Philosophical questions about reality and knowledge
Sceptical arguments are simple to construct and almost impossible to defeat on their own terms, which is exactly why the interesting question is not whether you can rule out deception but what knowledge was supposed to require in the first place. Move the standard and the puzzle changes shape.
Maintained by PonderAtlas · Reviewed
Six tensions
If knowledge requires eliminating every possibility of error, almost nothing is known; if it requires less, the threshold has to be specified without being arbitrary.
What would you accept as good enough to count as knowing, and why not less?
A scenario designed so that all your evidence would look the same cannot be refuted by appeal to that evidence.
Given that the evidence is identical either way, what work is your confidence doing?
Experience presents itself as direct contact with the world while also being the product of processes that can misrepresent it.
Where is the line between seeing something and constructing it?
Truth is variously explained as correspondence to fact, coherence among beliefs, or what enquiry would settle on, and the choice affects what enquiry is for.
Is a claim true because it matches the world, or because it survives every test we can put to it?
Reasons rest on further reasons, which either regress without end, circle back, or stop somewhere that needs its own defence.
Trace one belief back through its reasons. Where does the chain stop, and what holds it there?
Ordinary terms lack sharp boundaries, so apparently valid step-by-step reasoning can lead from a true premise to a false conclusion.
Pick a vague term you rely on. Which step in a series of small changes should have been refused?
Facilitation path
Reviewed next steps
Other guided routes
Reference desk
Correspondence, coherence and pragmatic accounts set side by side.