Inference to the best explanation and the external world : a defense of the explanationist response to skepticism

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Philosophy, 2012.Inference to the best explanation provides a promising response to the threat of external world skepticism. An attractive version of this sort of response to skepticism is what I call the "Explanationist Response". The Explanationist Response involves arguing that our commonsense view that there is an external world composed of mind-independent objects is the best explanation of the involuntary and spontaneous nature of our sensory experiences as well as their coherence with one another. Since it is rational to believe that the best explanation of these features of our sensory experiences is true, we can have knowledge of the external world. This Explanationist Response to skepticism is often gestured at as a promising way of responding to skepticism, but for too long it has remained a schema for how a successful response to skepticism might go rather than a full-fledged response to skepticism. This thesis takes important steps toward transforming the Explanationist Response from an outline into a complete reply to skepticism and defends the Explanationist Response from a variety of objections