Scepticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stewart Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Inductive Reasoning ◽  
External World ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
The World ◽  
Epistemic Appraisal ◽  
Sceptical Argument ◽  
Rule Out

Simply put, scepticism is the view that we fail to know anything. More generally, the term ‘scepticism’ refers to a family of views, each of which denies that some term of positive epistemic appraisal applies to our beliefs. Thus, sceptical doctrines might hold that none of our beliefs is certain, that none of our beliefs is justified, that none of our beliefs is reasonable, that none of our beliefs is more reasonable than its denial, and so on. Sceptical doctrines can also vary with respect to the kind of belief they target. Scepticism can be restricted to beliefs produced in certain ways: for example, scepticism concerning beliefs based on memory, on inductive reasoning or even on any reasoning whatsoever. And sceptical views can be restricted to beliefs about certain subjects: for example, scepticism concerning beliefs about the external world, beliefs about other minds, beliefs about value and so on. Solipsism – the view that all that exists is the self and its states – can be seen as a form of scepticism based on the claim that there are no convincing arguments for the existence of anything beyond the self. The philosophical problem of scepticism derives from what appear to be very strong arguments for sceptical conclusions. Since most philosophers are unwilling to accept those conclusions, there is a problem concerning how to respond to the arguments. For example, one kind of sceptical argument attempts to show that we have no knowledge of the world around us. The argument hinges on the claim that we are not in a position to rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat being artificially stimulated to have just the sensory experience we are actually having. We have no basis for ruling out this possibility since if it were actual, our experience would not change in any way. The sceptic then claims that if we cannot rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat, then we cannot know anything about the world around us. Responses to this argument often fall into one of two categories. Some philosophers argue that we can rule out the possibility that we are brains-in-a-vat. Others argue that we do not need to be able to rule out this possibility in order to have knowledge of the world around us.

scholarly journals A Minimal Sense of Here-ness

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 169-187
Author(s):  
Frédérique de Vignemont ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Buffer Zone ◽  
Peripersonal Space ◽  
External World ◽  
Perceptual System ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Tactile Sense ◽  
Sense Of Presence ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject

In this paper, I give an account of a hitherto neglected kind of ‘here’, which does not work as an intentional indexical. Instead, it automatically refers to the immediate perceptual environment of the subject’s body, which is known as peripersonal space. In between the self and the external world, there is something like a buffer zone, a place in which objects and events have a unique immediate significance for the subject because they may soon be in contact with her. I argue that seeing objects as being here in a minimal sense means seeing them in the place in which the perceptual system expects the world and the body to collide. I further argue that this minimal notion of here-content gives rise to a tactile sense of presence. It provides a unique experiential access to the reality of the seen object by making us aware of its ability to have an effect on us.

The Puzzle of Transparency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Byrne
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Other Minds ◽  
Private Language ◽  
The World ◽  
Fred Dretske ◽  
Problem Of Other Minds ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Special Case

In The World Without, the Mind Within, André Gallois points out that the inference from ‘p’ to ‘I believe that p’ is neither deductively valid nor inductively strong. This is (a version of) the puzzle of transparency—how can such an inference yield knowledge? This chapter examines the puzzle in depth, as it arises for belief, perception, and sensation. Gallois’s own solution to the puzzle is criticized, as are those offered by Richard Moran and Fred Dretske. The puzzle of transparency in the special case of sensations is also discussed, as is the puzzle’s connection with the problem of other minds as discussed by Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, and with Hume’s remarks on the self in the Treatise.

Kinaesthesia and a Feeling for Relations

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 355-368
Author(s):  
Roger Smith
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
External World ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Passive Component ◽  
Relational Processes ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

This article makes a case for connecting knowledge of the sense(s) of self-movement with understanding psychology’s subject matter in terms of relations. It first outlines the history of the sense of movement as a form of awareness and reviews usage of the terms “kinaesthesia,” “proprioception,” and “haptic sense.” It shows that the structure and “feel” of the sense of movement have been thought to be relational, that is, to consist of an active and a passive component, activity–resistance. This article introduces argument that a feeling for reality in sensory experience is bound up with relational processes in movement, putting us “in touch with” the world. The sense of movement has therefore had a significant place in psychology focused on participation in the world, rather than on observation and knowledge of an “external” world. Finally, this article discusses relations of activity–resistance in movement, whether in dance, walking, sport, or in other ways, as relations of forces or powers. The study, in relational language, of powers at work contributes to the existing literature on the sociopolitical understanding of movement practices, particularly with reference to agency. The argument is exemplified by discussion of dance.

Milton and Self-Knowledge

PMLA ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert W. Fields
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
External World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Samson Agonistes ◽  
Paradise Regained ◽  
The World ◽  
Rational Part ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Self Examination

Milton's notion of self-knowledge places him in the Socratic-Christian tradition which distinguishes between man's rational part, or self-like-God, and his passional nature, the aspect of self most easily subverted by Satan. Only the self-knowing man, by introspection and by seeing the reflection of self in the mirror of the world's stage, achieves a harmony between the two aspects of self. Milton's concept of self-examination, apparent in his prose and verse, is symbolically represented in Paradise Lost. The world of Adam-Eve mirrors both God's realm of pure truth and reason and Satan's realm of unreason and unrestrained passion. These realms represent those aspects of self that man must necessarily discover within. The Fall is inevitable and irrevocable in the creation of self: in Adam's discovery of his obligation to know himself “aright,” he understands that his rational self-like-God must rule the darker passionate self. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes also represent man as achieving self-knowledge by the twofold means of introspection and viewing the reflection of himself in the external world.

scholarly journals Escisión, simbolización e integración de la identidad

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-399
Author(s):  
Carlos Rodríguez Sutil ◽  
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
The Self ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mind

The inner-outer dualism, with its associated conception that the mind is a reality isolated from the world, permeates our everyday thinking. This article begins by demonstrating from the philosophy of the twentieth century the unreality of this separation and the stability of internal constructions. Once we isolate the mind in our imagination, we feel authorized to dream of magical shortcuts to overcome the isolation, such as telepathy or, in the psychotic, transparency or the sounding of thoughts, the theft of ideas, the imposition of ideas from the external world. We are not minds, permanent or eternal, inserted in a world that we see passing around us; we are temporary beings. The self is a representation, an internalized metaphor that we turn into a stable but fragile metaphor in the face of a changing reality, which endows us with immortality and consoles us. The psychotic is the one who lives the split because he has not been able to handle the conventionality of that double language, and accept that reality is at the same time fixed and changing, for this reason they need to adhere to permanent objects, with the quality of stable things. The psychotic is the one who believes in the official language at face value, is sick of conventions. If everyone knows the patient's thoughts, in some way this means that the thoughts are not locked in the head, an idea contrary to cultural belief, which produces terror because it is experienced as unnatural, cancels the division of interior and exterior, which means the experience of loss of identity and agency, the lost of control. Delirium is developed as a way of clinging to reality in the face of extreme disavowal of one's perceptions or feelings.

Culture and the plasticity of perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lifshitz ◽  
T. M. Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
The World

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

‘A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust’: The World and Self in Thomas Hardy's Poems

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Monika Szuba
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Phenomenological Philosophy ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
Body Subject

The essay discusses selected poems from Thomas Hardy's vast body of poetry, focusing on representations of the self and the world. Employing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concepts such as the body-subject, wild being, flesh, and reversibility, the essay offers an analysis of Hardy's poems in the light of phenomenological philosophy. It argues that far from demonstrating ‘cosmic indifference’, Hardy's poetry offers a sympathetic vision of interrelations governing the universe. The attunement with voices of the Earth foregrounded in the poems enables the self's entanglement in the flesh of the world, a chiasmatic intertwining of beings inserted between the leaves of the world. The relation of the self with the world is established through the act of perception, mainly visual and aural, when the body becomes intertwined with the world, thus resulting in a powerful welding. Such moments of vision are brief and elusive, which enhances a sense of transitoriness, and, yet, they are also timeless as the self becomes immersed in the experience. As time is a recurrent theme in Hardy's poetry, this essay discusses it in the context of dwelling, the provisionality of which is demonstrated in the prevalent sense of temporality, marked by seasons and birdsong, which underline the rhythms of the world.

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