Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt: A Philosophical Dialogue
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Overview
Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt brings something new to epistemology both in content and style. At the outset we are asked to imagine a person named Vatol who grows up in a world containing numerous people who are brains-in-vats and who hallucinate their entire lives. Would Vatol have reason to doubt whether he himself is in contact with reality? If he does have reason to doubt, would he doubt, or is it impossible for a person to have such doubts? And how do we ourselves compare to Vatol? After reflection, can we plausibly claim that Vatol has reason to doubt, but we don’t? These are the questions that provide the novel framework for the debates in this book. Topics that are treated here in significantly new ways include: the view that we ought to doubt only when we philosophize; epistemological “dogmatism”; and connections between radical doubt and “having a self.”
The book adopts the innovative form of a “dialogue/play.” The three characters, who are Talmud students as well as philosophers, hardly limit themselves to pure philosophy, but regale each other with Talmudic allusions, reminiscences, jokes, and insults. For them the possibility of doubt emerges as an existential problem with potentially deep emotional significance. Setting complex arguments about radical skepticism within entertaining dialogue, this book can be recommended for both beginners and specialists.
Three philosophy professors meditate on an age old philosophical puzzle, the challenge of explaining how it is possible to have knowledge of a world external to us, and introduce the reader to the basic arguments surrounding radical Cartesian skepticism.
Written by a highly-respected philosopher, this is an original introduction to the ancient problem of radical Cartesian skepticism
Divided into sections that are often independent of each other allowing lecturers to pick and choose relevant parts for courses
Uses entertaining dialogue to enliven a difficult subject and present new arguments in epistemology
Introduction
I. Vatol’s anxiety
Introduction to Lev’s question
The example of Vatol
Yitzhak’s reaction to skepticism, and Williamson’s
On the nature of this work
The “two-level” view of the impossibility of doubt
The meaning of “reasons” to doubt
Relationships between “doubt”, “belief”, “assertion”, and “certainty”
Further connections between “doubt”, “anxiety”, and “knowledge”
Interlude: Waiting for Godot
A connection to Nagel’s skepticism
Interlude: philosophy and comedy
A challenge to Lev’s assumptions about epistemic anxiety
II. Vatol and Us
The n-to-n+1 argument
A safety condition on belief
Interlude: memories of Berkeley
Pryor’s epistemic principle
Distinction between one-level and two-level cases
Interlude: Talmudic connections
The “non-circularity” condition
Daniel ’s challenges to Yitzhak’s view
Yitzhak’s stringent response to “entering a loop”
Yitzhak’s Austinian answer to the problem of dreams
Interlude: finding an “eitzah”
Daniel’s two additional questions
Summary
Lev’s disagreement with Yitzhak
III. The Impossibility of Doubt
Lev’s past epistemic anxiety
Interlude: Memories from Yeshiva
Lev’s first argument for the impossibility of doubt
The first premise of Lev’s first argument
A question about valuing one’s life on the basis of probabilities
A comparison of Lev’s position with Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s
Interlude: Yitzhak’s tale
Lev’s second argument
The meaning of “having a self”
Interlude: Yitzhak’s pride and shame
Relationship between the notions of “self” and “identification”
Broughton’s suggestion that Hume did not identity with his belief in an external reality
Lev’s epistemic attitude
Endnotes
References
Hirsch’s book is illuminating, it charts new territory, and lays out old territory in a new light. The Talmudic allusions are enlightening, and the narrative detours are entertaining . . . It is first-class philosophical literature.
Hirsch has opened the way to ask such questions, important not only for philosophy but for humanity.
- Title: Radical Skepticism and the Shadow of Doubt: A Philosophical Dialogue
- Author: Eli Hirsch
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Pages: 248
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781350033870, 9781350033856, 1350033855, 1350033871
- Resource ID: LLS:9781350033870
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T10:07:37Z
Eli Hirsch is Charles Goldman Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University, USA. He is the author of Dividing Reality (OUP, 1999) and Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology (OUP, 2011).