Topic
Write an essay on Jonathan’s Vogel’s “explanationist” response to skepticism. Your task is to reconstruct his argument.
It is essential that you carefully read all the instructions below and refer back to them again before submitting your essay.
Preliminary Note to These Instructions
You may find it surprising and daunting to see that the instructions for this assignment are so long. These lengthy instructions are not designed to make completing the essay more difficult. On the contrary, they are designed to give you the maximum chance for success in this assignment—as well as in future assignments that might not have such lengthy instructions. They are designed to guide you through the process of writing a philosophy essay. Short instructions might look less daunting, but in fact, they leave you with less guidance through the essay writing process and so a lower chance for success.
Audience
As always when writing, remember to think about your audience. Yes, your professor will be reading and grading your essay. But you should think of your audience as a fellow student: your audience needs a patient and careful account of the issues and texts you are discussing; your audience may have read the text, but they need your help to understand it; your audience also needs to be told what unfamiliar philosophical vocabulary means. Writing with this audience in mind will help you to write clearly and precisely and with a minimum of unstated assumptions. If your audience cannot follow your essay, then your are not writing an essay that is clear enough.
Citing Outside Sources
For this essay, you should use only the textbook and the video lectures as sources. There is no reason to look to any outside sources. But if you do use any outside sources, it is essential that you acknowledge that and how you have used the source. If you don’t do this properly, this is considered a serious form of academic dishonesty. Whether intentional or not, when you use an outside source without acknowledgement, you are writing as if someone else’s thoughts or writings were your own. You are therefore required to read the following document about plagiarism before writing your essay:
Essential Elements of Your Essay
Length. Your essay should be 800-1100 words.
Format. Make sure that you include your name and other information about the assignment on the top left of the first page. Do not make a separate cover page. Number your pages and use normal-sized font and margins. See an example of the proper format here (Links to an external site.).
Your own words vs. quotations. Your task is to explain everything in a way that your audience can understand. You therefore should put everything in your own words as much as possible. (This also shows your professor that you know what you are talking about.) However, it is also essential show your audience that you are explaining Vogel’s view. Therefore, you must, where appropriate, cite and quote from the text. For the purposes of the essay, you should have at least three quotes of approximately sentence length from the text. These should be carefully chosen. They should be quotes that illuminate a central point. You can have more than three quotes if you like, but be careful: you cannot use quotes from the text as a substitute for your own writing. Usually, if you have a quote, you will also have to explain to your audience what the quote means. Again, the main point is simply this: you must write everything in your own words but also show that you are accurately explaining what is in the text, and so you must also quote and cite from the text.
Title. Your essay should have short title that succinctly tells the audience the topic of your essay. (So, not “Essay #1”)
Introductory paragraph. Your essay should start with a short paragraph that summarizes the topic and results of your essay. Do not waste time talking in generalities about what philosophers have thought since the dawn of time. Instead, give your audience the overview of your essay that they need to be in the best position to understand the body of your essay as they read through it. So, for this essay, you should note Vogel’s basic strategy and what it seeks to accomplish.
Body of essay. You have two tasks in this essay. Your first task in the essay to explain the challenge that Vogel confronts: explain why Vogel thinks the “deceiver argument” (pp. 284-5) for the “skeptical hypothesis” poses a formidable challenge to our claim to have knowledge about the world. Why, according to Vogel, do the premises of the argument together with the “underdetermination principle” yield the conclusion that we have no knowledge of the world around you? Remember that the underdetermination principle is expressed as a conditional:
if the information available to you gives no reason at all to believe one hypothesis rather than another, then you don’t know whether either hypothesis is the case.
Make sure to explain to your audience how this principle works with premise ‘2’ to yield the skeptical conclusion that we have no knowledge of the world. (Hint: review the definition of the valid argument form modus ponens on p. xliii). Next, explain how this leads Vogel to the (intermediate) conclusion that the only response to the deceiver argument is to deny premise 2. Why would denying premise 2 allow us to escape the skeptical conclusion?
Your second task in the essay is to explain how Vogel denies premise 2 and thereby claims to refute the skeptical hypothesis. You should not discuss the Moorean and a priori approaches that Vogel mentions as alternative approaches. Instead, give an account of Vogel’s “explanationist” response. What is an inference to the best explanation and how can this form of argument be used to deny premise 2?
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