Rationalist Responses to Skepticism:  A New Puzzle

Willenken, Tim

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Rationalist Responses to Skepticism: A New Puzzle

Tim Willenken

February 2015, Volume 15, No. 5, pp. 1-20

Permalink: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0015.005

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Abstract

Most promising responses to skepticism fall into “Moorean” or “rationalist” camps. Mooreans believe that some apparently circular forms of reasoning allow us to have justification to believe that skeptical hypotheses are false. Rationalists believe that we have a priori justification to believe that skeptical hypotheses are false. It can seem that anti-skeptics are stuck choosing between fishy circular reasoning and mysterious a priori justification. I present a new difficulty for rationalism by focusing on skeptical scenarios wherein our faculties of a priori reasoning are untrustworthy. In dealing with these scenarios, rationalists end up having to embrace the same sorts of circular reasoning that Mooreans use to deal with more familiar skeptical scenarios. As a result, there is no viable diagnosis of what's wrong with Moorean reasoning that does not also apply to rationalism: both anti-skeptical approaches are in the same boat when it comes to embracing circular reasoning.

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My aims in this paper are twofold: first, to determine whether rationalism and Mooreanism are in the same boat when it comes to circularity; second, to determine whether that boat is a bad one to be in. My comments so far have been imprecise: if we are going to get straight about whether there is a real problem for rationalism here, we will need to say a lot more about exactly what question-begging means in this context. The next part of this paper will present skeptical challenges centered on BIV, NUW, and VMN more carefully. Part II will pose the question of what, exactly, is viciously circular or question-begging about Moorean responses to skepticism. Parts III, IV, and V will lay out three possible ways to make this charge of circularity more precise. Each of these attempts will fail in two ways. First, each alleged constraint on reasoning that rules out Mooreanism also rules out the rationalist response to a skeptic wielding VMN — that is, each will entail the Same Boat Hypothesis. Second, each will fail to point out a plausible general constraint on reasoning that is violated by Moorean responses to skepticism — that is, none will show that the boat shared by Mooreanism and rationalism is a bad one to be in. I conclude that the dilemma posed above succeeds: rationalism and Mooreanism are in the same boat, so rationalism is not an anti-skeptical alternative to Mooreanism. Does this mean that rationalism is false? Certainly not; it just means that rationalists are in no position to condemn Moorean reasoning as unacceptably circular. This result defeats an influential argument in favor of rationalism — namely, that it’s the only plausible alternative to skepticism — but does not give any affirmative reason to believe that rationalism is false. Indeed, I am not at all sure that anyone (Mooreans included) should reject rationalism entirely. In the final three parts of the paper, I’ll argue that we shouldn’t think of Mooreanism and rationalism as rivals, but rather as compatible — and possibly complementary — theories about different things.

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