Closure Scepticism and The Vat Argument

Thorpe, Joshua Rowan

doi:10.1093/mind/fzw035

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…See, for example, Brueckner (1992: 237), Christensen (1993: 314-5), Farrell (1986, Forbes (1995: 207), Glymour (1982: 173-5), Smith (1984: 117), Tymoczko (1989: 294-5), and Wright (1992. For a recent rival perspective, see Thorpe (2018). 6 In a companion piece (Helton, 2021), I argue from some of the same considerations presented here that epistemological solipsism just is, for creatures like ourselves, a genuine form of external world skepticism (Cf.…”

Section: The Structuralist Solution To Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 88%

On being a lonely brain‐in‐a‐vat: Structuralism, solipsism, and the threat from external world skepticism

Helton

2023

Philosophical Books

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Word count. 11,961 (inc. footnotes and references), 10,800 (excl. footnotes and references)Abstract. David Chalmers has recently developed a novel strategy of refuting external world skepticism, one he dubs the structuralist solution. In this paper, I make three primary claims: First, structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, even if it is combined with a functionalist approach to the metaphysics of minds. Second, because structuralism does not vindicate knowledge of other minds, the structuralist solution vindicates far less worldly knowledge than we would hope for from a solution to skepticism. For, solipsism threatens surprisingly vast swathes of worldly knowledge across multiple domains, including at least some knowledge about: political affairs, religious practices, artistic movements, historical events, and cultural trends. Third, the significance of these results exceeds their implications for the structuralist solution; these results suggest that no solution to external world skepticism which does not also solve the problem of other minds will ultimately yield the kind of solution we might have hoped for. Relatedly, these results suggest that the problem of external world skepticism should

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Section: The Structuralist Solution To Skepticismmentioning

confidence: 88%

On being a lonely brain‐in‐a‐vat: Structuralism, solipsism, and the threat from external world skepticism

Helton

2023

Philosophical Books

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“…Putnam's argument that we are not brains in a vat (=BIV) has recently seen a resurgence in interest (Putnam 1981, cf. Button 2013, Madden 2013, Goldberg 2016, Thorpe 2018, 2019). Putnam's argument is ambitious: According to Putnam, we can know that we are not BIVs and we can even know this based on apriori reasoning and reflective self-knowledge alone.…”

Section: Putnam's Argument: the State Of The Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Brains in a VAT and memory: How (not) to respond to Putnam's argument

Kraft¹

2020

Belgrade Philosop Ann

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Putnam's argument that we are not brains in a vat has recently seen a resurgence in interest. Although objections to it are legion, an emerging consensus seems to be that even if it successfully refutes one version of the brain in a vat scenario, lifelong envatment, it is powerless against a different one, recent envatment. Although initially appealing, I argue in this paper that this response-merely replacing lifelong envatment by recent envatment-is a bad response to Putnam's argument. Yet there is a different version of the brain in a vat scenario, recent memory-altering envatment, that Putnam's argument does not refute and is also sufficiently radical. The crucial issue turns out to be which epistemic sources sceptical scenarios may attack. I argue that there's no convincing reason for exempting memory from the sceptical attack: Sceptical scenarios must target memory to be sufficiently radical and they can do so without violating any constraint on sceptical scenarios. In the end Putnam's argument doesn't fail because of some 'deep' philosophical mistake, but because it overlooks how flexible and adjustable sceptical scenarios are.

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“…Thorpe (2018) has recently emphasized that only radical sceptical hypothesis are suitable for the sceptic's purposes.…”

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confidence: 99%

Scepticism, evidential holism and the logic of demonic deception

Okasha

2024

Nous

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Sceptical arguments in epistemology typically employ sceptical hypotheses, which are rivals to our everyday beliefs so constructed that they fit exactly the evidence on which those beliefs are based. There are two ways of using a sceptical hypothesis to undermine an everyday belief, giving rise to two distinct sorts of sceptical argument: underdetermination‐based and closure‐based. However, both sorts of argument, as usually formulated in the literature, fall foul of evidential holism, for they ignore the crucial role of background beliefs. An analogy with the philosophy of science makes this point explicit. There is no simple way to “holism proof” the two sceptical arguments.

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Closure Scepticism and The Vat Argument

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

On being a lonely brain‐in‐a‐vat: Structuralism, solipsism, and the threat from external world skepticism

On being a lonely brain‐in‐a‐vat: Structuralism, solipsism, and the threat from external world skepticism

Brains in a VAT and memory: How (not) to respond to Putnam's argument

Scepticism, evidential holism and the logic of demonic deception

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