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This book examines skeptical problems originally raised by Descartes and Hume and currently discussed in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. It answers the basic skeptical questions concerning the existence of what is now unperceived, the reality of what is perceived, and the existence of an external world.
Johnstone shows how the recently proposed solutions to these skeptical problems- pragmatic, coherentist, linguistic, and new-Kantian - do not and cannot work, and how only a return to foundational investigation on the terrain of the radical skeptic is adequate to the task. His analyses make for a valuable summary of every significant argument brought against skepticism. In the course of his investigation, Johnstone probes a number of topical issues: knowledge, rationality, the nature of meaning, nonverbal thinking, the bodily nature of the thinking self, parasitism, the role of the tactile-kinesthetic body in feeling and belief, and the necessary role of free will in epistemology.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Personae Argumenti
1. Cartesian Solipsism
The Challenge of Solipsism
Introducing Seven Cartesian Solipsists
Precursors in Antiquity
The Epistemological Task
2. The Claim to Know
The Charge of Absurdity
The Charge of Irrelevance
Appeals to Confirmational Autonomy and Nonclosure
The Hollowness of the Claim to Know
3. The Laconic Retort
Pragmatic Rejoinders
The Unreasonable Demand
The Self-Referential Manoeuvre
4. The Appeal to Perception
Skepticism and Foundationalism
Normal Perceptual Experience and Sense Data
Normal Perceptual Inquiry and Rational Foundationalism
Explanatory Coherence and Rationality
5. Epistemic Parasitism
Parasitism Arguments
Wittgenstein and the Background of Inquiry
Heidegger and Existential Commitment
Quine and Naturalized Epistemology
The Refutation of Sensa Solipsism
6. The Charge of Meaninglessness
The Disguised Tautology
Criteria Rejection and Illicit Coinage
The Verification Requirement
The Reference Requirement
7.Cartesian Semantics
Meaning as Personalized Associate
Referent as Posit
The Determination of Reference
The Semantic Contribution of Natural-Kind Terms
The Semantic Contribution of Proper Names
8.Conceptual and Linguistic Parasitism
On Conceptual Schemes and the Ontocentricity of Language
The Publicity of Language
The Presuppositions of Temporality and Identity
The Presuppositions of the Concept of Self
The Nature of the Cartesian Self
The Presuppositions of the Concept of Sense Data
The Presuppositions of Warrant Estimation
9. Thinking Outside Public Language
Private Language and Criteria
Psychological Nominalism and the Myth of the Given
Public Language and Rationality
Conceptual Schemes and Cultural Relativity
Nonlinguistic Thinking
Solipsism in Nonlinguistic Thought
10. The Given
The Need for Introspection
Structures of the Visual Field
Structures of the Tactile-Kinesthetic Field
Relations Among the Sense Fields
11. The Self
The Cartesian Self and the Self That Feels
The Corporeality of the Self That Wills
The Corporeality of the Thinking Self
The Invalidity of Cogito, Ergo Sum
Spontaneity and Free Choice
12. Unobserved Existence
The Problem of the Justification of Induction
The Irrationality of Ephemerata Solipsism
Optional Possibility and Rational Belief
Fleshing Out the Solipsistic World
The Refutation of Monopsyche Solipsism
13. The Reality of the World
The Problem of Reality
Unreality and Parsimony
Limitlessly Arbitrary Hypotheses
The Implausibility of Demoniac and Phantasmata Solipsism
The Implausibility of Oneirata and Non-Sensa Solipsism
The Permanent Possibility of Unreality
Notes
Index