External World Skepticism Argument Analysis

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External world skepticism is the view that a person cannot know anything about the external world – they can only know about the internal world of one’s own mind. An argument for external world skepticism is: (1) If I know that I have hands, then I know that I’m not a handless brain-in-a-vat (2) I don’t know that I’m not a handless brain-in-a-vat. Therefore, (3) I don’t know that I have hands. This seems like a ridiculous argument at first, but when looking closer, the argument is a valid through the form of Modes Tollens. The philosophical issues that are raised is that the second premise cannot be ruled out as false, and it questions what it means to know something. The second premise seems like it would be untrue because a person would know

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