Contrastivism, Evidence, and Scepticism

Abstract

I offer a critical treatment of the contrastivist response to the problem of radical scepticism. In particular, I argue that if contrastivism is understood along externalist lines then it is unnecessary, while if it is understood along internalist lines then it is intellectually dissatisfying. Moreover, I claim that a closer examination of the conditions under which it is appropriate to claim knowledge reveals that we can accommodate many of the intuitions appealed to by contrastivists without having to opt for this particular brand of epistemological revisionism.

Keywords:

• Contrastivism
• Epistemology
• Evidence
• Externalism/Internalism
• Scepticism

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Martijn Blaauw, Lars Bo Gundersen, Jacob Busck, Adrian Haddock, Jacob Hohwy, Jesper Kallestrup, Alan Millar, Ram Neta, Jonathan Schaffer, Walter Sinnott‐Armstrong, René van Woudenberg, and to the participants at a conference on Contrastivism that was held at Århus University in February 2005 at which an earlier version of this paper was presented.

Notes

[1] See Schaffer (2005a) for the contrastivist defence of closure, where he puts forward a number of “contrastivized” principles that, he claims, model the closure principle as we normally understand it. Given the complex nature of this account of closure, however, the natural question to ask is why this should be regarded as a contrastivist treatment of closure rather than an account of a different principle entirely (or at least a qualified, and thus logically weaker, version of the closure principle). This is especially so once one remembers that while there is a contrast set relative to which one can know everyday propositions and the entailment to anti‐sceptical propositions, there is no contrast set relative to which one knows anti‐sceptical propositions.

[2] I explicitly consider the arguments for non‐closure in Pritchard (2002a, 2002b). For the latest state‐of‐play in the debate about closure, see the exchange between Dretske (2005a, 2005b) and Hawthorne (2005). For an overview of the recent literature on scepticism in general, see Pritchard (2002c).

[3] In Pritchard (2005a, passim; 2005b), I take a more nuanced line on scepticism, claiming that while the sceptical problem as regards knowledge can be dealt with by adopting an externalist epistemology, there is a distinct sceptical problem that is focused on a certain type of knowledge that remains and that cannot be dealt with by adopting any sort of epistemological theory. There is thus a truth in scepticism after all, although it is not the truth that the sceptic advertises.

[4] One can find such a view of scepticism in the work of a number of authors. See, for example, Stroud (1984, passim) and Wright (2005).

[5] I think this conception of the moral of scepticism also creates problems for contextualist treatments of the problem—especially non‐evidentialist versions of contextualism—although my focus here will be on contrastivism. I critically discuss contextualist responses to scepticism in a number of places. See Pritchard (2001, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, chapters 2–3; 2005c).

[6] There are other ways of drawing the internalism/externalism distinction of course. One could put the point in terms of supervenience rather than access, for example, as Conee and Feldman (2000) do; or one might weaken the internalist requirement by saying that one only needs reflective access to the supporting grounds for one’s belief and not also to the fact that they are supporting grounds, as Alston (1988) suggests (although note that he does not regard this view as an internalist thesis as such). The account of the distinction offered here is fairly standard, however, and, I believe, it also gets to the heart of what is at issue in this debate. For more on this distinction, see Kornblith (2001).

[7] A complicating factor here is the view advanced by McDowell (1982, for example), which appears to allow that one can have adequate reflectively accessible grounds for believing in the denials of sceptical hypotheses. This highly unusual view raises issues that extend beyond the remit of this paper, however, and so I will set it to one side in what follows. I discuss the McDowellian response to scepticism at length in Pritchard (2003).

[8] I offer an extended discussion of Wright’s proposal in Pritchard (2005e).

[9] See Cohen (2000) for a frank discussion of this problem for his view. Wright (2005) takes issue with all contextualist anti‐sceptical theories and thus, a fortiori, thereby takes issue with internalist contextualist anti‐sceptical theories.

[10] Moreover, one needs to motivate the safety‐based view and deal with a range of problems that have been posed for such positions. I do just this in Pritchard (2005a, passim).

[11] There are also considerations relating to the content externalism/internalism debate here, since content externalists—such as disjunctivists—typically hold that the content of one’s experiences in deceived and undeceived cases, even where subjectively indistinguishable, are different. Given the further claim that one’s experiences are part of one’s evidence, it would thus follow that one’s evidence is also different in the two cases. Content externalism alone might thus suffice to block this “equivalence” thesis. For the sake of simplicity, however, I will not pursue this matter here. Perhaps the most famous exponent of disjunctivism in the recent literature is McDowell. See, for example, McDowell (1994).

[12] That said, Jonathan Schaffer has told me in conversation that he is an internalist, and my understanding is that Martijn Blaauw—another contrastivist—is also an internalist.

[13] Of course, as with closure, the contrastivist will no doubt argue for a “contrastivized” version of this principle they wish to retain. The problem is, however, it is going to be difficult to see why such a modified formulation of underdetermination should not be regarded as simply a different principle entirely, such that the contrastivist is actually rejecting underdetermination, strictly speaking.

[14] This consideration also explains, at least in part, why such claims to know what is (taken to be) plainly obvious always seem problematic. This is because it is hard to imagine a non‐sceptical context in which such an assertion would be entered.

[15] I discuss Wittgenstein’s treatment of scepticism in more detail in Pritchard (2005d, Forthcoming).