Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently, However they have writ the style of Gods'

Shakespeare's passage suggests the hopelessness of fighting common-sense empiricism. Whatever doubts abstract speculation might temporarily throw on necessity and causation or the continued, distinct existence of physical objects in the real world or on an externally existing moral relation of fitness amongst objects and actions, the ghost of Samuel Johnson is never far away. A quick kick of a rock and thus does he refute2 all skepticism and doubts. A natural human disposition3 exists in all of us, at least most of the time, to accept the reality of an external causal world. We all know that the sun will burn us if we sit too long under it or that without food we will slowly die. Most think no more of it. Yet, in the history of Western thought, a distinguished tradition of thinkers has questioned what humans really can know.

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