Skepticism, Logical Independence, and Epistemic Priority

Kirk Ludwig

University of Florida

Radical skepticism about the external world is founded on two assumptions: one is that the mind and the external world are logically independent; the other is that all our evidence for the nature of that world consists of facts about our minds.  In this paper, I explore the option of denying the epistemic, rather than the logical assumption.  I argue that one can do so only by embracing externalism about justification, or, after all, by rejecting the logical independence assumption.  Since (I argue) externalism is not a solution to the problem of skepticism, this means that skepticism is false only if the mind and the world are not logically independent.

Full paper available at:  http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/kludwig/Papers/skepticism.pdf