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Radical Scepticism, How-Possible Questions and Modest Transcendental Arguments

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International Journal of Philosophical Studies ISSN: 0967-2559 (Print) 1466-4542 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riph20 Radical Scepticism, How-Possible Questions and Modest Transcendental Arguments Ju Wang To cite this article: Ju Wang (2017) Radical Scepticism, How-Possible Questions and Modest Transcendental Arguments, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 25:2, 210-226, DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2017.1296881 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2017.1296881 Published online: 08 Mar 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 40 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=riph20 Download by: [Fudan University] Date: 12 April 2017, At: 01:43 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 2017 VOL. 25, NO. 2, 210–226 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2017.1296881 Radical Scepticism, How-Possible Questions and Modest Transcendental Arguments Ju Wang School of Philosophy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China ABSTRACT According to radical scepticism, knowledge of the external world is impossible. Transcendental arguments are supposed to be anti-sceptical, but can they provide a satisfying response to radical scepticism? Especially, when radical scepticism is cast as posing a how-possible question, there is a concern that transcendental arguments are neither sufficient nor necessary for answering such question. In light of this worry, I argue that we can take a modest transcendental argument as a stepping stone for a diagnostic anti-sceptical proposal, and I use a Wittgensteinian modest transcendental argument to illustrate my point. KEYWORDS Sceptical paradox; Wittgenstein; hinge commitments; how-possible questions; diagnosis 1. Introduction Transcendental arguments are supposed to be anti-sceptical, but can transcendental arguments provide a satisfying response to radical scepticism? In what follows, I take radical scepticism to amount to the thesis that our knowledge of the external world is impossible. Following Pritchard (2015, 15), I present the sceptical paradox as follows1: The Sceptical Paradox (1) One cannot know that one is not a brain in a vat (BIV). (2) If one knows that one is reading a book, then one is in a position to know that one is not a BIV. (3) One knows that one is reading a book. Each claim in the paradox looks prima facie plausible, but they are jointly incompatible. For (1), if one were a BIV, then one would have subjectively indistinguishable experience from one’s ordinary experience, therefore one cannot discriminate the two scenarios. The second claim is licenced by the clo- sure principle, which says that one’s knowledge can be extended via competent CONTACT Ju Wang [email protected] © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 211 deduction.2 The third claim is an example of everyday knowledge we think we have. Formulated this way, the sceptical paradox doesn’t involve any suspicious claim, at least at first sight; rather it hinges on nothing more than platitudes that we find intuitive. That is to say, by our own epistemic standards,3 we have no reason to reject any claim, but holding them together will land us in a predicament. Therefore, in order to get rid of this paradox, at least one claim in this paradox needs to be rejected. However, there are two approaches to solving this paradox.4 We can provide an obstacle-overriding response. To be specific, we can admit that the difficulty involved in this paradox is genuine and we must revise our intuition such that we can find a way out of the pre- dicament. Alternatively, we can provide an obstacle-dissolving response. This strategy takes the difficulty involved in the paradox to be spurious. That is to say, there are some problematic assumptions disguising as pre-theoretic intuitions. Therefore, it is unnecessary to revise our intuition in order to deal with the sceptical challenge. Instead, we only need to reveal the problematic assumptions behind the paradox and thereby scepticism will disappear. Crucially, an obsta- cle-dissolving response involves a diagnosis as to why we are lead into such a predicament. With such a diagnosis in play, we get intellectual relief. For, we can be shown that what cause the predicament are some faulty theories rather than our innocent epistemic platitudes. And if our default epistemic status is innocent, any theoretical revision is therefore unnecessary. With this strategical concern in mind, a diagnostic obstacle-dissolving approach to resolving radical scepticism, so long as it is viable, would be preferable. Transcendental arguments, as presented by Stern (1999, 2–4), have the fol- lowing features: A: That one thing X is a necessary condition for the possibility of something else Y, so that the latter cannot obtain without the former. B: The nature of the subject matter Y is to be experience, language, belief and intentionality. C: X is to have some anti-sceptical effect. With these three features in mind, we can roughly sketch how transcendental arguments work. A transcendental argument starts from a premise Y which the sceptic will accept, and then via a priori reasoning we arrive at a conclusion about some necessary conditions for (the possibility of) Y, namely X. That is to say, Y cannot obtain unless X is satisfied. Therefore, if we grant the existence of Y in the first place, we must be rationally committed to the existence of X. Note that the anti-sceptical effect of X is special, for the sceptic has no plausible way to reject it. On the one hand, she is committed to the premise Y, so she cannot challenge the premise in the first place; on the other hand, if she were to follow the argument, she would be rationally committed to the conclusion, because Y is impossible unless X obtains. Suppose the sceptic denies the conclusion, she will be accused of not the falsity of her claim, but rather the inconsistency J. WANG 212 of her position and the unintelligibility of her claim. In this sense, scepticism is labelled as self-defeating and therefore simply cannot get off the ground.5 With transcendental arguments so presented, it seems that they can play a significant role in arguing against radical scepticism. However, this is a demand- ing task, for we have witnessed various objections to transcendental arguments. In particular, Stroud (1968) famously argues against ambitious transcendental arguments.6 Ambitious transcendental arguments are arguments that aim to establish a non-psychological fact from an undisputed psychological fact via a claim of the form ‘X is a necessary condition for (the possibility of) Y’. In light of his objection, some transcendentalists tend to advance transcendental arguments modestly.7 Modest transcendental arguments are arguments that involve a necessity claim between only psychological facts. That is, instead of arguing that X is a necessary condition for (the possibility of) Y, modest transcendentalists merely argue that our commitment to X is a necessary condition for (the possibility of) Y. Hence, whether X is true is not what modest transcendentalists should bother about. However, even the modest variant faces objections to the extent that we are left wondering what the epistemological significance of adopting modest transcendental arguments is and whether modest transcendental arguments can contribute to one’s anti-sceptical proposal.8 In this paper, I will consider Cassam’s objection. To anticipate, I will argue that modest transcendental argu- ments are stepping stones for diagnostic anti-sceptical proposals. Here is my plan: in section 2, I discuss Cassam’s objection to the idea that transcendental arguments can answer how-possible questions; in section 3, I propose an alternative understanding of the role of (modest) transcendental arguments in anti-scepticism; after that I provide an example to illustrate my proposal in section 4; I have some concluding remarks in section 5. 2. Cassam’s objection Cassam (2007) develops a Multi-Level Response (hereafter MLR for short) to answer how-possible questions, and he argues that transcendental arguments are not suitable for answering how-possible questions.9 In this part, I will exam- ine his argument against transcendental arguments. What are how-possible questions? How-possible questions are usually put this way: ‘how is X possible?’ However, even though there is a similar form in posing how-possible questions, I think there are different types of how-possible questions. Imagine in a snooker match, John Higgins lost to a player who plays snooker for the first time. A snooker fan Ross would ask ‘how is that possible?’ This situation seems impossible because John Higgins is a top snooker player, and how could he lose his match against someone who is totally new to the sport? What is impossible in this situation is not the result, for it has been the case; rather it is that a satisfying explanation of this result seems impossible. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES 213 After all, there are obstacles that a potential explanation needs to counter. For instance, how can a top player in snooker play so badly that he loses to a novice? Therefore, a response to this snooker how-possible question needs to solve this obstacle. In contrast, there is a different kind of how-possible question. Imagine some- one says that the best runner can finish a 100m sprint in less than 9 seconds. Given that current world record is 9.58 seconds and that a slight improvement in 100m sprint (0.1s) is very difficult, we would ask how it is possible. In this case, we also find obstacles: a big gap between our current world record and the target, and the difficulty in running much faster than our current highest running speed.
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