The Extended Rationality View

Abstract

In the previous chapter we saw, among other things, how moderatism could embrace the idea that the principle of closure for warrant does not hold unconditionally. In particular, it fails when the conclusion of the argument is a very general proposition whose assumption is necessary to have warrant for some more specific premises that figure in the argument. Now, Humean skepticism in the form of an argument based on closure would therefore be blocked. For, even if there is no warrant for the existence of an external world, it does not follow, in the moderate conception of warrant, that we cannot have evidential justification for an ordinary empirical proposition, such as “Here is my hand”. Indeed, according to moderatism, given that assumption and an appropriate course of experience, absent reasons for doubt, we would have a perceptual warrant for that proposition.