Sahil Warsi – 28062 St.Stephens’ College In his paper on Skepticism and Irrationalism, J. Watkins presents an insight into the tradition as well as the contemporary state of Epistemological Skepticism – and it’s respective responses – as emerging out of Hume’s formulization of the same. At the very onset, Watkins declares Humean skepticism to be the focus of his paper and attention. This decision stands opposed to the idea of choosing Academic skepticism – which is akin to Socratic doubt: the only thing that one can know, is that one knows nothing; or a Cartesian Skepticism – which stipulates the dubiousness of logic and mathematics. It will be the purpose of my paper, to highlight the idea of Humean Skepticism, it’s characterizing features, Watkins’ interpretation of the same – as well as what he feels, is Hume’s response to the same as found in the Naturalist Strategy. Humean Skepticism is based on the simple idea that it is not possible for one, to progress from logical reasoning – based on sensory experience – to any genuine knowledge of the external world, if there is one at all. It is unique, insofar as it in inclusive when it comes to the agent’s egocentric knowledge, as well as of logical truths. One can be well aware of one’s internal states: feelings and emotions; as well as logical truths such as ‘A bachelor is an unmarried male’. The target of his skepticism is not blaring and all encompassing, as are many forms of Global Skepticism. It is not self-undermining and it does not exclude the possibility that one can know that there can be no genuine knowledge of the external world. Humean arguments are constructed on the edifice of a triad argument which states: (i) there are no synthetic a priori truths about the external world – this is the anti-a priorist thesis; (ii) any genuine knowledge about the external world must be a derivation from perceptual experience – this is the experientialist thesis; and finally (iii) only deductive derivations are valid – this is the deductivist thesis. They entail the idea that, for any factual statement ‘f’ to be considered as knowledge – there must exist true premises ‘p’ that report perceptual experiences from which ‘l’ is logically derivable. However, if ‘f’ refers to the external world and ‘p’ is based on exclusively perception, ‘f’ goes beyond the realm and scope of ‘p’ and cannot be logically derived from the same.

In Watkins’ eyes, Humean Skepticism is to be understood as a purely epistemological theory. It states, that none of our knowledge of the external world, can really count as knowledge. Where the term knowledge is absolute – and as any absolute concept, it is characterized by inflexibility carrying it’s water tight restrictions and qualifications requiring perfect justification and certainty. Watkins is of the opinion that Humean skepticism is infact a very serious issue, that if unattended to, will lead to irrationalism. Hume based his skepticism on a simple sensationalist principle – which played out in his bifurcations of ideas and impressions:- for every idea, there must be a simple or complex (amalgamation of simple ideas) impression supporting it. The rule was meant to apply, without exception (save the counter-example based on the colour-palette test: one can imagine the shade of a colour – if the shades preceding it and following it are provided). For instance: taking the example of a complex answer of “what is the moon?”, - “The Moon is our closest neighbor in space. It is made of moon rock and it is an airless world that orbits Earth. The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It has a gravitational pull that is 17% of what we have on earth. Most of the other planets in our solar system also have moons.” – The concepts of “moon-rock”, “airless”, “gravitational pull”, have no corresponding impressions; therefore the definition cannot count as anything sensible. All that we can know of the moon, is what we gather from viewing it in the night sky. Any such concept or idea that does not have a corresponding impression, is simply beyond the means of human faculty. The idea that it is impossible to formulate an idea without a corresponding impression – or to rephrase, the idea of a body that has a continued existence beyond it’s cognition by a mind/independent of a mind is called irrealism. Watkins suggests that Hume probably intended, as we should assume, that sensationalism is meant to entail irrealism. The question at this juncture is, is there a way to refute irrealism and consequently sensationalism – and does Hume’s sensationalism naturally lead to irrealism? [Watkins will eventually go on to show that Hume’s sensationalism presupposes a certain kind of physical realism]. For Watkins, Hume’s solution to his own skepticism lies in what is called the Naturalist Strategy. What options would be present to some one, who took Hume’s skepticism as unsolvable and unanswerable. According to

Watkins, three such options present themselves. The first would be for him to abandon some or all of the hypotheses he had previously accepted – without accepting any similar ones; The second, would be for him to retain all his previous accepted hypotheses – regardless of their irrationality; and finally, he switches to new hypotheses regardless of their potential irrationality as well. Taking the first alternative, where an individual who is convinced of Skepticism abandons all his beliefs/hypotheses, without accepting new ones, one is tempted to believe [Watkins provides the example of Logic Powder] – that eventually, if every one on earth felt the same, eventually things would come to a complete standstill and an inescapable lethargy would set in, which would be the end of all things. Hume - however, According to Watkins, is generally of the opinion that the most scathing and unsparing Skepticism is the sort that seems to leave the most unaffected. A Pyrrhonian form of skepticism, for instance, that destroys every thing is more a form of academic amusement, than serious argument. Hume would expect the individual to conform with the second option – to simply retain all his beliefs, regardless of their irrationality. The reason for this – and his response to Skepticism – lies in the idea that Skepticism contends against the belief forming machinery that is part of human nature (or more generally speaking, animal nature). This machinery works in a perhaps an irrational way – or a way that is not consistent with logic – but in an efficient and nonetheless, straightforward manner. The response is based on the idea that animals and men learn much from experience – and this observance of cause and effect leads to a treasure of knowledge of nature. “Nature has determined us, to judge as well as to breathe and feel”. The inductive reasoning that is the focus of Hume’s attack, is a natural endowment of nature – which is essentially instinctive. The argument proceeds with the idea that, since all our minds work in essentially the same way, insofar as the patterns of nature do, our respective beliefs will be moreorless similar as well. This extends to the notion that if human faculty is moreorless aligned, as are its responses to similar stimuli, that very divergent opinions could be formed on the same subject – And this communal intellect/system of beliefs is, regardless of it’s relative irrationality or non conformity to logic – still very reliable. There is one natural way of forming beliefs about the world – ie inductive reasoning – which occurs as naturally as breathing and eating – and the second the general beliefs one formulates about the natural occurrences

at which our experiences converge. In so far as people’s experiences are similar, their beliefs will be too.