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.