Scepticism About Philosophy

Notes

[^1] Thomas Kelly, ‘The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement’, in John Hawthorne and Tamar Gendler, eds., Oxford Studies in Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. [^173]:

[^2] Kelly, ‘Epistemic Significance of Disagreement’, p. [^10]:

[^3] Thus, one possible way to defeat outsider scepticism would be to show that a truth-seeking, error-avoiding agnostic is actually more likely than the rest of us to arrive at true doctrines.  Perhaps her lack of prior commitments makes philosophical methodology reliable for her, if not for us.   Whether this counter-argument will work depends on empirical points about the mechanism of belief formation as well.   Note also that this type of response attributes our disagreements to bias. However, suppose it can be show that the true agnostic has a good chance of getting the truth.  There will still be a sort of leftover outsider scepticism.  The outsider who is not an agnostic might still regard philosophy as unreliable, as having too great a tendency to allow people to rationalize their prior beliefs, etc.

[^4] Questions that were once thought to be philosophical have a tendency to become questions for the social or natural sciences.  The border between philosophical and nonphilosophical questions is fuzzy. However, without saying how to make the distinction, I will assume there is something like a core of questions that we reasonably can expect to remain part of philosophy.

[^5] T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pp. 136-[^138]:

[^6] Wilbur M. Urban, ‘Progress in Philosophy in the Last Quarter Century’, The Philosophical Review 35:2 (1926), pp. 93-[^123]:

[^7] This phrase comes from Toni Vogel Carey, ‘Is Philosophy Progressive’, Philosophy Now 59 (2007), accessed online (3/15/07) at http://www.philosophynow.org/issue59/59carey.html

[^8] E.g., Robert Audi, The Good in the Right, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

[^9] See Richard Feldman, ‘Reasonable Religious Disagreements’, in Louise Antony. ed.,

Philosophers Without Gods , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Richard Feldman, ‘Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement’, in Stephen Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology Futures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

[^10] Adam Elga, ‘Reflection and Disagreement’, Noûs 41 (2007), pp. 478-[^502]:

[^11] David Christensen, ‘Epistemology of Disagreement: the Good News’, Philosophical Review 116 (2007), pp. 187-[^217]:

[^12] Kelly, ‘Epistemic Significance of Disagreement’.

[^13] Gideon Rosen, ‘Nominalism, Naturalism, Philosophical Relativism’, Philosophical Perspectives 15 (2001), pp 69-[^91]:

[^14] Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), pp. 95-[^115]:

[^15] Peter van Inwagen, ‘It is Wrong, Everywhere, Always, and for Anyone, to Believe Anything upon Insufficient Evidence’, in Eleonore Stump and Michael J. Murray, eds., Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), p. [^275]: