AAP2010 Abstracts
Use the form below to search abstracts by Author, Institue or Keyword.
| Title | Mr |
| First Name | Daniel |
| Surname | Greco |
| Institution | MIT |
| Title of Paper | Skepticism, Belief, and the Impossibility of Agnosticism |
| Select a Stream | Epistemology |
| Abstract | Epistemologists and philosophers of mind both ask questions about belief. Epistemologists ask normative questions about belief—which beliefs ought we to have? Philosophers of mind ask metaphysical questions about belief—what are beliefs, and what does it take to have them? While these issues might seem independent of one another, there is potential for an interesting sort of conflict—the epistemologist might think we ought to have beliefs that, according to the philosopher of mind, it is impossible to have. In this paper I argue that conflicts along these lines create problems for traditional skeptical views in epistemology. On certain popular, broadly interpretivist views about the nature of belief, it is impossible to adopt the near-global agnosticism recommended by the skeptic. On other plausible views, while it may be possible to be a skeptic, it is not possible to be an “open-eyed skeptic,” that is, it is not possible to be a skeptic who knows both that he is a skeptic and the necessary consequences of that fact. The only views about the nature of belief on which there are no metaphysical hurdles to being a skeptic are views that face powerful objections that are independent of considerations relating to skepticism. In the context of defending these claims, I distinguish the anti-skeptical arguments I offer from superficially similar ones that have been articulated by Donald Davidson and Hilary Putnam; I argue that some popular strategies for responding to those well-known arguments are ineffective as responses to the arguments advanced here. |
