Abstract

Here, I shall be examining the viability of a Moorean response to the Argument from Ignorance; i.e., one that tries to rebut the argument by denying its first premise that we cannot have knowledge that we are not BIVs. After first explicating the Argument from Ignorance in detail, I then go on to try and motivate this approach by critically examining two alternative approaches to dealing with radical scepticism: closure-denial, and attributer contextualism. Finding them wanting, I then turn to a Moorean 'argument from knowledge', and diagnose why as it stands such an approach is ineffective, before going on to explore whether one can wed such an argument to an externalist framework in order to provide a more satisfying answer to the question of how one can know the denials of sceptical hypotheses, one that does not simply beg the question against the sceptic. Finding such a neo-Moorean approach to be initially promising, I then conclude by arguing that ultimately it winds up saving knowledge simpliciter only at the cost of losing rationally-grounded knowledge to the sceptic's grasp, and such a result is highly unpalatable.