Epistemic Immodesty and Embodied Rationality

Abstract

Based on Pritchard's distinction (2012, 2016) between favoring and discriminating epistemic grounds, and on how those grounds bear on the elimination of skeptical possibilities, I present the dream argument as a moderate skeptical possibility that can be reasonably motivated. In order to block the dream argument skeptical conclusion, I present a version of phenomenological disjunctivism based on Noë's actionist account of perceptual consciousness (2012). This suggests that perceptual knowledge is rationally grounded because it is a form of embodied achievement-what I call embodied rationality-, which offers a way of dissolving the pseudo-problem of epistemic immodesty, namely, the seemingly counterintuitive thesis that one can acquire rationally grounded knowledge that one is not in a radical skeptical scenario.

Radical Enactivism and Self-Knowledge

“…So, at the very least, rationality is an ability of certain agents to achieve specific goals. What we must reject is that the articulation of contentful states is all there is to rationality (Rolla, 2016). Successful engagement with the environment, even in the absence of reasons, is a rational endeavor if we shift the focus to a more inclusive view of rationality.…”