The Logical Structure of Michael Williams's Response to Skepticism

2000

The Journal of Philosophy, 1987

2015

ABSTRACT Nowadays, when one doubts or questions extraordinarily, he is branded a skeptic and consequently resisted. The reason for this anachronistic approach towards the skeptic as an individual, and skepticism as a method or an attitude is not far-fetched. For example, people usually think that skeptics are men whose basic mood is that of doubt. Also they argue that skeptics are those who deny absolutely that true knowledge is possible. In this work, our attempt generally is to show how wrong this position is, and specifically, it is to restate that rather than denying the possibility of certain knowledge, skepticism is a philosophical method of inquiry or epistemological attitude towards knowledge whose goal is indeed certainty, but which selects a serious universal doubt concerning all knowledge as the starting point of a theory of knowledge. In this context therefore, the paradox of skepticism in epistemological enterprise would demand that whoever wants certain knowledge should proceed through doubt. Ordinarily, one would have thought that the best way to certainty is by accepting entirely all that one is told especially when it comes from a sage, or a tradition. Unfortunately, the position of this paper suggests otherwise.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2002

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 373-375, 1994

In "The Self-Defeating Character of Skepticism" I argue that traditional global epistemological skepticism is incoherent because it mistakenly assumes that we can question our knowledge of the external world without undermining our self-knowledge. The rationale behind my argument is the idea that, since we are substantial agents who exist and act "in the world" among other material beings, the view that our knowledge of our own existence and nature is or can be exclusively subjective is misguided. In a critical response to my essay, Anthony Brueckner claims that my reasoning fails to discredit the idea that one can adopt both "the Cartesian conception of self-knowledge as involving an inference to the existence of a mental substance" and "the Cartesian skeptical view concerning knowledge of the external world. Brueckner believes that my argument is of the "transcendental" variety, and I suspect he also believes that any reasoning of that kind is fatally flawed. In this discussion I explain why my argument escapes Brueckner's objection.

Humanities (Special Issue on "The Legacy of Richard Rorty"), Neil Gascoigne (ed.)

"We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams’s Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is offered in influential work by Barry Stroud, a conception of the skeptical problem which generates metaepistemological ramifications for anti-skeptical theories. In particular, we argue that, contra Williams, Rorty’s view that Davidson was offering a theoretical diagnosis of radical skepticism can be consistently maintained with his transcendental approach."

1992

An important source of doubt about our knowledge of the "external world" is the thought that all of our sensory experience could be delusive without our realizing it. Such wholesale questioning of the deliverances of all forms of perception seems to leave no resources for successfully justifying our belief in the existence of an objective world beyond our subjective experiences. I argue that there is there is a fatal flaw in the very expression of philosophical doubt about the "external world." Therefore, no such justification is necessary. The feature of skepticism which I believe renders it vulnerable is the assumption that each of us has a right to be certain of his own existence as a subject of conscious experience even in the face of comprehensive doubt about our empirical beliefs.

South African Journal of Philosophy, 2016

Stroud has argued for many years that skepticism is conditionally correct. We cannot, he claims, both undergo a Cartesian-style examination of the extent of our knowledge as well as avoid skepticism. One reason Stroud's position appears quite plausible is the so-called "totality condition" imposed for this kind of examination: as inquiring philosophers we are called upon to assess all of our knowledge, all at once. However, in this paper I argue that Stroud's apparent understanding of the totality condition is mistaken. Evidently, Stroud thinks that honoring the totality condition amounts to imposing the strong requirement that we initially assume that we don't know anything about external reality. However, there is a weaker requirement available: that we initially not assume that we know anything about external reality. I argue i) that the weaker conception of the totality condition is most suitable for the kind of philosophical examination that Stroud seems to have in mind; and ii) that according to this same conception skepticism is not conditionally correct.