Fothcoming in Philosophical Studies PROBLEMS FOR DOGMATISM

Looking at the end of my arms, there appear to be some hands. Am I thereby justified in believing that these are hands? That depends. We can imagine possible scenarios in which it falsely appears to me that I have hands. Perhaps I'm a handless brain-in-a-vat artificially being fed experiences as of a couple of hands before me. Or perhaps my hands have been amputated and replaced by plastic replicas of hands. To the extent that I have reason to suppose that one of these alternative explanations of my experiences is correct, my perceptual justification for supposing that I have hands is undermined. But just what is required for me to be justified in believing that these are hands? In particular, must I also be justified in believing that I am not a handless brain-in-a-vat, do not have fake-hands, am not the victim of a hand-image inducing demon, and so on? This last question, which will be the focus of this paper, should be clarified in two respects. First, I can hardly be expected to survey all the possible ways that I might be subject to a visual illusion as of hands, and explicitly form justified beliefs that these do not obtain. But there is an important sense in which one can have justification for a proposition P without explicitly believing P or even considering it. I have justification for believing P in this sense if a belief in P is the appropriate attitude to take given my current epistemic state, if I am to take any attitude to it. So for instance, it might never have occurred to me that what I think is my right hand might be a plastic toy which looks just like a hand. But I'm aware that most people have hands, I have no memory of losing a hand, and obviously it would be very difficult to have a hand replaced by a plastic fake-hand without being aware of it. Given all this, it would make sense for me to believe that I do not have fake hands, even if I do not currently believe it. It is justification in this sense that is at issue when we are considering the conditions of perceptual justification (in the jargon, it is propositional not doxastic justification that concerns us). 2 Second, the crucial question here is not whether I can be justified in believing that I …