{"id":114,"date":"2014-09-22T17:10:59","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/?p=114"},"modified":"2014-09-22T17:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T17:11:33","slug":"when-do-we-need-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/2014\/09\/22\/when-do-we-need-skepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"When Do We Need Skepticism?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 15 of \u201cWhat Is This Thing Called Knowledge?\u201d by Duncan Pritchard presents a type of skepticism known as radical skepticism.\u00a0 This idea holds that it is impossible to know much of anything at all (Pritchard, 169).\u00a0 Most philosophers agree that this form of skepticism is not a philosophical thought, but a way to challenge those in the pursuit of knowledge; a methodological form, which someone uses in order to try and prove that his or her knowledge presented, is skepticism-proof (Pritchard, 169).\u00a0 Skepticism is a necessary tool in assessing truth-value of an argument, but too much of it creates an impossible task and thus should not be overly used by those trying to uncover knowledge.\u00a0 Instead of having the mindset that anything could in fact be wrong or misleading, I\u2019d lean towards the contextual response to radical skepticism, stating that different contexts set up different epistemic standards (Black, http:\/\/www.iep.utm.edu\/contextu\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The amount of skepticism necessary depends on the context of the situation at hand.\u00a0 Using an example similar to that of Pritchard, a scientist looking at her tools does not need the same amount skepticism in determining the effectiveness as a person who is preparing herself a snack in the kitchen.\u00a0 The scientist would need more skepticism in investigating her belief that her microscope and like equipment are in the right condition for her experiment whereas the person looking at her utensils would not need to use as much skepticism in the evaluating the belief that her kitchen tools will be able to make her sandwich.<\/p>\n

Although there are situations that require a more in depth evaluation that are labeled high-standard contexts, and thus the use of skeptical arguments are highly regarded, contextualists believe that most contexts have epistemic standards that are relatively low.\u00a0 And in these low epistemic standards, the necessity of skepticism is not very urgent (Black, http:\/\/www.iep.utm.edu\/contextu\/<\/a>).\u00a0 \u00a0In this sense, we can have cases of knowledge that are free from issues of that radical skepticism brings up without taking the idea of skepticism in other situations.<\/p>\n

On the basis of contextualism, one can still use the closure principle which is often times a good way to determine if the argument is valid or invalid.\u00a0 Contextualism allows for arguments of low-standards to use the closure principle while arguments of high-standards must look further into the beliefs using skepticism as a tool in this process.<\/p>\n

One main counter to the contextualist view is that radical skepticism does not need high standards in order to come into play.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026the skeptical claim is that we have no good grounds at all for thinking that we\u2019re not the victims of skeptical hypotheses, not we have good grounds but the grounds we have aren\u2019t good enough\u201d (Pritchard, 178).<\/p>\n

In this argument, there are no standards when it comes to radical skepticism, because no grounds for an argument are good enough.\u00a0 This counter-argument shows just how radical this much skepticism is.\u00a0 The idea that someone can\u2019t really be sure of anything is a little frightening and could leave a person with a very unstable mindset.\u00a0 It\u2019s also a very frustrating take; that nothing could be proven to be valid because there is always room for something crazy; for example, that our brains are floating in a vat and being controlled by outside forces.\u00a0 Of course, like what was brought up at the beginning of the chapter 15, radical skepticism is not really a position philosophers take, but just a challenge that must be overcome to arrive at knowledge <\/b>(Pritchard, 169).<\/p>\n

So the main questions that remains is when do we use skepticism? And when does skepticism become excessive?\u00a0 The contextual argument holds that there are times (many times in fact) when skepticism is not necessary and therefore one can use the closure principle and thus find relatively easily if the argument is valid or invalid.\u00a0 Within this contextual practice, there is room for skepticism but only when absolutely necessary (high-standard situations).\u00a0 Knowledge comes in varying degrees, so it seems prudent that different methods be used to analyze an argument depending on the specific degree of that argument.<\/p>\n

Other Sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

Black, Smith. \u201cContextualism in Epistemology\u201d.\u00a0 Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.\u00a0 https:\/\/owl.english.purdue.edu\/owl\/resource\/747\/08\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter 15 of \u201cWhat Is This Thing Called Knowledge?\u201d by Duncan Pritchard presents a type of skepticism known as radical skepticism.\u00a0 This idea holds that it is impossible to know much of anything at all (Pritchard, 169).\u00a0 Most philosophers agree that this form of skepticism is not a philosophical thought, but a way to challenge … Continue reading When Do We Need Skepticism?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/millsonph100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}