Tag: Skepticism

• May 23, 2014

  Epistemic error: Distrust follows from the unknowability of other minds

  I am slowly working my way toward a reconsideration of concepts like ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ ‘inward’ and ‘outward,’ ‘internal’ and ‘external.’ In most cases, I will take these to be metaphorical descriptions of certain mental activities that, because they couldn’t anyway, can’t reveal themselves to the eye. I would like, as  it were, to do away with them or,…
• October 20, 2012

  Cavell on the skeptical moment

  Excerpt from Stanley Cavell, “The Philosopher in American Life,” In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. * I came to the idea that philosophy’s task was not so much to defeat the skeptical argument as to preserve it, as though the philosophical profit of the argument…
• January 13, 2012

  Why humor is a saving grace and how life gets better with the really? are you so sure? question

  I can’t possibly examine my life unless (1) I’m able to take a reflexive stance toward my desires, beliefs, and values and unless (2) I’m willing to test those desires, beliefs, and values. The first condition concerns my capacity to reorient myself toward my life while the second condition stakes the possibility of my thinking…