Imagine you’re talking to your friend Dennison about skepticism, when he says: “I’m actually an external world skeptic.

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Imagine you’re talking to your friend Dennison about skepticism,
when he says:
“I’m actually an external world skeptic. I don’t think we
can know anything at all about the physical world. For instance, I
bet you think you know that you have hands. But I don’t think I
know this at all. My Aunt Helene actually doesn’t have hands. She
used to have them, but had both her hands amputated when she was
younger after an accident. She says often when she dreams, she
dreams of having hands again. She can look down and ‘see’ them,
‘feel’ them. In those dreams, she’s completely convinced that she
has hands, and doesn’t remember ever having lost them. Then she
wakes up and realizes all her senses have been misleading her
during her dream.
“Well, for all I know, I could be dreaming right now. Like,
seriously: how could I prove that I’m definitely awake and not
dreaming right now? And, for all I know, maybe I actually lost my
hands a while ago, and am only dreaming that I have hands right
now. Sure, it looks and feels like I have hands. But my senses
could be deceiving me, just like they do in a dream, without me
realizing it. Thus, I don’t know that I have hands. I
think I have hands, but I can’t be 100% sure that
I do.”
How would you respond to Dennison?
First, try to explain his argument in your own
words. What is his argument? How is it an argument for skepticism?
This is like the report-backs we did in the Unit 2 Discussion
Board.
Then, evaluate Dennison’s argument. Even if you
ultimately think his argument is good, try your hardest to provide
a refutation of the evidence in his argument.
Explain why a premise is questionable, or why the premises do not
provide enough logical support for the conclusion. You can still
tell us you ultimately like Dennison’s argument, but try your best
to refute it in your initial post.