External‐World Skepticism and the New Ethics of Belief

ABSTRACT

External‐world skepticism challenges, among other things, the epistemic credentials of beliefs about other people. Some external‐world skeptics deny that I know my loved ones exist; some claim that my belief that my loved ones exist is epistemically impermissible. However, abandoning this belief would be highly unattractive. In fact, new developments in the ethics of belief provide the groundwork for an argument that skeptical doubts about loved ones, even if well‐grounded, are prima facie morally wrongful. I defend the external‐world skeptic from this moral criticism. Our moral obligations, I note, are sensitive to our epistemic limitations; the fact that you have no epistemic reason to believe that your uncle exists, for instance, can explain why you are under no moral obligation to visit him in the hospital. Drawing on this point, I demonstrate that we face no moral obligation to avoid skeptical doubt when that doubt is genuinely well‐grounded.