Global Scepticism, Underdetermination and Metaphysical Possibility

Erkenntnis 79 (2):381-403 (2014)
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Abstract

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument

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Luca Moretti
University of Eastern Piedmont

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 2001 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne, Conceivability and Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 145--200.
The Philosophy of Philosophy.Timothy Williamson - 2008 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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