Six Anti-skeptical Strategies - Epistemology Video 24 

I know that I liked this video. Hence there is an external world. QED.

What's interesting to me is that nobody actually believes in Cartesian skepticism, even if they say they do. Nobody seems to hear about Cartesian skepticism and say, 'Well, I guess that means that I can behave immorally now, because I have no reason to believe that anyone around me is real. There's no way for me to hurt anyone with my actions, so I might as well behave as selfishly as I want." The reason nobody says this is that no one actually believes that they are a brain in a vat. It's simply not a sustainable belief; you cannot believe it and go about your normal daily life. It seems to be repugnant to the brain to believe. I wondered if this could be used to argue that Cartesian skepticism is wrong, but I'm not sure that it can be used that way. Just because we aren't capable of believing something, that doesn't mean it isn't true.

I really like how these videos address the elephant in the room!

It seems to me that the belief "I have hands" might be sensitive in ordinary, non-skeptical cases (like losing your hands in real life), but the sensitivity condition fails exactly in simulated worlds where the belief is false (so you don’t have hands) and you still believe it's true that you have hands. So for sensitivity to work, don't we already have to presuppose that we're not in a skeptical scenario?

do you White any boks. love this and your a priori/posteriori- analytical-synthetic vid was fab

I know Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street in London, which is true within the fictional domain, even though Sherlock is not real. So, even if I'm a brain in a vat, things in my mental domain would also be true, regardless of whether they are real or not. Truth for me is always relative to a domain.

how do skeptics know of brains?

you should know you're not a brain in a vat because the sheer amount of information that would need to be simulated would require extreme technology and a power source nearly infinite.