What do you know for sure? Consider the fact that you are reading this paper right now. Is this something you know? Before you say yes, consider the following question. Do you feel it is possible for someone to dream they are reading a paper right now, when really they are asleep in bed? Can you prove that you are awake right now and not dreaming? If you start feeling inclined to doubt the possession of knowledge, you are feeling the attraction of Skepticism. The problem of Skepticism has been around for centuries, many philosophers such as Descartes, Russells, Moore, and Putnam have attempted to answer this question each of them offering a variety of different justifications showing that we indeed live in “the physical world”. The word Skepticism comes from ancient Greece, the home of two skeptical traditions academic skepticism and Phyrrohnian skepticism.
Academic Skeptics Argue that sensory impressions which are often taken to be the foundation of knowledge about the world. Don’t actually allow you to “know” anything. Do you have the impression that the words you are reading right now in this paragraph were written by the same person in the last paragraph. I might have an identical twin, you might be slightly
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Imagine a brain being held in a vat and being connected to a super computer that sends sensory signals that simulate the experience of a coherent reality, the computer also picks up on the brains outgoing motor signals and adjusts its inputs accordingly when the brain sends signals to the hand to touch something, the computer delivers coordinated visual and tactical input of feeling a hand and feeling what it touches. If the computer program is good enough (and let’s assume that it is) the brain in a vat experiences a perfect virtual world. We could have a wide range of complex experiences such as being stuck