Dreams, scepticism, and features of the world

✍ Scribed by Morris Lipson

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1989
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 309 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8116
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00354191

✦ Synopsis

Recently, John Heil has argued 1 that a certain familiar sort of sceptical argument, typified by Stroud's reconstruction of 'the Cartesian dream argument, 2 fails in a rather striking way to impugn the ordinary epistemic claims that are its target.

To understand Heil, we need to have the dream argument before us. Let us suppose then, with Stroud's Descartes, that at any time (1) it is possible that we are dreaming, and (2) we are unable then to tell whether we're dreaming or not. Further, let us concede that if a true belief that p is formed on the basis of one's current experience, and that experience is (unknown to one) a dream experience, one fails to know that p. We are conceding, that is, that dreaming that p is incompatible with one's knowing that p. From these, Descartes would have us infer that no belief that has been formed on the basis of current experience can count as knowledge.

Heil wants to say that this inference is simply mistaken. It does of course follow from the assumed fact that you cannot know that p if you