大卫·刘易斯的语境主义的反怀疑论策略评析

Comments on David Lewis’ Contextualist Solution to Skepticism

关于外部世界知识的怀疑论者声称,我们并不拥有外部世界的知识。为支持该结论,他们提出各种怀疑主义的假说并力图表明,由于我们所持有的经验证据无法排除这些假说成立的可能,因而我们并不知道自己不是处在这些情形之下。但是,以大卫·刘易斯为代表的语境主义者则认为,我们可以在特定语境下恰当地无视这些假说成立的可能,因而它们并未对日常知识构成挑战。但是,分析表明,语境主义的反怀疑论策略存在一些明显缺陷。这说明语境主义者在一定程度上错失了怀疑论论证的要害。

The skeptics about the knowledge of the external world claim that we do not have knowledge of the external world at all.In order to support this conclusion,they put forward various skeptical hypotheses aiming to show that we do not know we are not in the possible skeptical situations because our empirical evidence could not rule out them.However,according to the Lewis-style contextualism,we can properly ignore the skeptical possibilities and thus they do not constitute a challenge to our ordinary knowledge.In the following,we shall begin with taking a close look at the contextualist solution to skepticism and then point out some fundamental defects.These defects surpass its so-called virtues and this shows that contextualists miss the upshot of the skeptical argument in some degree.