Genia Schönbaumsfeld

Bio: Genia Schönbaumsfeld is an academic researcher from University of Southampton. The author has contributed to research in topics: Skepticism & Faith. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 30 publications receiving 202 citations.

The Illusion of Doubt

Abstract: The Illusion of Doubt shows that radical scepticism is an illusion generated by a Cartesian picture of our evidential situation - the view that my epistemic grounds in both the 'good' and the 'bad' cases must be the same, and consists in information about an inner mental realm of experience from which I must try to work my way out to what goes on 'out there' in the external world. It is this picture which issues both a standing invitation to radical scepticism and ensures that there is no way of getting out of it while agreeing to the sceptic's terms. What we therefore need to do is not try to answer the sceptical problem 'directly', but rather to undermine the assumptions that it depends on. These are among the most ingrained in contemporary epistemology. They include the notion that radical scepticism can be motivated by the 'closure' principle for knowledge, that the 'Indistinguishability Argument' renders the Cartesian conception compulsory, that the 'new evil genius thesis' is coherent, and the demand for a 'global validation' of our epistemic practices makes sense. Once these dogmas are undermined, the path is clear for a 'realism without empiricism' that allows us to re-establish unmediated contact with the objects and persons in our environment which an illusion of doubt had threatened to put forever beyond our cognitive grasp.

A Confusion of the Spheres: Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein on Philosophy and Religion

Abstract: Introduction 1. Kierkegaard's Influence on Wittgenstein's Thought 2. The Point of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Authorship 3. Sense and Ineffabilia - Kierkegaard and the Tractatus 4. A Confusion of the Spheres - Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's Conception of Religious Belief Conclusion Index

McDowellian Neo-Mooreanism?

Abstract: In a series of recent articles, Duncan Pritchard argues for a “neo-Moorean” interpretation of John McDowell’s anti-sceptical strategy. Pritchard introduces a distinction between “favouring” and “discriminating” epistemic grounds in order to show that, within the radical sceptical context, an absence of “discriminating” epistemic grounds allowing one to distinguish brain-in-a-vat from non-brain-in-a-vat scenarios does not preclude possessing knowledge of the denials of sceptical hypotheses. I argue that Pritchard’s account fails. First, the distinction between “favouring” and “discriminating” epistemic grounds only works for “mules-disguised-as zebras” examples, but breaks down in the radical sceptical case. Second, McDowellian disjunctivism neutralizes the radical sceptical threat, but does not refute it. Third, the “highest common factor” conception is itself responsible for generating the sceptical problem and once this is undermined by McDowellian disjunctivism, scepticism no longer stands in need of direct refutation. I conclude by showing that one can either be a McDowellian disjunctivist or a neo-Moorean, but not both.

‘Hinge Propositions’ and the ‘Logical’ Exclusion of Doubt

Abstract: Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘hinge propositions’—those propositions that stand fast for us and around which all empirical enquiry turns—remains controversial and elusive, and none of the recent attempts to make sense of it strike me as entirely satisfactory. The literature on this topic tends to divide into two camps: either a ‘quasi-epistemic’ reading is offered that seeks to downplay the radical nature of Wittgenstein’s proposal by assimilating his thought to more mainstream epistemological views, or a non-epistemic, ‘quasi-pragmatic’ conception is adopted that goes too far in the opposite direction by, for example, equating ‘hinge propositions’ with a type of ‘animal’ certainty. Neither interpretative strategy, I will argue, is promising for the reason that ‘hinges’ are best not conceived as certainties (or uncertainties) at all. Rather, what Wittgenstein says in respect to them is that doubt is “logically” excluded, and where there can be no doubt, I contend, there is no such thing as knowledge or certainty either

Knowledge and Presuppositions

Abstract: The paper explicates a new way to model the context-sensitivity of ‘knows’, viz. a way that suggests a close connection between the content of ‘knows’ in a context C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. After explicating my new approach in the first half of the paper and arguing that it is explanatorily superior to standard accounts of epistemic contextualism, the paper points, in its second half, to some interesting new features of the emerging account, such as its compatibility with the intuitions of Moorean dogmatists. Finally, the paper shows that the account defended is not subject to the most prominent and familiar philosophical objections to epistemic contextualism discussed in the recent literature.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism

Abstract: term used to frame the process of transition from an apartheid regime to a new “rainbow nation” and an African renaissance. There is no consensus on what ubuntu actually means, and the precise content of the concept is still contested. The translations range from “humanity” and “charity” to “common sense” and “generosity.” Often ubuntu is seen as a concept enshrined in a traditional philosophy of life, although one needs to further differentiate between ubuntu as a moral quality of a person or as a way of living. The core meaning of the concept ubuntu is frequently expressed using the Zulu-Xhosa aphorism “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” – “A human being is a human being through other people.” meaning that every human being needs other people in order to be human; every person is part of a whole, integrated into a comprehensive network of mutual dependencies. The aphorism expresses “the African idea of persons: persons exist only in relation to other persons. The human self . . . only exists in relationship to its surroundings; these relationships are what it is. And the most important of these are the relationships we have with other persons” (Shutte 2001, 23). Thus, the aphorism refers to the deep relational character of ubuntu and underlines at the same time that human beings (umuntu) are a “being

Parasitism and disjunctivism in nyāya epistemology

Abstract: From the early modern period, Western epistemologists have often been concerned with a rigorous notion of epistemic justification, epitomized in the work of D escartes: properly held beliefs require insulation from extreme skepticism. To the degree that veridical cognitive states may be indistinguishable from non-veridical states, apparently veridical states cannot enjoy high-grade positive epistemic status. Therefore, a good believer begins from what are taken to be neutral, subjective experiences and reasons outward — hopefully identifying the kinds of appearances that properly link up to the world and those that do not. Good beliefs, beliefs that are justified (warranted, etc.), are those that a believer has consciously arrived at by such reasoning (or, in a weaker version, those that could be consciously arrived at by such reasoning if required). This approach, which I will occasionally call a Cartesian approach, has two important features. First, it considers doubt a legitimate default position in the space of reasons. The burden of proof is upon the believer to defend her belief. In the absence of such a defense, belief is suspect. Second, one’s cognitive starting point consists in alethically neutral cognitive states as described above. The tradition that I will discuss in this essay, the Nyāya school of classical India, looks at things from a very different perspective. It defends what may be called epistemic trust as the proper default position. Furthermore, Nyāya has a conception of knowledge sources as faculties that directly connect us to a mind-independent world, irrespective of the potential for indistinguishable error states. Despite such potential for error, Nyāya argues that when we get things right, we directly gain purchase on an external world. This notion of direct openness to the world is tied deeply to Nyāya’s epistemic trust. Though, indeed, various sorts of factors trigger review, d efense, and, if required, rejection of belief, the notion that we must step outside our knowledge-producing faculties and pass judgment on their overall effectiveness is held to be a fantasy that is unnecessary, pragmatically troublesome, and ultimately incoherent. This essay will examine a battery of Nyāya arguments in support of default trust and a ground-level realism, which I collectively call arguments from parasitism. These are meant to prove that error presupposes veridical cognition, and, this being the case, we cannot even engage in philosophical reflection and critique unless we appeal to a background of true belief and a baseline cognitive connection with the real world. Given that we must acknowledge such a connection, trust is therefore taken to be the correct default epistemic attitude. I will illustrate and classify various forms that the argument takes, consider allied arguments further offered by Nyāya, and suggest ways in which Naiyāyikas may respond to certain challenges. I conclude

An Analytic-Hermeneutic History of Consciousness

Abstract: A great strength of the analytic tradition in philosophy (I count myself among it) is its affiliation with the mathematical logic of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Tarski: all graduate students are forced to learn its basics, and soon come to discipline their thoughts to fit its structures. This makes for a lingua franca, an admirable prevailing level of clarity and rigor, and interdisciplinary permeability with cognate fields sharing this affiliation. These all contribute to the continuing growth and dynamism of the global analytic-philosophical research community, which shows no sign of losing steam. But mathematical logic is not theory-neutral. Its characteristic use of truth as the fundamental analysans for validity and entailment reflects its origins as a tool for representing the discourse of the natural sciences, which aim at the truth from ‘outside’ their subject-matter. And—though this would conflict with the ‘unity of science’ (Carnap 1928/1927, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958) characteristically embraced by the analytic tradition—perhaps the discourse of the ‘human’ sciences is fundamentally different. After all, a disjuncture between ‘naturalistic’ and ‘humanistic’ discourse—less poetically, physical and mental—is the mainstay of the continental hermeneutic tradition (Schleiermacher 1834/1998, Dilthey 1883/1989, Gadamer 1976, Ricouer 1981); and for the twentieth-century anglophone nonanalytic philosopher Collingwood (1933/2005, 1946/1993), the ‘relation between the sciences of the body, or natural sciences, and the sciences of the mind[] is the relation inquiry into which ought to be substituted for the make-believe inquiry into the make-believe problem of ‘the relation between body and mind’ ’ (Collingwood 1942/92, 2.49). More specifically,