Explanatory Solutions to Skeptical Problems

Explanatory Solutions to Skeptical Problems provides an overview of a recent theory of epistemic justification: Phenomenal Explanationism. It uses this novel theory to solve longstanding issues concerning our knowledge of the external world, the past, and inductive reasoning.

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Phenomenal Explanationism is a powerful new theory of epistemic justification that combines an explanationist conception of evidential support with an appearance-based or phenomenal conception of evidence. According to PE, epistemic justification is a matter of what best explains our evidence, which ultimately consists of appearances. It is a complete internalist theory of epistemic justification that delivers on the promises of other appearance-based theories while avoiding their pitfalls.

In Explanatory Solutions to Skeptical Problems, Kevin McCain expands his previous work on the internalist dimension of the theory to cover external world skepticism. He also demonstrates how PE offers solutions to a host of other perennial skeptical problems including the problem of the criterion, the regress of justification, memory skepticism, and inductive skepticism. The promise that PE displays in responding to these problems makes it plain that it is a viable conception of epistemic justification worthy of careful consideration, and also that accepting internalism more generally doesn't leave one without reasonable responses to skeptical problems.