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St.Stephens’ College
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.
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.
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.