Perceptual Entitlement and Skepticism

Abstract

What are the implications for perceptual anti-individualism for radical scepticism about perceptual entitlement? Previous ambitious arguments are criticized: one can only know a posteriori the extent of perceptual entitlement. But one can know a priori that one is not the only sentient being to have ever existed. Brueckner presented a reconstruction of an argument thought to be discernible in Burge’s “Perceptual Entitlement.” It was supposed to be an a priori argument for the existence of perceptual entitlement. Though it was not touted as such, the argument would be a kind of a priori anti-skeptical argument. For if it could be demonstrated a priori that we have entitlement to hold our perceptual beliefs, then this would answer a skeptic who claimed that our perceptual beliefs have no positive epistemic status, given our inability to rule out his skeptical counterpossibilities in a manner that itself possesses positive epistemic status.