The Appearance of Ignorance: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context, Volume 2
Keith DeRose
Detailed Contents
1. Solving the Skeptical Problem
1. The Puzzle of Skeptical Hypotheses
2. Contextualist Solutions: The Basic Strategy
3. Some Old Contextualist Solutions: Lewis’s “Rule of Accommodation”
4. Some Old Contextualist Solutions: The “Relevant Alternatives” Approach and the Rule of Relevance
5. The Subjunctive Conditionals Account (SCA) of the Plausibility of AI’s First Premise
6. SCA, Grandmothers, and Methods
7. SCA and Some Skeptical Hypotheses That Don’t Work
8. SCA Confirmed
9. Nozick’s Own Solution and the Abominable Conjunction
10. Strength of Epistemic Position and AI’s Second Premise
11. Strength and Sensitivity
12. The Rule of Sensitivity and the Beginnings of a New Contextualist Solution
13. The Rule of Sensitivity and SCA: A Comparison of Our New Solution with the Other Contextualist Solutions and with Nozick’s Solution
14. Our New Contextualist Solution Clarified and Compared with the Straightforward Solutions
15. Bold Skepticism and the Warranted Assertability Maneuver
16. Bold Skepticism and Systematic Falsehood
17. Begging the Question Against the Skeptic?
2. Moorean Methodology: Was the Skeptic Doomed to Inevitable Defeat?
1. Methodological vs. Substantive Mooreanism
2. A Quick Look at Moore in Action
3. Conservatism and Making a ‘Moorean Choice’
4. MORE PLAUSIBLE and its Application to the ‘Moorean Situation’
5. Damage-Control Conservatism: Making an ‘Enlightened Moorean Choice’ and the Project of Defeating the Skeptic
6. Was the Skeptic Doomed to Defeat?
7. A Division Among Philosophers over the Intuitive Power of AI’s First Premise
8. More Curiously Varying Responses to AI’s First Premise: Attempts to Ask Non-Philosophers
9. Assessment: The Intuitive Power of AI’s First Premise
10. Contextualist Mooreanism and the Intuitive Complexity Surrounding AI’s First Premise
11. The Value of AI, Whether or Not the Skeptic Had a Chance
3. Two Substantively Moorean Responses and the Project of Refuting Skepticism
1. Substantively Moorean Responses to AI, Straightforward and Contextualist, and Our Pointed Question: How Can We Know that We’re not Brains in Vats?
2. The Project of Refuting Skeptics—and Anti-Skeptics who Are Not Engaged in that Project
3. Putnam-Style Responses to AI from Semantic Externalism
4. Two Forms of Arguments from Semantic Externalism
5. Old Objections: Varieties of Semantic Externalism and Varieties of Skeptical Hypotheses
6. The Disadvantages of Heroism
7. The Challenges Facing Non-Heroic, Moorean Alternative Responses
8. Comparing the Two Moorean Responses to Skepticism
4. Contextualism and Skepticism: The Defeat of the Bold Skeptic
1. Contextualism and the Project of Solving the AI Puzzle
2. A General Puzzle about Skeptical Inclinations Waxing and Waning vs. the AI Puzzle I’m Trying to Solve
3. Unspoken AI
4. Actual, Spoken Disputes over AI: I’m Not that Nice Contextualist!
5. Are the Skeptic and Her Moorean Opponent Both Making True Claims as They Argue?: Some Disputes Are Genuine!
6. Are the Claims that Our Disputants Are ‘Trying’ to Make Both True?: Some Disputes Are Deeply Genuine!
7. Are the Claims that Our Disputants Are ‘Trying’ to Make Both Deeply Important?
8. Bold vs. Timid Skeptics
9. Kornblith’s Attack: Full-Blooded vs. High Standards Skeptics
10. The Philosophical Interest of the High Standards Skeptic
11. Do I Respond Only to the High Standards Skeptic?: The High Standards Skeptic, the Deplorable Position Skeptic, and the Bold Skeptic
12. Do I Respond Only to the High Standards Skeptic?: The Simultaneous Defeat ofthe Bold Skeptics of Both Kinds
13. My Supposedly Thoroughly Externalist Response to the Full-Blooded Skeptic
14. Indexed AI
15. Irrelevant to Traditional Epistemological Reflection on Skepticism?
16. Is My Contextualist Position Inexpressible?
17. The Factivity Problem
5. Lotteries, Insensitivity, and Closure
1. The Harman Lottery Puzzle
2. The Explanation: SCA
3. The Open Future: No Determinate Winner, Losers
4. The Existence of an Actual Winner: The Eccentric Billionaire’s Lottery
5. The ‘Grabber’ Lottery and Lewis’s Account
6. The ‘Grabber’ Lottery and Hawthorne’s Account
7. The Existence of an Actual Winner: The Newspaper Lottery
8. SCA and the Newspaper Lottery
9. What About ‘My Paper is Accurate’?
10. Probabilistic Thoughts and Statistical Reasons
11. Causal Connections
12. That There is a Chance of Winning is the Whole Point of the Lottery!
13. The Big Pay-Off, etc.
14. Our SSP Solution Applied to the Harman Lottery Puzzle
15. The Standard Contextualist Solution to the Harman Lottery Puzzle
16. The Intuitive Pull (Felt by Some) Toward Judging that We Do Knowthat We’ve Lost the Lottery
17. Ordinary-Strength Claims to Know that Someone Has Lost the Lottery: The Case of Andy, Nico, and Lou
18. Ordinary-Strength Claims to Know that Someone Has Lost the Lottery: ‘Come Off It’ / ‘Get Serious’ Claims
19. Hawthorne’s Objection and Multi-Premise Closure
20. Toward Intuitive Closure: Problems and Refinements
21. Yet Another Problem: The Aggregation of Risk
22. Fixing the Closure Principle to Address the Problem of the Aggregation of Risk Undermines Hawthorne-Like Objections
23. An Infallibilist Evasion of the Problem?
24. Micro-Risks of Error and the Failure of the Infallibilist Evasion
25. The Infallibilist Evasion and Standard Contextualist Solutions to the Lottery Puzzle
26. Intuitive Closure and Oxford Closure
6. Insensitivity
1. Counterexamples and Philosophical Theories
2. Insensitivity Accounts—Direct and Indirect
3. The Attack by Counterexamples on Insensitivity Accounts and Two Lines of Response to this Attack
4. Terminology: We Will Here Use ‘Sensitivity’ and ‘Insensitivity’ to Refer to the Refined Notions
5. Why Insensitivity Accounts Seem on the Right Track—Even if There Are Counterexamples that Have Not Yet Been Successfully Handled
6. Perilously Nearby Counterexamples: Schiffer’s and Williamson’s Enhanced BIV Hypotheses, and Hawthorne’s Non-Player Lottery Case
7. My Old Refinement: CE
8. ‘Real’ Exceptions to IA’s Generalization: Low-Strength, True Claims to ‘Know’ that Skeptical Hypotheses Are False
9. Williamson’s Distance Underestimator
10. Relative Insensitivity
11. Degree of Belief Insensitivity
12. Williamson’s Strange Creatures
13. Strength of Belief, Basing, and Williamson’s Strange Creatures
7. How Do We Know that We’re Not Brains in Vats?: Toward A Picture of Knowledge
1. Two Types of Explanation-Based Answers to Skepticism and the Problem with Giving Only the Positive Explanation
2. Combining the Positive and Negative Explanatory Approaches to Skepticism: Toward a Not-so-Partial Picture of Knowledge
3. Pictures, Theories, and Examples
4. Developing the Picture: Closeness, Restrictions, and the Coordination of Safety with Sensitivity
5. Single- or Double-Safety?
6. Pointed Questions and Challenges Facing Contextualist Mooreans
7. Keeping it Easy to Knowo that We’re not Brains in Vats
8. Our Knowledgeo that We’re not BIVs and The Charge of Vacuousness
9. What Is, and What Is Not, Important to Knowledge on the Basic Safety Approach: A Parable
10. Radical Skeptical Hypotheses, APrioritism, and Split Cases AI
11. The Basic Easy Account of How We Come to Knowothat We’re not BIVs
12. Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Conservatism, and The Basic Easy Account of How We Come to Knowo that We’re not BIVs
13. A Prioritism vs. Pryor-Style Dogmatism
14. Problems for Dogmatism
15. Deeply Contingent A Priori Knowledge: An Intolerable Problem for A Prioritism?
16. A Priori Knowledge: The Veins in the Marble
17. Deeply Contingent A Priori Knowledge and Radical Skeptical Hypotheses: Why Necessity Isn’t Necessary
18. A Less Fanciful Account of How We Come to Think We Are Not BIVs and the Dogmatist Account of How Such Beliefs Come to Be Justified
19. Should We Ascribe a Basing Relation Here Without any Conscious Inference?: Problems for Dogmatism (Again)
20. An A Prioritist Account
21. Dogmatism vs. APrioritism on Two Questions
22. An Evaluation of Split Cases AI
23. How Do We Know that We’re Not Brains in Vats?
Appendix A: Pryor and Byrne’s Comparisons
Pryor
Byrne
Appendix B: Attempts to Ask Non-Philosophers about AI’s First Premise
Appendix C: Do I Even Knowo Any of This to Be True?: Some Thoughts about Belief, Knowledge, and Assertion in Philosophical Settings and Other Knowledge Deserts
Appendix D: Weakened Closure and Skeptical Arguments
Appendix E: Attempts to Explicate Intuitive Fallibilism and the Distinction between Intuitive and Genuine Conflict (GC-) Fallibilism
Contextualism, Skepticism, and Intuitive Fallibilism
The Non-Entailing Reasons/Evidence Account of Intuitive Fallibilism
Accounting for Intuitive Fallibilism in Terms of Risk, Chances, or Possibilities of Error?
Genuine Conflict (GC-) Fallibilism Distinguished from Intuitive Fallibilism
Characterizing Intuitive Fallibilism in Micro- Terms
Appendix F: Stine-Validity, Stalnaker-Reasonableness, and Fallibilist Positions on the Infallibilist’s Tensions
References
Index