Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning. In Our Knowledge of the External World , Bertrand Russell illustrates instances where the claims of philosophers have been excessive, and examines why their achievements have not been greater.

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists (...) should explicitly consider whether those solutions extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys. (shrink)

This book offers solutions to two persistent and I believe closely related problems in epistemology. The first problem is that of drawing a principled distinction between perception and inference: what is the difference between seeing that something is the case and merely believing it on the basis of what we do see? The second problem is that of specifying which beliefs are epistemologically basic (i.e., directly, or noninferentially, justified) and which are not. I argue that what makes a belief a (...) perceptual belief, or a basic belief, is not any introspectible feature of the belief but rather the nature of the cognitive system, or "module", that is causally responsible for the belief. Thus, even zombies, who in the philosophical literature lack conscious experiences altogether, can have basic, justified, perceptual beliefs. -/- The theories of perceptual and basic beliefs developed in the monograph are embedded in a larger reliabilist epistemology. I use this theory of basic beliefs to develop a detailed reliabilist theory: Inferentialist Reliabilism, which offers a reliabilist theory of inferential justification and which solves some longstanding problems for other reliabilist views by demanding inferential support for some—but not all—beliefs. The book is an instance of a thoroughgoingly naturalistic approach to epistemology. Many of my arguments have an empirical basis, and the view that I endorse reserves a central role for the cognitive sciences—in particular, cognitive neuroscience—in filling in the details of an applied epistemological theory. (shrink)

Hume’s understanding of the external world, particularly, his conception of objects, or what he occasionally refers to as “bodies,” is the subject of much dispute. Are objects mind-independent? Or, are they just what we see, feel, smell, taste, or touch? In other words, are objects just sense data? Or, are they ideas about sense data? Or, are objects, somehow, mind-independent, but we have ideas of them, and we receive sense data from them? In this paper, I provide some (...) answers to these questions—by way of distinguishing between the vulgar position, the philosophical position, and Hume’s position. (shrink)

In this paper I will draw attention to an important route to external world skepticism, which I will call confidence skepticism. I will argue that we can defang confidence skepticism (though not a meeker ‘argument from might’ which has got some attention in the 20th century literature on external world skepticism) by adopting a partially psychologistic answer to the problem of priors. And I will argue that certain recent work in the epistemology of mathematics and logic (...) provides independent support for such psychologism. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 3, pp 147 - 172 The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, _Twenty Verses_, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion (...) is closer to skepticism on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition. (shrink)

Recent literature in epistemology has focused on the following argument for skepticism (SA): I know that I have two hands only if I know that I am not a handless brain in a vat. But I don't know I am not a handless brain in a vat. Therefore, I don't know that I have two hands. Part I of this article reviews two responses to skepticism that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s: sensitivity theories and attributor contextualism. Part II considers (...) the more recent ‘neo-Moorean’ response to skepticism and its development in ‘safety’ theories of knowledge. Part III argues that the skeptical argument set out in SA is not of central importance. Specifically, SA is parasitic on skeptical reasoning that is more powerful and more fundamental than that displayed by SA itself. Finally, Part IV reviews a Pyrrhonian argument for skepticism that is not well captured by SA, and considers a promising strategy for responding to it. (shrink)

This article develops a logical (or semantic) response to scepticism about the existence of an external world. Specifically, it is argued that any doubt about the existence of an external world can be proved to be false, but whatever appears to be doubt about the existence of an external world that _cannot_ be proved to be false is nonsense, insofar as it must rely on the assertion of something that is logically impossible. The article (...) further suggests that both G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein worked towards the same solution but left their work unfinished. (shrink)

A general trend in recent philosophical and empirical work aims to undermine various traditional claims regarding the distinctive nature of self-knowledge. So far, however, this work has not seriously threatened the Cartesian claim that (at least some) self-knowledge is immune to the sort of sceptical problem that seems to afflict our knowledge of the external world. In this paper I carry this trend further by arguing that the Cartesian claim is false. This is done by showing that a (...) familiar sceptical argument that targets my knowledge of the external world can be adapted to target my belief that I exist, along with any of my self-knowledge that I know entails my own existence. Thus, my self-knowledge and my knowledge of the external world are subject to the same sort of sceptical problem. (shrink)

Speculations of this last type have existed from a much earlier period in the Eastern civilizations, particularly in those areas affected by Hindu philosophy. For example, in the Sánkhya or Yoga-Sútras by Patánjali, we find a very radical distinction between the external world and the individual soul or self. But for Sánkhya, the "external world" includes everything that could possibly be an object of consciousness--physical objects and their relationships, sensations and imaginations, dreams, memories, expectations, etc. In (...) other words, for Sánkhya, our thoughts or desires, far from being the "cause" of the external world as in some forms of Western idealism, are simply other aspects of the external world itself, that is, merely particular items in the totality of our consciousness. On the other hand, the individual soul or self is only the spectator of this consciousness and not ordinarily conscious of itself. If the self were to become conscious of "itself" in the same way that it was conscious of all other objects, all that it would really be aware of would be another object of consciousness---the mere idea of itself, while it would remain the unknown knower. Nevertheless, realizing that a completely "unconscious self" would be simply a postulate of thought and therefore part of the external world, the Sánkhya-Sútras emphasize that the self can become aware of itself by another and more intuitive means. (shrink)

The problem of induction is to validate inferences from some experiences or data to others. By experiences or data I mean such things as red patches, sounds, tastes, pains. Distinctions between private and public data, between internal and external impressions, between data and objects, are not epistemologically primitive or given but are modes of categorizing the given. The application of categories and the construction of objects are cases of, and so presuppose the validity of, induction.To hypostatize a construction, or (...) a system of constructions, is in fact to generate what may be called an external world. Examples are physical objects, and scientific objects. And when analysis proceeds, as it often does, by replacing the original subject by constructs, a hierarchy of external systems is generated. Thus, physical objects—e.g., our bodies—are external to data, and scientific objects are external to physical objects. (shrink)

We face reality presented with the data of conscious experience and nothing else. The project of early modern philosophy was to build a complete theory of the world from this starting point, with no cheating. Crucial to this starting point is the data of conscious sensory experience – sense data. Attempts to avoid this project often argue that the very idea of sense data is confused. But the sense-data way of talking, the sense-data language, can be freed from every (...) blemish using ideas from contemporary metaontology. We can adopt a sense-data framework that vindicates the traditional claims of sense-data theories and leads to plausible theories of perception and color. We can, we should, and in a sense, we must. Yet when we do, we face the traditional problem of external world skepticism, head-on. The real challenge of skepticism is forced upon us; it cannot honestly be avoided using externalist tricks, burden of proof shifting, or other razzle dazzle. But the challenge can be met: we are rational to posit the external world as the best explanation of the many synchronic and diachronic patterns over our sense-data. This paper argues for all of these points and ends with a plea for analytic empiricism – a traditional sense-data version of empiricism that uses all of the tools of analytic philosophy while avoiding the more questionable doctrines of the Vienna Circle (phenomenalism, verificationism). Analytic empiricism is our last best hope for completing the great philosophical project of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that arguments from skeptical hypotheses for external world skepticism derive their support from a skeptical argument from the distinction between appearance and reality. This skeptical argument from the appearance/reality distinction gives the external world skeptic her conclusion without appealing to skeptical hypotheses and without assuming that knowledge is closed under known entailments. If this is correct, then this skeptical argument from the appearance/reality distinction poses a new skeptical challenge that cannot be (...) resolved by denying skeptical hypotheses or knowledge closure. (shrink)

_'Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and acheived fewer results than any other branch of learning... I believe that the time has now arrived when this unsatisfactory state of affairs can be brought to an end'_ - _Bertrand Russell_ So begins _Our Knowledge of the Eternal World_, Bertrand Russell's classic attempt to show by means of examples, the nature, capacity and limitations of the logico-analytical method in philosophy.

In this paper, I argue that perception justifies belief about the external world in virtue of its phenomenal character together with its relations to the external world. But I argue that perceptual relations to the external world impact on the justifying role of perception only by virtue of their impact on its representational content. Epistemic level-bridging principles provide a principled rationale for avoiding more radically externalist theories of perceptual justification.

This chapter examines Russell’s appreciation of the relevance of psychology for the theory of knowledge, especially in connection with the problem of the external world, and the background for this appreciation in British philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Russell wrote in 1914 that “the epistemological order of deduction includes both logical and psychological considerations.” Indeed, the notion of what is “psychologically derivative” played a crucial role in his epistemological analysis from this time. His epistemological discussions engage (...) psychological factors in the perception of external objects that had been closely examined in the nineteenth century, among other places in J. S. Mill’s response to William Hamilton’s conception of knowledge of the external world. These considerations came to Russell in various ways, including his contact with British Empiricism (Mill, with Berkeley, Hume, and Reid as background), his engagement with Austrian philosophy, his close acquaintance with the philosophy and psychology of William James, and his exposure to contemporary British writings concerning the problem of the external world. The latter writings provide a crucial context within which natural scientific psychology came to be seen as distinct from epistemology and yet as relevant to its concerns. (shrink)

One of the most important and perennially debated philosophical questions is whether we can have knowledge of the external world. Butchvarov here considers whether and how skepticism with regard to such knowledge can be refuted or at least answered. He argues that only a direct realist view of perception has any hope of providing a compelling response to the skeptic and introduces the radical innovation that the direct object of perceptual, and even dreaming and hallucinatory, experience is always (...) a material object, but not necessarily one that actually exists. This leads him to a metaphysics in which reality is ultimately constructed by human decisions out of objects that are ontologically more basic but which cannot be said in themselves to be either real or unreal. (shrink)

The phenomena of perception have been used by philosophers to kindle and fuel doubts about the reality of ‘the external world’, a phrase which points roughly in the direction of our natural environment. After grappling with problems, which trade under this title, one often discovers that the issues have less to do with the reality of anything which might be called ‘the external world’ and more to do with the reality of the problems themselves. In this (...) paper I propose to examine three approaches to what might deserve to be labelled, ‘problems about theexternal world’. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the traditional problem of our knowledge of the external world was dissolved by Wittgestein and others. They argue that it was not really a problem - just a linguistic `confusion' that did not actually require a solution. Bruce Aune argues that they are wrong. He casts doubt on the generally accepted reasons for putting the problem aside and proposes an entirely new approach. By considering the history of the problem from Descartes to Kant, Aune (...) shows that analogous arguments create difficulties for the contemporary philosophical consensus. He makes it clear that the problem remains acute, particualarly for our understanding of scientific evidence. The solution he proposes draws upon contemporary philosophy of science and probability theory. (shrink)

: In Contra Academicos 3.11.24, Augustine responds to skepticism about the existence of the external world by arguing that what appears to be the world — as he terms things, the "quasi-earth" and "quasi-sky" — cannot be doubted. While some (e.g., M. Burnyeat and G. Matthews) interpret this passage as a subjectivist response to global skepticism, it is here argued that Augustine's debt to Epicurean epistemology and theology, especially as presented in Cicero's De Natura Deorum 1.25.69 - (...) 1.26.74, provides the basis for a much more plausible, realist interpretation of Augustine's argument. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that the traditional problem of our knowledge of the external world was dissolved by Wittgestein and others. They argue that it was not really a problem - just a linguistic `confusion' that did not actually require a solution. Bruce Aune argues that they are wrong. He casts doubt on the generally accepted reasons for putting the problem aside and proposes an entirely new approach. By considering the history of the problem from Descartes to Kant, Aune (...) shows that analogous arguments create difficulties for the contemporary philosophical consensus. He makes it clear that the problem remains acute, particualarly for our understanding of scientific evidence. The solution he proposes draws upon contemporary philosophy of science and probability theory. (shrink)

Outlines a tenable version of a traditional foundationalist account\nof empirical justification and its implications for the justification\nof beliefs about physical or material objects. Presupposing the acceptability\nof other beliefs about physical objects; Concept of a basic belief;\nMetabeliefs about one's own occurrent beliefs; Beliefs about sensory\nexperience.

Simply stated, Pragmatic Invariantism is the view that the practical interests of a person can influence whether that person’s true belief constitutes knowledge. My primary objective in this article is to show that Pragmatic Invariantism entails external world skepticism. Toward this end, I’ll first introduce a basic version of Pragmatic Invariantism (PI). Then I’ll introduce a sample skeptical hypothesis (SK) to the framework. From this I will show that it is extremely important that the phenomenally equivalent skeptical scenarios (...) generated by SK are actually false. We’ll then see that by combining PI and SK, the effect will be to place extremelyhigh demands upon evidence for ~SK. It will finally be observed that, while we may have good evidence for ~SK, we do not have extremely strong evidence sufficient for establishing ~SK. This supports my conclusion that any standard version of Pragmatic Invariantism ultimately entails external world skepticism. If successful, my conclusion will critically undermine the current view that Pragmatic Invariantism is actually a skeptically resistant position. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare and contrast two kinds of scepticism, Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Quinean scepticism about meaning. I expose Quine's metaphysical claim that there are no facts of the matter about meaning as a sceptical response to a sceptical problem regarding the possibility of our knowledge of meanings. I argue that this sceptical response is overkill; for the sceptical problem about our knowledge of meanings may receive a treatment similar to the naturalistic treatment (...) Quine himself offered for the problem of our knowledge of the external world. Further, I suggest that a naturalistic treatment of Quinean meaning scepticism may fare better than Quine's own naturalistic treatment of external world scepticism. (shrink)

I argue that descartes' doubting of the external world does not rest on doubting the truth of clear and distinct ideas. in fact, he denies that we clearly and distinctly perceive the "existence" of material things. thus, their existence is not established through the validation of such ideas and we can understand why descartes' argument for their existence takes the form it does. i suggest that dreams lead him to conclude that the existence of material things is not (...) clearly perceived and to doubt their existence. (shrink)

The Sixth Meditation deals, as its title proclaims, with ‘the existence of material things, and the real distinction between the mind and body of man’. In this paper, I want to start by examining Descartes' argument for the existence of material things—for the existence of an ‘external’, physical world around us. Next, in section two, I shall use this argument concerning the external world to bring out an important general point about the ‘dialectical’ way in which (...) Descartes presents his reasoning in the Meditations. This will lead me on to the third section of the paper, which will analyse the concept of ‘nature’ and the role it plays in Descartes' reasoning, particularly in the Sixth Meditation. And this in turn will bring me to the fourth and final part of the paper, which will focus on what is by general consensus the most fascinating part of the Sixth Meditation—Descartes' account of the relation between mind and body. What I shall try to do in this final section is to highlight a curious tension between Descartes' recognition of the facts of human experience on the one hand, and on the other hand his doctrine that we are essentially incorporeal or non-physical substances. (shrink)

There are a number of apparent parallels between belief in God and belief in the existence of an external world beyond our experiences. Both beliefs would seem to condition one's overall view of reality and one's place within it – and yet it is difficult to see how either can be defended. Neither belief is likely to receive a purely a priori defence and any empirical evidence that one cites either in favour of the existence of God or (...) the existence of the external world would seem to blatantly beg the question against a doubter. I will explore just how far this parallel can be pushed by examining some strategies for resisting external world scepticism1. (shrink)

I trace the history of Wittgenstein’s engagement with Russell’s external world programme from 1913 to 1929.

Realism, defined as a justified belief in the existence of the external world, is jeopardized by ‘meaning rationalism,’ the classic theory of meaning that sees the extension of words as a function of the intensions of individual speakers, with no way to ensure that these intensions actually correspond to anything in the external world. To defend realism, Ruth Millikan ( 1984 , 1989a , b , 1993 , 2004 , 2005 ) offers a biological theory of (...) meaning called ‘teleosemantics’ in which words, without requiring any contribution from the speaker’s intensions, are supposedly matched directly with their extensions by external norms. But even if one granted as a theoretical possibility that word meaning might possibly be stabilized through an external process, nonetheless, realists who wish to appeal to teleosemantics for a semantic proof of the external world must be capable of identifying these external norms, something that Millikan describes as highly fallible. Furthermore, because they can be aware of these norms only as these are internally represented, it would also be necessary for realists to verify that these internal representations accurately reflect the norms as they occur in the external world. But given that this is virtually the same stumbling block to realism found in meaning rationalism, it is concluded that teleosemantics is not likely to restore faith in this worldview. (shrink)

Like Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley before him, Hume propounds a theory of the external world or of what, in his case, is better called belief in the existence of body. The success or failure of his discussion rests not on any conclusion reached about the status of this belief—its reasonableness or unreasonableness, its truth or falsity--but only on whether, in accordance with his purpose of providing a “science of MAN,” his explanation of why we have the belief is (...) convincing. Furthermore, Hume identifies two versions of the belief: an ordinary or “vulgar” version that we all hold until we confront the arguments that demonstrate its falsity and a “philosophical” version that we are driven to by those arguments but that has no rational foundation. This chapter analyzes Hume’s treatment of both versions and offers an internal criticism as well as some criticism from the standpoint of contemporary analytic philosophy. (shrink)

For some time there have been appearing in the philosophical literature hints and suggestions that the so-called “problem of the external world” should be abandoned, not primarily because it is of little pragmatic significance, but rather because there is really no such problem to be solved. The publication of Reichenbach's Experience and Prediction has now stimulated a resurgence of these suggestions. In the course of his discussion of the book in the April Philosophy of Science Professor Ernest Nagel (...) has taken occasion to argue briefly that this problem, which Reichenbach attempts to solve, cannot even be stated unless one assumes its solution. And in a similar vein more recently Dr. William Barrett has also criticized Reichenbach and has then gone on to present certain fundamental logical considerations which, it is alleged, guarantee that the expression “Is there an external world?” cannot designate a legitimate philosophical problem. The situation, as he describes it, is as follows. The sentence “There is an external world” or the equivalent sentence “There is a physical object” can be confirmed in a physicalistic language only if one assumes the existence of certain physical objects. This procedure is of course circular. These sentences cannot therefore be confirmed, and, since the verifiability theory of meaning is accepted, the questions derived by transferring them into the interrogative mood cannot be meaningfully asked. A similar result is asserted to follow if one employs a perception language for science in place of a physicalistic language, since there is a parallelism between these two languages such that for every expression in the one there will be a corresponding expression in the other. (shrink)

Vision scientists standardly assume that the goal of vision is to recover properties of the external world. Lehar's “miniature, virtual-reality replica of the external world inside our head” (target article, sect. 10) is an example of this assumption. I propose instead, on evolutionary grounds, that the goal of vision is simply to provide a useful user interface to the external world.

The problem of how we can know the existence and nature of the world external to our mind is one of the oldest and most difficult in philosophy. The discussion by John Locke (1632-1704) of knowledge of the external world have proved to be some of the most confusing and difficult passages of his entire body of philosophical work.