BonJour’s Abductivist Reply to Skepticism

Abstract

Forthcoming in PhilosophiaAccording to the abductivist reply to skepticism, the continuity, coherence and repeatable regularities found in our sensory experiences cry out for explanation. Abductivists claim the best explanation of these features of our experience is that they reflect objective regularities in the world. They maintain that the hypothesis that our sense experiences are caused by objects having roughly the characteristics we ordinarily take them to have constitutes a better explanation of our sensory experience than any skeptical hypothesis involving evil demons or brains in vats. The explanatory superiority of the commonsensical hypothesis, abductivists contend, renders belief in it epistemically justified and belief in the falsity of skeptical

The Abductivist Reply to Skepticism

“…34 34 Cf. Beebe (2007) for further discussion of BonJour’s particular version of rationalist abductivism. …”