Watch The Matrix. Or at the very least, click here to see a clip. Read Dan Dennett's little essay 'Where am I?'. You can find it in Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology by Daniel C. Dennett. Copyright (I) 1978 by Bradford Books. Or in Hofstadter, D.R. and Dennett, D.C. (1981): The Mind's I: Reflections on Self and Soul, New York: Bantam Books. Or you can read it here. Or here, if the first link fails.
Revise and improve your understanding of Descartes' Dream Argument. If you need a reading list, you will find it here. And then proceed to the reading below.
Barry Stroud
The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Clarendon, 1984. An excellent book. Read all you like, but be sure to take in his chapter on The Dream Argument.
K. DeRose & T. Warfield (eds.)
Skepticism: a Contemporary Reader, OUP 1999. Again, read all you want, but be sure to take in the selections from Putnam and Nozick. In case you cannnot find the collection, the individual references are:
Robert Nozick
Philosophical Explanations, Clarendon 1981, chapter 3, pp.167-178 & 197-211. This is difficult and technical stuff. You will have to work hard to master it.
Hilary Putnam
Reason, Truth and History, CUP 1981, chapter 1, pp.1-21. Here is one aspect of a recent fad known as 'Semantic Externalism'. Try to get a general picture of this position, as well as its application to the case in point.
Thomas Nagel
The View from Nowhere, OUP 1986, chapter 5. And while you are there, read all you can of this excellent book. The Nagel view has applications across Philosophy, never mind across Knowledge and Reality.
Choose your own title for your essay. If you would prefer me to impose one, here it is:
Is the hypothesis that you are a brain-in-a-vat coherent? If so, does it follow that you cannot know that you are in Oxford?
Exam preparation
Two parts. First, sort out the clearest and most powerful version that you can of the sceptical argument. Then it is time to deal with the supposed refutations.
Supposed refutations of external-world scepticism are as old as the hills. There are three recent tries that you need to know about. Nozick thinks he can alcemize up a refutation through an analysis of 'X knows that P'. Putnam thinks that straightforward considerations from the Theory of Reference will do the job. These two you have already met. Now meet Donald Davidson, who thinks that global constraints on the interpretation of the beliefs of others entail the falsity of the sceptical hypothesis. Read actively, looking for his anti-sceptical argument.
Donald Davidson
'The Method of Truth in Metaphysics', in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: OUP 1994, pp.199-214.
'A Coherence Theory of Knowledge and Truth', in LePore (ed.) Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Blackwell 1986, pp. 307-19.
Each of these three tries is hopeless. And there is a pattern to their failure: each directly begs the question against the sceptical position.
In the case of Nozick, since he draws only on considerations concerning knowledge, that is the extent of the damage – he just begs the question.
With Davidson and Putnam it is worse. Davidson adduces a thesis concerning interpretation, and Putnam relies on a thesis about meaning. So when they beg the question it isn't just knowledge that is undermined by the sceptical hypothesis, but interpretation and meaning as well.
Edward Craig has laid out very briefly and neatly what is wrong with the arguments adduced by Nozick and Davidson. It will be a very good test of your understanding in the area if you can work out for yourselves the parallel response to Putnam. So you are invited, in effect, to produce your version of
‘Putnam and the Sceptic: The Thumbnail Version', Niggle vol. 1, 2004
The Craig articles are little gems. Accurate, devastating, and not a word wasted. Master them. Here they are.
Edward Craig
‘Nozick and the Sceptic: The Thumbnail Version', Analysis vol. 49.4 (1989) pp. 161-2
‘Davidson and the Sceptic: The Thumbnail Version' Analysis vol. 50.4 (1990), pp. 213-14
This material, properly understood, will give you a very good answer to any question concerning external world scepticism. So it is well worth getting very clear about it.
Choose your own title for your essay. If you would prefer me to impose one, here it is:
Is the hypothesis that you are a brain-in-a-vat coherent? If so, does it follow that you cannot know that you are in Oxford?
-oOo-