Finding Space in a Non-Spatial World

What is the relation between space in the manifest image of perceptual experience and in the scientific image of physics? I will argue that we have moved from spatial primitivism (on which space is understood as a primitive conception that we are acquainted with) to spatial functionalism (on which space is picked out by its functional role). I investigate different forms of spatial functionalism on which the relevant roles are experiential (involving effects on our experience) and non-experiential (involving patterns of causal interactions). I draw connections to functionalism in the philosophy of mind, to Cartesian skepticism, and to recent literature on spacetime functionalism and emergent spacetime.

Descartes and Ancient Skepticism: Reheated Cabbage?

Chapter 13 considers a variety of ways in which Pyrrhonian skepticism has been thought to differ from Cartesian skepticism: that is, from the sort of skepticism Descartes describes in (among other places) Meditation 1. For example, it has been argued that Pyrrhonian skepticism disavows belief, whereas Cartesian skepticism disavows only knowledge. It has also been argued that Pyrrhonian skepticism is less extensive than Cartesian skepticism is, and that Pyrrhonian but not Cartesian skepticism is a way of life. This chapter argues, however, that Pyrrhonian skepticism is closer to Cartesian skepticism than it is often taken to be, siding with Descartes in his statement that what is new is not the skepticism he describes, but his refutation of it.

Sextus and External World Skepticism

Chapter 14 discusses the scope of Pyrrhonian skepticism and how it compares with the scope of Cartesian skepticism, with a focus on external world skepticism. At least three general views have been held. First, some commentators think that Pyrrhonian skepticism is less extensive than Cartesian skepticism is. Secondly, Descartes denies that there is a difference in the scopes of ancient and Cartesian skepticism. Thirdly, Hegel thinks that ancient skepticism is more extensive than the skepticism from Descartes’s day to his own is. This chapter argues that the Pyrrhonian skeptics and the Cyrenaics countenance external world skepticism in a recognizable sense. Hence, contrary to a familiar view, Descartes is not the first philosopher to expound external world skepticism.

The Structure of Thoreau’s Epistemology, with Continual Reference to Descartes

We can find in Henry David Thoreau’s work a response to Cartesian skepticism. Thoreau takes this skepticism to get its start in us only when we are not attuned to the world, that is, only when we lose sight of our being integrated with the world in the way we quite naturally are. Thoreau posits for human beings a natural and unshakeable integration with the world. This develops into an attunement with the world, making us ready to engage with the world as mature epistemic agents. Yet even if we fall out of attunement with the world, perhaps in response to the reasonableness of a comprehensive doubt, our natural integration with the world remains. Skepticism lacks force because we are integrated with the world even when we are not attuned to it, and because our integration with the world can always help us return to a healthy epistemic engagement with the world.

Knowledge without “Experience”

Genia Schönbaumsfeld argues that Cartesian skepticism is an illusion induced by the “Cartesian Picture” of perceptual knowledge, in which knowledge of the “external world” depends on an inference from how things subjectively seem to one to how they actually are. To show its incoherence, she draws on the work of John McDowell, which she sees as elaborating a central theme from Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. I argue that Cartesian skepticism is not an illusion, as Schönbaumsfeld understands ‘illusion’, and that McDowell’s account of perceptual knowledge is both untenable and incompatible with Wittgenstein’s ideas about knowledge. Schönbaumsfeld thinks that, to understand how perception can engender knowledge of the world, we need a non-Cartesian account of perceptual reasons. Wittgenstein offers a much more radical break with the Cartesian Picture: an account of knowledge without ‘experience’.

Wittgensteinian Epistemology, Epistemic Vertigo, and Pyrrhonian Skepticism

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein offers a radical conception of the structure of rational evaluation, such that all rational evaluations are essentially local in that they necessarily occur relative to arational hinge certainties. Support is canvassed for the following claims: (1) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology, while the antidote to a certain formulation of Cartesian skepticism, is entirely compatible, including in spirit, with Pyrrhonian skepticism; (2) that the philosophical quietism which provides the wider context for Wittgenstein’s epistemology is very much in keeping with the core nature of Pyrrhonian skeptical techniques; and (3) that a Wittgensteinian epistemology sits very well alongside a particular way of thinking about Pyrrhonian skepticism such that it is primarily directed at our specifically theoretical commitments. As we will see, a key element to understanding how the Wittgensteinian line against Cartesian skepticism can be allied to a Pyrrhonian skepticism is the notion of epistemic vertigo.

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

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.

Simon Foucher and Anti-Cartesian Skepticism

Historians of philosophy have read Simon Foucher both as a Cartesian philosopher wedded to the basic principles of Descartes’s philosophy, and also as a fierce anti-Cartesian skeptic whose writings may be responsible more than anyone else’s for the “downfall of Cartesianism”. This chapter argues that this “Foucher enigma” arises because Foucher’s writings, when considered in themselves, are Cartesian in spirit even when they criticize Descartes. But taken in the context of the wave of late seventeenth-century French skepticism, Foucher’s writings contribute to a devastating attack on Descartes’s criterion of truth. The conclusion is that, perhaps like Descartes, Foucher was a skeptic malgré lui.