BERKELEY’S PARADOX: EXTERNAL WORLD SKEPTICISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

How can I ever be certain that there is anything at all external to my own thoughts? Many philosophers have either tried to advance a proof of the external world, or to dismiss the intelligibility of the very idea of a “proof” in this context. The aim of this paper is to show that the so-called “problem of the external world” arises out of a misleading conception of epistemic justification. I present an analysis of what I call “Berkeley’s paradox” in order to show that the ordinary use of language should not work as the standard of correctness for the application of concepts such as knowledge and existence. I conclude that both the traditional attempts to provide a proof for the existence of the external world and the attempts to dismiss the problem as meaningless are mistaken. What has to be taken into account in the examination of the external world is the context within which the skeptical contention is raised.