology, namely the adoption of a non-metaphysical Wittgenstein’s realism. The recently proposed by D. Pritchard within the frame-work of his “biscopic” approach dissolving of the skeptical problem asa pseudo-problem just combines Wittgenstein’s hinge epistemology and epistemological disjunctivism.

Wittgenstein and the Transmission of Traditions

1990 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Anthony O'Hear
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Saul Kripke ◽  
Private Language ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Considerable Discussion

In this country, we tend to look at Wittgenstein in a rather ahistorical way. We see his concerns as fundamentally logico-linguistic, following on first from the work of Frege and Russell, and then referring back indirectly to the concerns of the British empiricists, to those of Locke and Hume, say, on such matters as the reference of our talk about sensations and scepticism about the external world. Recently there has been considerable discussion of the extent to which Wittgenstein's own analysis of the private language and of rule-following might not itself be a new version of a fundamentally Humean scepticism: according to Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein's arguments amount to a demonstration that there is no more reason for speakers of a language to follow the rules governing the concepts of that language in the same way than on the Humean account there is any reason for an effect to follow its causes (Kripke, 1981).

A Sellarsian Transcendental Argument against External World Skepticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Marin Geier
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
External World Skepticism ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Brain In A Vat

This paper investigates the relation between what James Conant has called Kantian and Cartesian varieties of skepticism. It is argued that a solution to the most prominent example of a Kantian variety of skepticism, i.e. Kripkensteinian skepticism about rule-following and meaning, can be found in the works of Wilfrid Sellars. It is then argued that, on the basis of that very same solution to the Kantian problematic of rule-following and meaning, a novel argument against external world skepticism can be formulated. This argument takes the shape of a transcendental argument, which is reminiscent of Hilary Putnam’s infamous argument against the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, but is, as is argued, superior to it in certain respects.

External-World Skepticism in Classical India: The Case of Vasubandhu

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Mills
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Central Issue ◽  
Final Conclusion ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
External World Skepticism

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu (c. 400 ce) has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, Twenty Verses, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition.

Zum Außenweltproblem in der Antike

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 15-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Gabriel
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Train Of Thought ◽  
Epistemological Skepticism

Miles Burnyeat famously argued that there could, in principle, be no idealism in Greek philosophy, because it was not yet prepared to regard the existence of an external world beyond our veil of perception as a serious philosophical problem. I believe that this thesis is historically and systematically false. Burnyeat’s claim is backed up by a short sketch of the most important philosophical systems in Greek philosophy that might seem to contradict his no-idealism view, viz. ancient skepticism and Neo-Platonism. In this paper, I argue against Burnyeat’s view on the basis of a reconstruction of Sextus Empiricus’ epistemological skepticism regarding the external world. Then, I try to show that Plotinus’ idealism and his theory of νοῦς are built on the assumption that metaphysical realism entails the problem of the external world and is, therefore, potentially inconsistent because of its skeptical results. Plotinus shows how skepticism about the external world can be avoided by idealism which can, thus, be seen as an explicit overcoming of epistemological skepticism. This whole train of thought explicitly refers to the problem of an external world. Therefore, Plotinus can be seen as answering the skeptical challenge with an idealistic metaphysic of experience.

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