How do I know I'm not dreaming? This sort of question has puzzled philosophers for thousands of years. Eric Schwitzgebel discusses scepticism and its history with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. This episode of Philosophy Bites was sponsored by the Examining Ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University. You can subscribe to Examining Ethics on iTunes or listen to episodes at ExaminingEthics.Org
This is philosophy Bites with me, David.
Edmonds, and me, Nigel Warburton.
This episode of Philosophy Bytes was sponsored by the examining ethics podcast from the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePaul University.
You can subscribe to examining ethics on iTunes or listen to episodes@examiningethics.org dot are.
You dreaming that you're listening to philosophy bites?
Is the voice you're now hearing a nocturnal delusion playing out in your deep sleep?
Will you wake up any minute to discover that I have vanished?
Well, probably not.
But is it at least a possibility?
Eric Schwitzgable wonders how sceptical we should be about skepticism.
Eric Schwitzschebel, welcome to flossy Bites.
Thanks for having me.
The topic we're going to focus on today is scepticism.
Now, scepticism has obviously had a big part to play in the history of philosophy.
I wonder if you could say something about that at the start.
Well, there have been some very interesting skeptics in the history of philosophy.
One of my favorite skeptics is Zhuangzi, an ancient chinese philosopher.
He argued for all kinds of bizarre seeming things, like that he might be a butterfly dreaming that he's a human.
And in a sense, western philosophy gets started with Plato being skeptical about the world that we think of as the everyday world being real.
Yeah.