Anti-Individualism, Self-Knowledge, and Why Skepticism Cannot be Cartesian

Leora Weitzman

University of St. Thomas

This essay argues for a new middle ground between anti-individualist claims to undermine external-world skepticism and individualist defenses of skepticism’s coherence. Looked at closely, anti-individualist arguments show the need for something outside of each meaningful thought but not necessarily outside of the thinker. In fact, what anti-individualists should count as outside of the thinker is crucially unclear in the context of engaging skepticism about the physical world. Defending the coherence of external-world skepticism, on the other hand, requires a Cartesian notion of self-knowledge that collapses under the weight of Wittgensteinian arguments. In the end skepticism survives, but without being restricted to a world “external” to the thinker. Nor, however, does Humean skepticism prevail; for even apparent meaningfulness turns out to require real meaningfulness, and anti-individualism suffices to show that a lone thought could not be meaningful. There is thus room for a skepticism between Descartes’ and Hume’s.