Scepticism and Externalism

Abstract

Like Descartes, many analytic epistemologists employ sceptical argument ‘methodologically’, affording undue respect to its illusory force in order to present their own theory as the way to avoid its conclusion. Like ‘fallibilism’ and ‘contextualism’, epistemological ‘externalism’ (or ‘reliabilism’) is commonly thus supported. Well-known argument by Fred Dretske is selected for critical examination, which leads into the assessment of externalist notions of defeasibility. Certain fundamental presuppositions of these externalist arguments are identified and questioned. The problem of how our belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable can be justified without circularity, and Ernest Sosa’s answer to it, are considered, and another, less intellectualist answer given. A final section turns to McDowell’s ‘internalist’ response to scepticism, broached in Chapter III, and his version of ‘disjunctivism’, a doctrine assessed as making a valid point misleadingly presented as semantic analysis. McDowell’s oddly quasi-externalist conception of defeasibility and justification is also assessed.