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Naturalized epistemology

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-P033-1
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DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-P033-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 1998
Retrieved March 28, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/naturalized-epistemology/v-1

6. The significance of scepticism

Like Hume, contemporary naturalists view epistemology as the attempt to clarify how the apparatus people use in investigating the world works when used in applications for which, we assume, it is reliable, and to identify what ought and ought not count as knowledge by identifying what sorts of beliefs are endorsed by the proper use of that apparatus. Contemporaries depart from him chiefly in thinking that more must be taken for granted than the reliability of mental faculties. Recent naturalists help themselves to the whole of natural science, which can be thought of as the combination of our mental faculties with techniques and devices that extend them.

Accordingly, there is a compelling case for saying that naturalists cannot hope to put global scepticism to rest. Global scepticism says that our belief schemes (including science) are irrational because: (1) ultimately our beliefs are based on arbitrary assumptions, claims that, even upon some reflection, we cannot link to a consideration that suggests it is true; and (2) it is irrational to make arbitrary assumptions (see Scepticism §5). To argue that scientific apparatus is reliable after having simply assumed that it is would be circular, so naturalists seem committed to granting (1). Perhaps this is why naturalists rarely confront global scepticism.

Attempts, none the less, have been made. One approach involves coherentism, which is the claim that beliefs may derive justification by cohering one with another (see Knowledge and justification, coherence theory of). If coherentism were correct, then since it sanctions some circular justifications, naturalists could use it against (1), and argue that all our beliefs can be justified at once. Another common approach is to turn the tables on the global sceptic and point out that, like everyone else who investigates knowledge, sceptics, too, must take for granted the reliability of their investigative apparatus. As an attack on (1) this table-turning would not work. Sceptics can retort: ‘Yes, all of us are in the same boat: there are assumptions we simply take for granted’. But it might well prove useful as part of an attack on (2).

It is important to notice that the global sceptic needs both (1) and (2). Once we do, we can see that even if naturalists cannot defeat (1), they can still respond to scepticism if they defeat (2). Naturalists could accept the sceptic’s discovery that ultimately our views are, perforce, arbitrary, and insist that it is sometimes all right, it is sometimes rational, to believe things we simply take for granted (Luper-Foy 1990).

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Citing this article:
Luper, Steven. The significance of scepticism. Naturalized epistemology, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-P033-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/naturalized-epistemology/v-1/sections/the-significance-of-scepticism.
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