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brain in a vat
Oct. 7th, 2005 07:24 pmLast night in class a certain professor was arguing for what appeared to be the distinction between internal & external skepticism. external skepticism is "philosophical" skepticism--wherein the skeptical hypothesis can be true while all one's beliefs remain unchanged; i.e. everything could be exactly the same as it is now, but we'd be brains in vats. and there's no way of verifying whether we are or not. Internal skepticism occurs when we have reasons, "internal" to our framework of beliefs, for being skeptical about something, for thinking we're hallucinating, etc. there is, at least in principle, some way of verifying internal skeptical claims (did someone put LSD in our coffee this morning? we can ask whoever handled our coffee, etc.).
He called skeptical hypotheses "third personal" (or some variation on that) and good reasons to be skeptical "first personal" (ditto disclaimer);--this is what leads me to believe that something along the lines of the internal/external skepticism distinction was what he intended. But he also seemed to be making a claim about words (or rather, many claims about words), of the general form that we don't know what it would mean to ourselves be brains in vats, or for a brain in a vat to "have experiences" or to "think." I want to know how these sorts of claims are related to the internal/external skepticism distinction, if they are. I also want to know if the problem here has to do with third-personal accounts or hypotheses in general, or with difficulties in using these particular words ("experience," "think") outside of ordinary contexts. Or what the connection is between those two things, if there is one.
Thirdly, the trouble for me with contextualism is that by relegating skepticism to its own context, it misses the fact that skepticism is what it is because it can always arise, regardless of reasons or justifications for being skeptical. That is, there is no evidence for knowledge claims in the skeptical context. It's not just a context where we have impossibly high standards for knowledge; it's a context where standards are thrown out the window because there is no knowledge.
Is making the internal/external distinction the same thing as saying there are ordinary contexts and skeptical contexts? Or does it somehow avoid this mistake? Because I will want to say, ultimately, that skepticism can always arise--and philosophical skepticism, not just psychological skepticism.
He called skeptical hypotheses "third personal" (or some variation on that) and good reasons to be skeptical "first personal" (ditto disclaimer);--this is what leads me to believe that something along the lines of the internal/external skepticism distinction was what he intended. But he also seemed to be making a claim about words (or rather, many claims about words), of the general form that we don't know what it would mean to ourselves be brains in vats, or for a brain in a vat to "have experiences" or to "think." I want to know how these sorts of claims are related to the internal/external skepticism distinction, if they are. I also want to know if the problem here has to do with third-personal accounts or hypotheses in general, or with difficulties in using these particular words ("experience," "think") outside of ordinary contexts. Or what the connection is between those two things, if there is one.
Thirdly, the trouble for me with contextualism is that by relegating skepticism to its own context, it misses the fact that skepticism is what it is because it can always arise, regardless of reasons or justifications for being skeptical. That is, there is no evidence for knowledge claims in the skeptical context. It's not just a context where we have impossibly high standards for knowledge; it's a context where standards are thrown out the window because there is no knowledge.
Is making the internal/external distinction the same thing as saying there are ordinary contexts and skeptical contexts? Or does it somehow avoid this mistake? Because I will want to say, ultimately, that skepticism can always arise--and philosophical skepticism, not just psychological skepticism.
