u/Spoikester

for a little over half a year now I have been looking into and studying external world skepticism. some responses to the problem seem to be good, others are not; some are interesting and some are rather dull. but, not to pander on, another response I have recently looked into is Thomas Reid’s. in the past I tended to just dismiss Reid because I thought by “appealing to common sense” he was just being dogmatic and somewhat fideistic, but I’ve recently learned his arguments are far more intuitive than that. he accuses skeptics of arbitrarily doubting some things and accepting others, seemingly nitpicking parts of their cognitive faculties to doubt other parts of them. what I am wondering is, in your opinions, how effective is this style of a response to problems of epistemology such as the brain in a vat? have any modern authors used something similar to Reid’s arguments, or been inspired by them? thanks!

for a little over half a year now I have been looking into and studying external world skepticism. some responses to the problem seem to be good, others are not; some are interesting and some are rather dull. but, not to pander on, another response I have recently looked into is Thomas Reid’s. in the past I tended to just dismiss Reid because I thought by “appealing to common sense” he was just being dogmatic and somewhat fideistic, but I’ve recently learned his arguments are far more intuitive than that. he accuses skeptics of arbitrarily doubting some things and accepting others, seemingly nitpicking parts of their cognitive faculties to doubt other parts of them. what I am wondering is, in your opinions, how effective is this style of a response to problems of epistemology such as the brain in a vat? have any modern authors used something similar to Reid’s arguments, or been inspired by them? thanks!

an article I read on the difference between Gilson’s approach to realism and Maritain and Lagrange’s approach to realism seemed to imply that Gilson’s choice to favor realism over idealism is purely arbitrary and a form of dogmatism. how true is this and is this really the best we have to offer?

this question has several parts.

1. what is the best approach to philosophy of perception? since I’m assuming most Catholic philosophers here will say direct realism, why is direct realism true?

2. can such a foundational philosophy even be implemented without question begging

3. how well does something like direct realism do at dissolving skeptical scenarios like the brain in a vat

hello everyone! I’ve posted on this subreddit a few times, specifically regarding epistemological skepticism (most notably the brain in a vat argument), which has been somewhat of a stumbling block to me thus far. one argument from Catholic circles I’ve seen to combat evil deceiver arguments is the one written by Reverend Charles Coppens in his Textbook on Logic and Mental Philosophy:

Objections: 1. An evil genius could produce the deception.

Answer. We deny this; for the deception, if such it were, would be, not accidental, but natural and essential to man, and therefore it would be essential to man to judge falsely; and thus universal Scepticism would become reasonable.

for context, Coppens at a different point in the textbook shows universal skepticism to be self refuting via reductio ad absurdum.

my question to you all is, how effective do you think his argument is? Does it leave anything to be desired, and does it truly provide firm metaphysical defeaters for skeptical scenarios like Descartes’s evil genius, matrix, and the Brain in a vat?

Some of our arguments in Catholic philosophy, such as affirming first principles, realism, anti-skepticism, etc, depend on some form of ambitious transcendental argument. However, I have recently learned about Barry Stroud's objection to these ambitious transcendental arguments; namely, that just because something is necessary for thought does not mean it really corresponds to the actual world.

My question is therefore; how do we combat Stroud's position and save these transcendental arguments?