ABSTRACT

This final chapter provides an explanation of the skeptical puzzle and the Moorean puzzle that is based on a sensitivity account of checking, SAC. Section 8.1 surveys the contemporary debate about skepticism and Mooreanism. Section 8.2 presents a SAC-based explanation of the skeptical puzzle and the Moorean puzzle. It begins by discussing doubting and its relationship to checking one’s own beliefs, contrasting them with ordinary self-reflection. It argues that Moorean reasoning is a way of acquiring higher-level knowledge and knowledge that the skeptical hypotheses are false. However, it is not a way of checking of one’s beliefs in the denials of the skeptical hypotheses that they are true. This explanation of the Moorean puzzle fits well with moderate invariantism and with an SAC-based version of contextualism. Section 8.3 discusses a heterogeneity problem concerning bootstrapping and Mooreanism that existing sensitivity accounts of knowledge are faced with along with a generality problem about higher-level knowledge. It is shown that a SAC-based solution suffers neither from the heterogeneity problem nor from the generality problem.