Essays on Skepticism

The problem of skepticism about knowledge of the external world has been the centrepiece of epistemology since Descartes. In the last 25 years, there has been a keen focus of interest on the problem, with a number of new insights by the best contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of mind. Anthony Brueckner is recognized as one of the leading contemporary investigators of the problem of skepticism. Essays on Skepticism collects Brueckner's most important work in this area, providing a connected and comprehensive guide to the complex state of play on this intensively studied area of philosophy. The guiding questions of this volume are: Can we have knowledge of the external world of things outside our minds? Can we have knowledge of the internal world of our own contentful mental states? The work divides into four sections: I. Transcendental Arguments against Skepticism; II. Semantic Answers to Skepticism; III. Self-knowledge; IV. Skepticism and Epistemic Closure.Introduction ; I. TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENTS AGAINST SKEPTICISM ; 1. Transcendental Arguments I ; 2. Transcendental Arguments II ; 3. The Anti-Skeptical Strategy of the Refutation of Idealism ; 4. Modest Transcendental Arguments ; 5. Transcendental Arguments from Content Externalism ; 6. Stroud's 'Transcendental Arguments' Reconsidered ; II. SEMANTIC ANSWERS TO SKEPTICISM ; 7. Brains in a Vat ; 8. Semantic Answers to Skepticism ; 9. Trees, Computer Program Features, and Skeptical Hypotheses ; 10. Cartesian Skepticism, Content Externalism, and Self-Knowledge ; 11. Terms of Envatment ; 12. Charity and Skepticism ; 13. The Omniscient Interpreter Rides Again ; 14. Singular Thought and Cartesian Philosophy ; III. SELF-KNOWLEDGE ; 15. Scepticism about Knowledge of Content ; 16. Knowledge of Content and Knowledge of the World ; 17. Externalism and Memory ; 18. What an Anti-Individualist Knows A Priori ; 19. The Characteristic Thesis of Anti-Individualism ; 20. Brewer on the McKinsey Problem ; 21. Wright on the McKinsey Problem ; 22. Externalism and Privileged Access Are Consistent ; 23. The Resiliency of the McKinsey Problem ; IV. SKEPTICISM AND EPISTEMIC CLOSURE ; 24. Epistemic Universalizability Principles ; 25. Why Nozick is a Sceptic ; 26. Skepticism and Epistemic Closure ; 27. Unfair to Nozick ; 28. Problems with the Wright Route to Scepticism ; 29. The Structure of the Skeptical Argument ; 30. Klein on Closure and Skepticism ; 31. The Elusive Virtues of Contextualism ; 32. Strategies for Refuting Closure for Knowledge ; 33. Knowledge, Evidence, and Skepticism According to Williamso ; 34. Fallibilism, Underdetermination, and Skepticism ; 35. Some Comfort for the Closure Skeptic ; 36. ~K~SK ; Acknowledgements ; Bibliography ; Index