Austin’s Way with Skepticism Revisited

What is it about?

In “Other Minds,” Austin maintained that, if he has claimed to have seen a goldfinch, and there is no special reason to suspect the bird he saw is stuffed, then he does not need to do enough to show it is not stuffed in order to be credited with knowing he saw is a goldfinch. But suppose Austin were presented with the following argument:_x000D_ _x000D_ You don’t know the bird is not a stuffed goldfinch._x000D_ If you don’t know the bird is not a stuffed goldfinch, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch._x000D_ Therefore, you don’t know the bird is a goldfinch._x000D_ _x000D_ Which of the premises of this argument would Austin have rejected? My brief is that the answer is, “Neither”: Austin would have dismissed the very idea that he needed to choose a premise to reject. The burden of this essay is to explain why._x000D_

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