Skepticism About a Refutation of Skepticism free essay sample

â€Å"Skepticism about a Refutation of Skepticism† In â€Å"The Refutation of Skepticism†, Jonathan Vogel establishes an â€Å"Inference to the Best Explanation† (hereafter, â€Å"IBE†) as a means to refute skepticism about the external world. In this refutation, Vogel acknowledges that skepticism about IBE still remains a possibility, but that this kind of skepticism would be rather outlandish in character and thus could be ignored. This paper shall both establish and evaluate Vogel’s reasoning as to why he confidently dismisses any skepticism pertaining to his IBE, and furthermore will illuminate some points as to why Vogel may have mischaracterized potential threats to his method, leaving his refutation of skepticism vulnerable to doubt that is not as unorthodox as he believes it to be. IBE is a method for promoting our ordinary, everyday beliefs about the external world (referred to as â€Å"mundane propositions†) into knowledge in the face of equally plausible skeptical competitors, which aim to deny that we have such knowledge. We will write a custom essay sample on Skepticism About a Refutation of Skepticism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It is founded upon the underdetermination principle, which governs knowledge by evaluating competing hypotheses for whichever has the most epistemic merit compared to the alternatives. However, the question of â€Å"what factors add to or subtract from epistemic merit is a crucial, but controversial, matter† (Vogel, 73) that leaves the criteria for knowledge in a susceptible state. The issue that IBE sets out to solve is that both mundane propositions and their competing skeptical arguments have equal epistemic merit in virtue of the underdetermination principle – giving skeptics the ability to use a form of the deceiver argument to â€Å"show†¦by our own lights, we lack knowledge of the world we think we have† (Vogel, 73). Vogel identifies this position as â€Å"domestic skepticism† because it aims to challenge our ordinary knowledge claims by use of accepted epistemic principles (thus not challenging these principles as well) – and he targets this as the skepticism that is inimical to our knowledge of the world, in need of refutation by IBE. Vogel considers a belief of epistemic merit to be the hypothesis that achieves the most explanatory success for a relevant body of facts – so ccording to IBE, one has good reason to accept a belief that is able to provide the best explanation pertaining to our mental lives compared to any alternative views. Yet still we are faced with the same conundrum – both ordinary claims and those motivated by the deceiver argument could effectively explain our mental lives, and we have no means to assess which is better – leaving them equal in explanatory success. With this being so, IBE holds that simplicity follows as the next criterion. So when faced with two explanations that are equally as plausible, the simpler account would be considered the better one, and thereby justified as â€Å"known† courtesy of IBE. Why does Vogel consider simplicity to be the guide to truth for IBE? As previously mentioned, our mental lives are what need to be best explained by a belief. Vogel takes it that â€Å"we are committed to a body of epistemic principles that govern what we count as knowledge, justified belief, and the like† (Vogel, 73) and believes that inductive confirmation is an inherent part of how our mental lives function. For example, if we have experienced the sun rise every day and assume that it will rise again tomorrow, we are using induction to reach this conclusion. Induction is a generally accepted principle by philosophers and non-philosophers alike, which presupposes the observed serves as a guide to the unobserved; our knowledge of the past and present can guide our predictions for the future – giving us the impression that the world has a tendency to be simply â€Å"nice and neat†; that there is a general sense of order to things. Non-entailed beliefs are also justified by induction, which leaves us â€Å"room for error† in these mere assumptions we make by hypothesizing from what we know. Vogel claims that since IBE focuses on our mental lives, it goes hand-in-hand with inductive confirmation. Therefore it accepts â€Å"hypotheses that aren’t entailed by the evidence that supports them† (Vogel, 79) and also appeals to the notion of simplicity that induction implies that the world is â€Å"nice and neat† and straightforward in how it functions. So how is this supposed to serve as a successful refutation of skepticism? To make sense of this, it should first be understood exactly how IBE qualifies its requirement for simplicity, and also what Vogel understands both mundane propositions and skeptical arguments to be comprised of. The assumption that the world works in ways that are simple, implied from the principle of induction, is construed by Vogel to mean that the better explanation would be the belief involving the fewest complexities and least number of parts to argue. Vogel is under the impression that skeptical arguments involve much more complexity in order to make them parallel the ordinary beliefs they aim to compete with, and cites the example that for ordinary properties such as shape and location that could be involved in a mundane proposition, the skeptic would have to invoke a much more elaborate explanation for why we are experiencing pseudo-shapes and pseudo-locations. This leaves the skeptical argument at a major disadvantage when assessed by IBE’s requirement for simplicity, allowing for the mundane proposition to be deemed the better explanation because of its capability to explain things â€Å"as they are† instead of â€Å"why they appear to be as they are but really are not† – maintaining that ordinary beliefs shall always be what is to be justified by IBE, leaving their skeptical competitors consistently refuted. As mentioned earlier, IBE is solely a refutation of â€Å"domestic skepticism† – what Vogel sees as the only legitimate threat to our knowledge, because it utilizes our epistemic principles as a means to undermine our concept of what knowledge is and show that we truly lack knowledge of anything in our world. He acknowledges some potential skeptical criticisms that remain regarding the methodology of IBE, and admits that he is unable to provide any refutations for these – thus he does not argue directly for IBE’s validity, as much as entertain it as a plausible inference for best refuting skepticism. Yet he also discusses the existence of a broader form of skepticism which he terms â€Å"exotic skepticism†, that aims to challenge both our ordinary knowledge claims and the legitimacy of our epistemic principles used to make any of these judgments but quickly dismisses this type of doubt as anything worthy of our attention, due to its apparently outlandish, radical nature. With the intention of upholding IBE’s status as a successful refutation of skepticism (in theory, at least), Vogel concludes that any skepticism about IBE itself cannot be refuted, but also needn’t be. This is because of how he connects IBE with induction meaning that any kind of skepticism about IBE would also undoubtedly be skepticism about induction in general, which appears to be a significant part of our mental lives and is therefore considered a generally accepted epistemic principle. If one were to doubt a generally accepted principle such as this, it would be regarded as a form of â€Å"exotic skepticism† and consequently may be reasonably ignored, due to the radical position one would be forced to take against one’s mental life. Therefore, any skepticism about IBE would be â€Å"exotic† in character by Vogel’s definition and could be reasonably ignored. It seems apparent that Vogel’s methodology is flawed on multiple levels of consideration, allowing several opportunities for IBE to entirely collapse as a successful refutation of skepticism. A clear point for criticism is how Vogel draws the distinction between what he calls â€Å"domestic† and â€Å"exotic† skepticism, and the way he uses this distinction to give strength to his formulation of IBE. Vogel bases his division of skepticism into these two categories upon whether the doubt in question challenges our generally accepted epistemic principles or not – going on to claim that any skepticism that does contest these generally accepted principles may reasonably be ignored as anything worthy of consideration. Yet what exactly are the criteria for determining whether a principle is â€Å"generally accepted† or not, anyway? Is there even a concrete way to determine this? Let us assume, in Vogel’s favor, that a majority consensus is what gives rise to the â€Å"general acceptance† of something. Then indeed, induction would thereby qualify as a generally accepted principle. But even if so, it seems completely unreasonable for Vogel to promote the underlying idea here that the majority’s acceptance of something means that what is accepted is truer than any possible alternative, lesser-accepted options – thereby allowing us to summarily dismiss these alternatives altogether. Moreover, many qualified philosophers have reasonably doubted induction. Just because they do not comply with what has been accepted by the majority, does this make their arguments any less valid and worthy of being entirely ignored? Since we have no way of judging what is more or less true, it seems epistemically irresponsible to ignore doubts solely because they are not favored by a majority – for what if an alternative view does possess something closer to truth? This potential truth would then go entirely unnoticed; putting us at isk of straying further and further away from what is really true, in honor of an ignorant majority’s viewpoint instead. Even if we do grant the validity of how Vogel distinguishes â€Å"domestic† and â€Å"exotic† skepticism, IBE continues to beckon strong criticism in other ways that are just as crucial. Vogel places IBE and induction in a relationship he treats as inseparable, because of their mutual appeal to our mental li ves based upon the notion of simplicity. This connection alone seems to be a drastic overstatement, and the simplicity factor involved that Vogel strongly emphasizes is also quite faulty. Vogel claims that both induction and IBE are founded upon the idea that the world is â€Å"nice and neat† – thus rather than our experience with the external world being random and chaotic, instead we are able to use the observed as a reliable guide to the unobserved; our knowledge of the past and present to reasonably hypothesize about the future. From phenomena such as this, Vogel gleans that an assumption of â€Å"simplicity† is inherent to induction, and then transfers this idea to his evaluation for beliefs most relevant to our mental lives: IBE. There are several points of concern with this. Firstly, the assumption that the world is â€Å"nice and neat† given off from induction is something that is only implied by the principle, and in itself not actually justified. Additionally, the common forms of induction that support this assumption do not even rely upon the concept of â€Å"simplicity† as much as the concept of â€Å"continuity†. So not only does Vogel base his entire method off of something that is merely an unjustified assumption, but he also misinterprets a key factor of this assumption – his understanding of â€Å"continuity† to mean â€Å"simplicity† – and then makes this misinterpretation the essence of how IBE functions. Even if these errors were to be overlooked and it was upheld that simplicity is a justified factor for Vogel to work with in virtue of induction, a critical issue still remains: despite the features induction and IBE being presumably inseparable, the notion of simplicity Vogel derives from the nature of induction is of a drastically different character than how he qualifies the simplicity requirement of IBE – which is based strictly on the number and complexity of parts of an argument. For any and all of these reasons, IBE’s reliance upon the factor of simplicity appears to be a very illegitimate method of reasoning. Another challenge to IBE arises, even if all of the aforementioned problems went overlooked. Vogel is under the impression that skeptical competitors to beliefs must undoubtedly invoke more parts that require more complex explanations compared to the mundane propositions they rival, which is why he believes IBE’s simplicity requirement plays a significant role in refuting skepticism. However, is this really a valid assumption? Vogel seems to ignore the idea that skeptical doubts to our ordinary claims may involve explanations that are actually simpler than the ways in which we directly perceive the external world. Take it from a holist point of view, where everything is considered made up of one unified thing – whether it be God, energy, matter, whatever. This type of viewpoint is just as legitimate as the rest, and if IBE held, would surpass any other belief as the best explanation – which is not what Vogel intends at all. Lastly, let us not forget the initial â€Å"problem† that IBE sets out to combat – that skeptical arguments do indeed have the same epistemic merit as our mundane propositions, and are just as successful at explaining our mental lives because we truly do not have the capability of discerning which is better. Wouldn’t devising a method for justifying what we prefer to believe opposed to the alternatives be cheating ourselves out of potential truths that are not known to us, preventing us from having the expansive knowledge that we could, just so we could feel more comfortable? And wouldn’t the justification of our ordinary beliefs be pointless unless they really did have a greater tendency to be true? We truly don’t know if our mundane propositions are true, and if we settled for just validating all of them as knowledge and refuting any forms of doubt though IBE, it seems as if it would be impossible to ever make any advancements in what we even take to be ordinary knowledge. A proposition such as â€Å"the world is flat† could easily be justified by IBE over a proposition that the world is a sphere – and despite the latter being correct, it could be entirely dismissed. Perhaps a good amount of doubt may be healthy for our knowledge, rather than â€Å"dangerous†, as Vogel puts it – because by use of doubt in the face of what we take to have â€Å"ordinary† knowledge of, this could motivate us to further investigate our ordinary claims. Upon this further investigation, we then have the ability to advance our ordinary knowledge by realizing initial faults in our beliefs and replacing these with newer, decidedly more accurate beliefs that we discover; or by realizing that our previously held eliefs are still just as accurate as we’d initially understood them to be, we could confirm them with far more confidence than we’ve ever had – depending on the scenario. This seems much more progressive than refuting skepticism altogether. Vogel’s IBE as a method of refuting skepticism about the external world does not appear to be very successful. It should be kept in mind that even Vogel himself acknowledges some of the criticisms mentioned above as plausible threats to his argument, and admits that he is unable to provide successful refutations for them. Aside from this, his argument nevertheless includes several unreasonable and illegitimate methods of reasoning that cannot be ignored by any means. The criticisms of these issues of IBE would supposedly be forms of â€Å"exotic† skepticism, according to how Vogel believes he formulated his method but none of them seem to fit the description of being outlandish, radical, or unworthy of our attention – and most do not contest the legitimacy of the principles Vogel considers â€Å"generally accepted†, either. This further confirms the inadequacy of IBE to amount to anything successful, leaving skepticism to remain just as viable as our mundane propositions in our understanding of knowledge. Works Cited. Vogel, Jonathan. The Refutation of Skepticism. Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Ed. Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. 72-84. Print. [ 1 ]. If q is a competitor to p, then a subject S can know p only if p has more epistemic merit (for S) than q (Vogel, 73) [ 2 ]. . g. â€Å"I am currently looking at a piece of paper† [ 3 ]. e. g. â€Å"My brain is in a laboratory vat that is simulating the experience that I am looking at a piece of paper† [ 4 ]. (1) In order to know any mundane proposition about the world m, my belief that m must not be underdetermined. (2) My belief that m is underdetermined. (3) Therefore, I don’t know that m. (Vogel, 73) [ 5 ]. Our mental lives are the most relevant body of facts in any of these cases [ 6 ]. i. e. ur knowledge of the past and present cannot directly apply to the future, we can only hypothesize about it – it is impossible to have knowledge of the unknown so this uncertainty must be accounted for [ 7 ]. Of a â€Å"domestic† form that goes along with our generally accepted epistemic principles [ 8 ]. Holding the assumption that induction is one of these accepted epistemic principles due to how our mental lives generally function [ 9 ]. This is how Vogel views â€Å"exotic skepticism† [ 10 ]. These are common forms of inductive confirmation [ 11 ]. Reasoning from observed to unobserved, past and present to future, etc.