The Dynamic Strategy of Common Sense Against Radical Revisionism

Abstract

Common-sense philosophers typically maintain that common-sense propositions have a certain kind of epistemic privilege that allows them to evade the threats of skepticism or radical revisionism. But why do they have this special privilege? In response to this question, the “Common-Sense Tradition” contains many different strands of arguments. In this paper, I will develop a strategy that combines two of these strands of arguments. First, the “Dynamic Argument” (or the “starting-point argument”), inspired by Thomas Reid and Charles S. Peirce (but which will be strengthened with the help of Gilbert Harman’s epistemology of belief revision). Second, G.E. Moore’s “greater certainty argument” (interpreted along the lines of Soames’ and Pollock’s construal). This combined strategy, I will argue, is the strong core of Common-Sense Philosophy, and relies on extremely modest and widely held assumptions.

If presentism is false, then I don’t exist. On common-sense presentism

“…I will leave aside the rest of the common-sense argument and the question whether this common-sense intuition gives prima facie or ultima facie justification in favour of Presentism. In other works, I have tried to offer defences of (some version of) premise (2) (Guillon, 2017(Guillon, , 2020a(Guillon, , 2020b(Guillon, , 2023a(Guillon, , 2023b(Guillon, , 2023c. And my personal view, for what it's worth, is that Presentism does have prima facie (and probably ultima facie) justification.…”