Judgments and Lotteries MCMP – Metaphilosophy

Andreas Stokke (Umeå) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (16 January, 2014) titled "Judgments and Lotteries". Abstract: Timothy Williamson has argued that the challenge from experimental philosophy is a form of skepticism about judgments. Given reasons to believe that the actual world contains instances of scenarios for judgment skepticism, Williamson argues that judgment skepticism cannot be dismissed as far-fetched in the manner of familiar types of responses to other kinds of skepticism. I argue that the problem presented by judgment skepticism is an instance of the well-known class of problems involving lottery propositions. Hence, the threat from judgment skeptical scenarios motivates skepticism about practices of making judgments only if lottery problems in general motivate skepticism.