Austin’s Way with Skepticism Revisited

Abstract

In “Other Minds,” Austin maintained that, unless there is a special reason to suspect the bird he saw is stuffed, he does not need to do enough to show it is not stuffed in order to be credited with knowing what he has just claimed to know: that the bird he saw is a goldfinch. But suppose Austin were presented with the following argument: You don’t know the bird is not a stuffed goldfinch. If you don’t know the bird is not a stuffed goldfinch, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch. Therefore, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch. Which of the premises of this argument would Austin have rejected? My brief is that the answer is, “Neither”: Austin would have dismissed the very idea that he needed to choose a premise to reject. The burden of this essay is to explain why.