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Question I still have problems understanding why external world skepticism is a thing in philosophy. I've heard so many hypotheses and they all seem to revolve around the idea that consciousness is a "simulatable". Here's what I don't understand: The keywords are: Consciousness: the state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings. Simulation: imitation of something else. Simulation, by definition, is the imitation of something else. The "something else" in this case is consciousness. If it's the imitation of consciousness then it cannot be the real one. How on earth can consciousness not be real? It seems to me that by simulation they are trying to say that there is "illusory simulated consciousness" and "real non-simulated consciousness". How on earth can consciousness be illusory/simulated? A lot of people then say: external world skepticism is skepticism about perception not consciousness. It seems to me that perception and consciousness are more or less the same thing. Consciousness is the general state of being aware of and responsive to one's surroundings. Perception is the specific response to one's surroundings or, in other words, "consciousness of" something specific. I don't understand. Is it possible that skepticism is finally dead?

Accepted:
August 21, 2019

Comments

I think that you and those

I think that you and those you see as your opponents may simply be talking past each other. You define consciousness so that being conscious logically guarantees being aware of your surroundings. In arguments about external-world skepticism, consciousness has traditionally been given a weaker definition, a definition that doesn't logically guarantee being aware of your surroundings. In the classic evil demon scenario, your conscious mental states are caused by the evil demon and not by your surroundings (not even indirectly). You're conscious -- that is, you're not in the midst of an experiential blank -- but your conscious states are unreliable indicators of your surroundings. Sometimes the term "perception" is used to distinguish conscious states that reliably represent the environment from conscious states that represent it unreliably .

I hasten to add that it takes a lot of argument to get from (1) the admission that consciousness can be inaccurate to (2) the conclusion that we never achieve external-world knowledge via our conscious states. I don't find any of those arguments compelling, but even so the refutation of skepticism isn't as easy as alleging that skeptics misuse the word "consciousness."