Responding to How Things Seem: Bergmann on Scepticism and Intuition

Michael Bergmann’s important new book on scepticism is attractively systematic and thorough. He places familiar ideas under an exceptionally bright spotlight, exposing features we might not have noticed on casual survey. He draws out hidden consequences of his starting points with admirable courage, even when these consequences look like trouble for him. Before getting into this trouble, and some differences in how I would tackle it, I will begin by highlighting some ground we share. First, I like Bergmann’s fundamental epistemic optimism in the face of the sceptical challenge. When the radical sceptic suggests that close attention to our natural epistemic self-trust should erode it, I’ll agree with Bergmann that closer attention can vindicate it. Indeed, my optimism about epistemology extends all the way to holding that scrutiny of our instinctive ­epistemic self-trust can refine it, by alerting us in advance to some odd situations in which these natural instincts of ours can be expected to fail, and giving us a solid, non-sceptical understanding of just why this is so. Back on the positive side, I agree warmly with Bergmann that, in general, perceptual judgement and epistemic intuition are in good shape: our sensory faculties really do yield extensive knowledge of the world, and, moving up a level, our natural capacities for mindreading do yield extensive knowledge of the wide range of states of knowledge we possess (and, derivatively, states of justified belief – like Bergmann, I take knowledge to entail justified belief). I am not sure that Bergmann would favour the label ‘mindreading’ on our capacity for epistemic intuition, but I think that classifying it this way is entirely compatible with Bergmann’s commonsense Reidian approach. Understanding our instinctive mindreading capacities is one way of learning about ourselves, taking Bergmann’s ‘autodidactic’ turn (147), rather than attempting to convert the sceptical adversary directly. Perhaps some points can be scored against sloppy Academic sceptics who dogmatically maintain that knowledge is impossible – we can certainly challenge the positive claims they will need to make about the nature of knowledge, or the conditions of our existence, in order to argue for their repellent conclusion. But we should have no hope of directly converting the stronger Pyrrhonian sceptic, who simply maintains a chronic stance of questioning everything. There are dim prospects for ­constructing an anti-sceptical argument against him, starting from premises he will be bound to accept. As long as he is on the ball, the Pyrrhonian can keep raising an eyebrow at any attempt to formulate such premises, and the argument against him will never get going. Still, the power of an autodidactic approach should not be underestimated: for anyone who hasn’t already slipped into this ultimately sterile Pyrrhonian way of thinking, a healthy course of self-examination can fortify them against the threat of slipping into that trap in the future.

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