Dogmatism and Easy Knowledge: Avoiding the Dialectic?

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes and objects to the anti‐skeptical strategy endorsed by Epistemological Dogmatism. Dogmatism is a theory of epistemic justification that holds perceptual warrant for our beliefs is immediate, based on experiential seemings. Crucially, it rejects requests for higher‐order justification or active defense of the justification one's beliefs enjoy. This allows Dogmatism to endorse a neo‐Moorean anti‐skeptical strategy. In order to investigate the main element of this strategy, the problem of easy knowledge is introduced. The dogmatic answer to easy knowledge consists in rejecting the skeptical dialectic, labeling skepticism as a disease that should not be engaged with from the start. Countering this strategy via appeal to skeptical or non‐dogmatic intuitions would either beg the question against Dogmatism or have little possibility of adjudicating the disagreement. Therefore, a different route is pursued. The Dogmatic point concerning immediate perceptual warrant is provisionally accepted and tested to determine whether it leads to a tenable position. It is argued that adopting the dogmatic standpoint generates a series of problems that cannot be handled without Dogmatism undergoing a significant revision. This revision shows that, far from being able to reject the skeptical dialectic entirely, Dogmatism must necessarily engage with the skeptical Problem of the Criterion.