Abstract
Let Internalism be the view that our inferences are justified depending on whether we have knowledge of the logical rules on which they are based, and Scepticism the view that none of our inferences are justified. Boghossian has shown that Internalism entails Scepticism, and Philie has attempted to block the entailment by invoking an assumption on rationality. In this contribution, I enforce the entailment claim and argue that Philie’s solution misses the target: Internalism does entail Scepticism.
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Notes
- 1.
For those who suspect that the validity of the inference of (3) can be seen directly, that is, not via (4)–(6), see (***) in Sect. 13.4 below.
- 2.
At several points, Philie suggests he is discussing Carroll’s argument itself, yet see Philie (2007, fn. 3) for a qualification on this. Indeed, it will become clear in a minute that there are important differences.
- 3.
Throughout the paper, I regard steps of the following form as uncontroversial: if you \(\varphi\) only if you ψ, then you have to ψ in order to \(\varphi\).
- 4.
For details on how regresses can be generated and how conclusions can be drawn from them, see Wieland (2014).
- 5.
- 6.
Standardly, beliefs need be true and degettierized as well. For present purposes, it is only needed to assume that knowledge requires justified belief. Indeed, a possibility to resist the argument is to defend that knowledge does not require this. This move may look implausible, but it is possible for Internalism as defined.
- 7.
See Wright (2001) for further qualifications on the regress argument.
- 8.
I shall not go into this here, but cf. Boghossian (2003).
- 9.
To be sure, all the argument shows is that there should be one such principle, not three. For one is enough to generate obligations. But then which one should it be, if any of these? This calls for further argumentation, but let this pass here.
- 10.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks go to: Giuseppe Primiero, Dagmar Provijn and Erik Weber.
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Wieland, J.W. (2014). Internalism Does Entail Scepticism. In: Weber, E., Wouters, D., Meheus, J. (eds) Logic, Reasoning, and Rationality. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9011-6_13
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