ABSTRACT

McDowell’s disjunctivism is sometimes said to constitute a response to Cartesian skepticism. The aim of this chapter is to explore what this response comes to. Cartesian skepticism emerges, and seems necessary, only in the context of a certain project—the project of “modern” epistemology. But it is a central thought of this chapter that this project is a specific version of a more general project. Both projects seek self-understanding. But it is an assumption of the more specific project that self-understanding is a matter of understanding how things stand with an object of a certain kind—"a subject" or “a self”—and, as such, that the use of the first person which figures in the expression of self-understanding is one in which “I” refers to such an object. This assumption ensures that the modern project leads to skepticism. And insofar as disjunctivism is understood as a contribution to this project, it is powerless to resist this consequence. That might make it tempting to abandon the very idea of epistemology as self-understanding. And that is the position of contemporary epistemology. But contemporary epistemology only changes the subject, and as such leaves the case for skepticism unaffected. The anti-skeptical import of disjunctivism can be appreciated only once it is seen that the modern project is incoherent: it assumes that self-understanding is a matter of understanding how things stand with a “self”—but it is unable to make sense of this assumption. Once this is understood, the modern project will lapse, and the fundamental insight of disjunctivism will emerge. And as it does, skepticism will fall away.