Réflexivité épistémique et défense forte du sens commun. Remarques sur l’épistémologie de Pascal Engel

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss Pascal Engel’s epistemology, in particular his anti-sceptical strategy as developed in Va Savoir!. After a first section, where I give a summary of the main ideas of his anti-sceptical strategy (i.e., “internalist neo-Mooreanism”), I concentrate my study on two elements of this strategy with which I disagree, namely (i) Engel’s rejection of any principle of epistemic reflexivity, and (ii) Engel’s rejection of a “robust” defence of common sense. In section 2, I argue that there is at least one reflexivity principle—namely Michael Huemer’s Meta-Coherence Principle—which cannot be reasonably rejected. In section 3, I show that Engel’s epistemology does not have the resources to tackle the sceptical challenge that a sceptic may raise by using the Meta-Coherence Principle. Finally, in section 4, I argue that the most satisfactory way to tackle sceptical arguments based on Meta-Coherence is to adopt a “robust” defence of common sense, i.e., a defence (adopted by Reid but not by Moore, Lemos or Engel) according to which the propositions of common sense have some kind of justification in virtue of the very fact that they are common sense propositions.