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The Refutation of Scepticism
Book by Grayling, A. C.
158 pages, Paperback
Published October 27, 1988
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About the author
A.C. Grayling
95 books655 followersAnthony Clifford "A. C." Grayling is a British philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.
He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.
He is a director and contributor at Prospect Magazine, as well as a Vice President of the British Humanist Association. His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics and philosophical logic. He has described himself as "a man of the left" and is associated in Britain with the new atheism movement, and is sometimes described as the 'Fifth Horseman of New Atheism'. He appears in the British media discussing philosophy.
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June 27, 2011
Grayling's mission here is to refute philosophical skepticism without using ontology. We could argue against skepticism with an ontologically based realism, but Grayling thinks this is conceding too much ground to the skeptic. He can refute it with the help of epistemology.
Grayling's arguments cover 113 pages, a kind of extended essay in four chapters. He includes several useful appendices as well, in which he goes into detail on certain topics. As the book takes shape readers see that Stawson and Stroud are the impetus for Grayling's exposition of transcendental arguments and their power to deal with the most serious versions of skepticism.
By avoiding ontology the author hopes to avoid certain problems associated with it regarding skepticism. His epistemological discussion emphasizes such terms as justification (as opposed to truth), belief (as opposed to knowledge), conceptual schemes, and the notion of warrant. I encountered a healthy degree of linguistic analysis along the way.
This author exhibits a fault in the first 25 or 30 pages that bears mention. His first two chapters seem a bit confusing. For awhile he strings disparate abstract thoughts together in syntactically complex sentences written in a dense, academic British upper class prose. The often unnecessary or desultory parenthetical remarks and clauses attached to this sort of writing left me intensely grateful that Kant never went to Oxford or Cambridge.
For general philosophy readers I recommend the book, provided you all bear with the author for awhile and you have at least a minimal understanding of philosophy. I don't think my own lack of familiarity with Strawson and Stroud affected my ability to follow Grayling, for he does get much better as he goes along. Likewise, the special vocabulary makes sense to anyone with only a general knowledge of Locke, Hume and Kant. I give Grayling four stars for this book, minus one for the showing off in the first few pages. This book is an important and useful discussion of the problems posed by skepticism.
Grayling's arguments cover 113 pages, a kind of extended essay in four chapters. He includes several useful appendices as well, in which he goes into detail on certain topics. As the book takes shape readers see that Stawson and Stroud are the impetus for Grayling's exposition of transcendental arguments and their power to deal with the most serious versions of skepticism.
By avoiding ontology the author hopes to avoid certain problems associated with it regarding skepticism. His epistemological discussion emphasizes such terms as justification (as opposed to truth), belief (as opposed to knowledge), conceptual schemes, and the notion of warrant. I encountered a healthy degree of linguistic analysis along the way.
This author exhibits a fault in the first 25 or 30 pages that bears mention. His first two chapters seem a bit confusing. For awhile he strings disparate abstract thoughts together in syntactically complex sentences written in a dense, academic British upper class prose. The often unnecessary or desultory parenthetical remarks and clauses attached to this sort of writing left me intensely grateful that Kant never went to Oxford or Cambridge.
For general philosophy readers I recommend the book, provided you all bear with the author for awhile and you have at least a minimal understanding of philosophy. I don't think my own lack of familiarity with Strawson and Stroud affected my ability to follow Grayling, for he does get much better as he goes along. Likewise, the special vocabulary makes sense to anyone with only a general knowledge of Locke, Hume and Kant. I give Grayling four stars for this book, minus one for the showing off in the first few pages. This book is an important and useful discussion of the problems posed by skepticism.
August 8, 2024
A “TRANSCENDENTAL” REJECTION OF SKEPTICISM
A.C. Grayling wrote in the Preface to this 1985 book, “It has been a temptation lately for philosophers to give a Humean shrug when faced with the problem of our knowledge of the external world. This reaction seems to me perfectly right, and in what follows I attempt to spell out why. This book Is not a study of epistemological skepticism as such, which is a tedious and over-familiar topic. The varieties of skeptical argument… get barely a mention here; I assume that the reader know them. What they come down to, taken together, is the claim that since it is never a contradiction to assert the conjunction of the best evidence we have for some epistemological claim ‘p’ with the denial of ‘p,’ we can never be fully justified in believing what we normally take ourselves to believe about the world. The task I set myself here is to refute this claim.”
He adds in the Introduction, “The aim in what follows is to refute skepticism concerning our knowledge of the external world… the aim is to demonstrate the vacuity of skeptical doubt concerning the justification of our ordinary empirical beliefs… The apparent vacuity of some skeptical doubts arises from the fact that they are directed against notions of knowledge, justification or rationality which… turn out to be artificially restrictive… What we are concerned to show is how we can be justified in making assertions of the general purport: this is how things stand in the world.” (Pg. 1)
He explains, “skepticism consists in the conjunction of (a0 a set of psychological contingencies relating to the main sources of our evidence for what we take to be the way things are in the world with (b) certain crucial questions about the nature of justification and the danger of uncontrollable justification regress.” (Pg. 1)
He outlines, “The first stage of my argument will be that we are justified in making knowledge claims about the world on the basis of our evidence for them, for the reason that this evidence, together with beliefs about the world which are basic to our conceptual scheme and without which we could not have coherent experience, constitute the conditions for assertion of such knowledge claims, such that when these conditions are satisfied assertion of the relevant claims is warranted.” (Pg. 2) He adds, “The enterprise in hand … is to show that skepticism is to be dealt with by demonstrating how our ordinary empirical judgments are underpinned by beliefs playing a foundational role in our conceptual scheme, and that if this maneuver is successful, it will force the skeptic to shift his attention to the question of the scheme as a whole and its stock of basic… beliefs.” (Pg. 4)
He notes, “For any ordinary perceptual judgment---for example ‘the tablecloth is blue’---matters are therefore like this: the statement is assertable because we know---in virtue of understanding the language---in what kinds of perceptual circumstances we would be warranted in asserting it. This means that we know two kinds of independent things; we know which terms are systematically correlated by a rule to such and such items or features of our experience, and we know what it is to recognize those items of features.” (Pg. 30)
He acknowledges, “All that the argument to this point establishes if it is right, however, is that the coherence of our perceptual talk and experience depends on the ASSUMPTION that there is an external world, for being bound to employ objectivity concepts does not of itself entail that anything answers to those concepts, as can be shown by considering a possible ideal universe of experience.” (Pg. 34)
He summarizes: “the foregoing shows how the skeptic’s request is to be met: by showing that the objective assumptions of perceptual talk and experience are essential to their intelligibility. Showing this constitutes a reply to skepticism; if objective assumptions are necessary, then even if it cannot be further shown that they are true, skepticism is denied.” (Pg. 37) But he adds, “But … the skeptic will now .. attack the notions of transcendental beliefs and what justifies them—such as the notion of a conceptual scheme, and of the propriety of the arguments used to show what is fundamental to it. The next two chapters develop a defense against this higher level of skepticism.” (Pg. 39)
He states, “So far, conceptual schemes have been characterized as forms of organization of experience, using this locution to capture what is intended by talk of ‘points of view’ or ‘systems of categories that give form to the data of sense.’… In so far as they are schemes, conceptual schemes are at least in part structures, there being relations of dependence and consequence among the beliefs in the scheme, beliefs being construed as concepts to which are attached that Korner calls ‘epistemic pro- and con-attitudes.’ … [But] this latitude diminishes as one descends from the richly flourishing superstructure of the scheme to its more basic empirical substructure, where the sensefulness of concepts accrues from the more determinate empirical conditions of their applicability. It is at this level that transcendental beliefs are to be found.” (Pg. 53-54)
He observes, “nothing could count as a language unless it were recognizable as such to us, and that differences in outlook or opinion, in order to be recognized as differences, would have to occur against a wide background of mutual comprehensibility and a wide range of shared beliefs and assumptions. This seems to me right, and promises to be decisive against conceptual relativism.” (Pg. 65)
He says, “This is not to say… that unique ranges of sensory evidence are to have or to be available for the confirmation or disconfirmation of a sentence in order for it to be ASSERTABLE, although they would be available on each occasion of an undefeatedly warranted use of such a sentence. What the speaker has to know is what circumstances would warrant use of the sentence; if there are such circumstances, the sentence is assertable.” (Pg. 72-73)
He summarizes, “Two transcendental arguments… have appeared in the preceding… [One] sought to establish that no sense can be made of how perceptual discourse works unless that discourse is seen to presuppose a belief, held by discoursers, to the effect that their experience and talk ranges over domain of perception-independent particulars… [The second argument] sought to establish that there is only one conceptual scheme. If both arguments work, then the conjunction of their conclusions shows that the skeptical challenge, concerning what justification we have for believing that there are objects, is answered by showing that it is wholly idle to doubt that there are objects. To show that skepticism on this head is idle is to defeat skepticism.” (Pg. 77)
He points out, “skeptical doubt is shown to be idle or pointless because the beliefs the skeptic asks us to justify turn out to be necessary to our thought and talk of the world, and nothing counts as thought and talk unless it is recognizable as such from the standpoint of the thought and talk we enjoy; so that the beliefs to which we are committed, and to which essential reference must be made for any explanation or description of experience in general, are simply not negotiable, that is, are not open to doubt.” (Pg. 92-93)
He explains, “The most fruitful way to characterize a belief embodied in a proposition of this special kind is to say that it is a PRESUPPOSITION of our thinking, talking, and acting as we do, such that to doubt that it IS a presupposition is not to do something merely false, but senseless. An analogy is provided by the example of a man who prays, attends church… and is neither a dissimulator nor a sociologist conducting a hermeneutic experiment. To doubt or deny that such a man believes in the existence of at least one divinity is to fail to… understand his practice and whatever assertions he may issue relevant to his practice.” (Pg. 109)
He concludes, “On the reformulation and amplification of the TA [Transcendental Argument] offered here, the spectre of strong verificationism in the TA itself vanishes. On this note the project of this essay is completed. If the foregoing discussions are in any way satisfactory, they reveal why skeptical doubt is not in the end troubling: it is because we HAVE to believe what we do at the foundations of our conceptual scheme. This is the ‘Humean shrug.’ It is all we either can or need to show, for it shows a great deal.” (Pg. 113)
This book will interest many of those studying epistemological questions relating to skepticism.
A.C. Grayling wrote in the Preface to this 1985 book, “It has been a temptation lately for philosophers to give a Humean shrug when faced with the problem of our knowledge of the external world. This reaction seems to me perfectly right, and in what follows I attempt to spell out why. This book Is not a study of epistemological skepticism as such, which is a tedious and over-familiar topic. The varieties of skeptical argument… get barely a mention here; I assume that the reader know them. What they come down to, taken together, is the claim that since it is never a contradiction to assert the conjunction of the best evidence we have for some epistemological claim ‘p’ with the denial of ‘p,’ we can never be fully justified in believing what we normally take ourselves to believe about the world. The task I set myself here is to refute this claim.”
He adds in the Introduction, “The aim in what follows is to refute skepticism concerning our knowledge of the external world… the aim is to demonstrate the vacuity of skeptical doubt concerning the justification of our ordinary empirical beliefs… The apparent vacuity of some skeptical doubts arises from the fact that they are directed against notions of knowledge, justification or rationality which… turn out to be artificially restrictive… What we are concerned to show is how we can be justified in making assertions of the general purport: this is how things stand in the world.” (Pg. 1)
He explains, “skepticism consists in the conjunction of (a0 a set of psychological contingencies relating to the main sources of our evidence for what we take to be the way things are in the world with (b) certain crucial questions about the nature of justification and the danger of uncontrollable justification regress.” (Pg. 1)
He outlines, “The first stage of my argument will be that we are justified in making knowledge claims about the world on the basis of our evidence for them, for the reason that this evidence, together with beliefs about the world which are basic to our conceptual scheme and without which we could not have coherent experience, constitute the conditions for assertion of such knowledge claims, such that when these conditions are satisfied assertion of the relevant claims is warranted.” (Pg. 2) He adds, “The enterprise in hand … is to show that skepticism is to be dealt with by demonstrating how our ordinary empirical judgments are underpinned by beliefs playing a foundational role in our conceptual scheme, and that if this maneuver is successful, it will force the skeptic to shift his attention to the question of the scheme as a whole and its stock of basic… beliefs.” (Pg. 4)
He notes, “For any ordinary perceptual judgment---for example ‘the tablecloth is blue’---matters are therefore like this: the statement is assertable because we know---in virtue of understanding the language---in what kinds of perceptual circumstances we would be warranted in asserting it. This means that we know two kinds of independent things; we know which terms are systematically correlated by a rule to such and such items or features of our experience, and we know what it is to recognize those items of features.” (Pg. 30)
He acknowledges, “All that the argument to this point establishes if it is right, however, is that the coherence of our perceptual talk and experience depends on the ASSUMPTION that there is an external world, for being bound to employ objectivity concepts does not of itself entail that anything answers to those concepts, as can be shown by considering a possible ideal universe of experience.” (Pg. 34)
He summarizes: “the foregoing shows how the skeptic’s request is to be met: by showing that the objective assumptions of perceptual talk and experience are essential to their intelligibility. Showing this constitutes a reply to skepticism; if objective assumptions are necessary, then even if it cannot be further shown that they are true, skepticism is denied.” (Pg. 37) But he adds, “But … the skeptic will now .. attack the notions of transcendental beliefs and what justifies them—such as the notion of a conceptual scheme, and of the propriety of the arguments used to show what is fundamental to it. The next two chapters develop a defense against this higher level of skepticism.” (Pg. 39)
He states, “So far, conceptual schemes have been characterized as forms of organization of experience, using this locution to capture what is intended by talk of ‘points of view’ or ‘systems of categories that give form to the data of sense.’… In so far as they are schemes, conceptual schemes are at least in part structures, there being relations of dependence and consequence among the beliefs in the scheme, beliefs being construed as concepts to which are attached that Korner calls ‘epistemic pro- and con-attitudes.’ … [But] this latitude diminishes as one descends from the richly flourishing superstructure of the scheme to its more basic empirical substructure, where the sensefulness of concepts accrues from the more determinate empirical conditions of their applicability. It is at this level that transcendental beliefs are to be found.” (Pg. 53-54)
He observes, “nothing could count as a language unless it were recognizable as such to us, and that differences in outlook or opinion, in order to be recognized as differences, would have to occur against a wide background of mutual comprehensibility and a wide range of shared beliefs and assumptions. This seems to me right, and promises to be decisive against conceptual relativism.” (Pg. 65)
He says, “This is not to say… that unique ranges of sensory evidence are to have or to be available for the confirmation or disconfirmation of a sentence in order for it to be ASSERTABLE, although they would be available on each occasion of an undefeatedly warranted use of such a sentence. What the speaker has to know is what circumstances would warrant use of the sentence; if there are such circumstances, the sentence is assertable.” (Pg. 72-73)
He summarizes, “Two transcendental arguments… have appeared in the preceding… [One] sought to establish that no sense can be made of how perceptual discourse works unless that discourse is seen to presuppose a belief, held by discoursers, to the effect that their experience and talk ranges over domain of perception-independent particulars… [The second argument] sought to establish that there is only one conceptual scheme. If both arguments work, then the conjunction of their conclusions shows that the skeptical challenge, concerning what justification we have for believing that there are objects, is answered by showing that it is wholly idle to doubt that there are objects. To show that skepticism on this head is idle is to defeat skepticism.” (Pg. 77)
He points out, “skeptical doubt is shown to be idle or pointless because the beliefs the skeptic asks us to justify turn out to be necessary to our thought and talk of the world, and nothing counts as thought and talk unless it is recognizable as such from the standpoint of the thought and talk we enjoy; so that the beliefs to which we are committed, and to which essential reference must be made for any explanation or description of experience in general, are simply not negotiable, that is, are not open to doubt.” (Pg. 92-93)
He explains, “The most fruitful way to characterize a belief embodied in a proposition of this special kind is to say that it is a PRESUPPOSITION of our thinking, talking, and acting as we do, such that to doubt that it IS a presupposition is not to do something merely false, but senseless. An analogy is provided by the example of a man who prays, attends church… and is neither a dissimulator nor a sociologist conducting a hermeneutic experiment. To doubt or deny that such a man believes in the existence of at least one divinity is to fail to… understand his practice and whatever assertions he may issue relevant to his practice.” (Pg. 109)
He concludes, “On the reformulation and amplification of the TA [Transcendental Argument] offered here, the spectre of strong verificationism in the TA itself vanishes. On this note the project of this essay is completed. If the foregoing discussions are in any way satisfactory, they reveal why skeptical doubt is not in the end troubling: it is because we HAVE to believe what we do at the foundations of our conceptual scheme. This is the ‘Humean shrug.’ It is all we either can or need to show, for it shows a great deal.” (Pg. 113)
This book will interest many of those studying epistemological questions relating to skepticism.
March 17, 2016
Books like this are the philosophical equivalent of taking your coffee black. It's classic analytic philosophy consisting of rigorous argumentation, language analysis, massive paragraphs, and debates with positivism.
In this book, A.C. Grayling, popularly (unfortunately?) known as the "fifth horseman of the new atheism, presents the argument from his doctoral dissertation regarding skepticism and transcendental arguments. He undertakes the task of demonstrating that, in response to the skeptic of external reality, all discourse regarding our perceptual experience necessarily relies on a belief in some form of external reality.
While the book is a small one, consisting of less that 150 pages, it packs in a pretty complex argument. Out of the four main chapters. Only two are directly concerned with Grayling's main argument and they cover the following material: Chapter 2 discusses Grayling's reply to skepticism via transcendental argument (discussed below) while chapter 3 anticipates the objections of relativism regarding his argument.
His primary argument discussed in chapter 2 can be summarized as follows: Any statements about perceptual experience necessarily involves reference to the objects present in our experience. Some philosophers such as A.J. Ayer have tried to argue against this point by pushing for a perceptual vocabulary free of ontological commitment. Grayling refutes this proposal by arguing that, while one can try to hedge ones way between statements about perceptual experience ("I see a red ball.") and sensory experience, any attempt to do so ("I am having the experience that is like seeing a red ball") will contain a metaphorical reference to objects that is reliant on an understanding of their standard usage in order to remain intelligible. As Grayling notes regarding statements about the content of one's experience (which, as noted, contain reference to objects), "Such an answer can only be given if the answerer is committed to belief in the existence of publicly accessible states of affairs in terms of which saying what the experience is like can be understood."
After demonstrating that any assessment of the content of one's experience requires reference to objects, Grayling goes on to show that any understanding of the language used to assess that content requires an understanding of when certain perceptual statements are "warranted." For example, the statement "I see a red ball." Is only warranted if one understands the necessary procedures for checking to make sure that one is not mistaken in judgement.
With these two claims under his belt, Grayling's final move is to show that the only way to use the same rules of warrant and justification for the identification of objects and thus have coherent experience is for one to assume that these rules apply independently of one's experience. By demonstrating this, Grayling shows that the skeptical attack ("You are unwarranted in saying you see a red ball.") fails because, by identifying the object in question, the skeptic already presupposes a conceptual schema that includes a belief in external reality.
What the reader may have noticed (assuming this is even a remotely readable summary of Grayling's rather complex argument), is that Grayling is not arguing that it is true that the external world exists. Rather, he is arguing that coherent experience necessarily presupposes the belief that the external world exists. This is all that Grayling needs to show in order to demonstrate that the skeptical argument fails. There is no use doubting the existence of the external world because it is impossible to not believe in the existence of the external world.
The next chapter of Grayling's book is dedicated to defending his argument against the attacks of relativism that seek to challenge the validity of his conceptual schema as a whole rather than the initial reply to skepticism. In it, he shows that any relevant conceptual schema will behave according to the same rules laid out in chapter two so a relativist reply is not successful.
The Refutation of Skepticism was an extremely interesting book that dealt with a problem I have long struggled with in a satisfying way. While I did feel that Grayling was somewhat inconsistent in his use of justification, I think his main argument was successful. This book intrigued me and revitalized my interest in analytic philosophy of language. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for the same.
In this book, A.C. Grayling, popularly (unfortunately?) known as the "fifth horseman of the new atheism, presents the argument from his doctoral dissertation regarding skepticism and transcendental arguments. He undertakes the task of demonstrating that, in response to the skeptic of external reality, all discourse regarding our perceptual experience necessarily relies on a belief in some form of external reality.
While the book is a small one, consisting of less that 150 pages, it packs in a pretty complex argument. Out of the four main chapters. Only two are directly concerned with Grayling's main argument and they cover the following material: Chapter 2 discusses Grayling's reply to skepticism via transcendental argument (discussed below) while chapter 3 anticipates the objections of relativism regarding his argument.
His primary argument discussed in chapter 2 can be summarized as follows: Any statements about perceptual experience necessarily involves reference to the objects present in our experience. Some philosophers such as A.J. Ayer have tried to argue against this point by pushing for a perceptual vocabulary free of ontological commitment. Grayling refutes this proposal by arguing that, while one can try to hedge ones way between statements about perceptual experience ("I see a red ball.") and sensory experience, any attempt to do so ("I am having the experience that is like seeing a red ball") will contain a metaphorical reference to objects that is reliant on an understanding of their standard usage in order to remain intelligible. As Grayling notes regarding statements about the content of one's experience (which, as noted, contain reference to objects), "Such an answer can only be given if the answerer is committed to belief in the existence of publicly accessible states of affairs in terms of which saying what the experience is like can be understood."
After demonstrating that any assessment of the content of one's experience requires reference to objects, Grayling goes on to show that any understanding of the language used to assess that content requires an understanding of when certain perceptual statements are "warranted." For example, the statement "I see a red ball." Is only warranted if one understands the necessary procedures for checking to make sure that one is not mistaken in judgement.
With these two claims under his belt, Grayling's final move is to show that the only way to use the same rules of warrant and justification for the identification of objects and thus have coherent experience is for one to assume that these rules apply independently of one's experience. By demonstrating this, Grayling shows that the skeptical attack ("You are unwarranted in saying you see a red ball.") fails because, by identifying the object in question, the skeptic already presupposes a conceptual schema that includes a belief in external reality.
What the reader may have noticed (assuming this is even a remotely readable summary of Grayling's rather complex argument), is that Grayling is not arguing that it is true that the external world exists. Rather, he is arguing that coherent experience necessarily presupposes the belief that the external world exists. This is all that Grayling needs to show in order to demonstrate that the skeptical argument fails. There is no use doubting the existence of the external world because it is impossible to not believe in the existence of the external world.
The next chapter of Grayling's book is dedicated to defending his argument against the attacks of relativism that seek to challenge the validity of his conceptual schema as a whole rather than the initial reply to skepticism. In it, he shows that any relevant conceptual schema will behave according to the same rules laid out in chapter two so a relativist reply is not successful.
The Refutation of Skepticism was an extremely interesting book that dealt with a problem I have long struggled with in a satisfying way. While I did feel that Grayling was somewhat inconsistent in his use of justification, I think his main argument was successful. This book intrigued me and revitalized my interest in analytic philosophy of language. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for the same.
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