The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche On Overcoming Nihilism

can decipher, I think, what the argument is supposed to be. First, it is clear that Pritchard thinks that the original perceptual evidence for any everyday proposition does not constitute evidence against the skeptical hypothesis. The reason for such a conclusion is presumably the underdetermination principle, according to which one has good evidence for p only if one’s evidence for p is evidence which ‘‘favors’’ p over claims known to be incompatible with p. But the notion of favoring here is ambiguous in a way related to the New Evil Demon Problem cited earlier. Suppose that R is a reason for believing p, but not a reason concerning q. Then R favors p over q. So if q is a skeptical hypothesis known to be incompatible p, and p is an everyday proposition, R constitutes evidence that favors p over q. It favors p over q because it is a reason for believing p, and isn’t a reason, one way or the other, about q. This is the account of favoring that internalists can employ when defending the claim that we and our evil demon compatriots are equally justified in what we believe (even if we are likely to be correct and they are overwhelmingly likely to be mistaken). In order to claim that R doesn’t favor p over q, Pritchard needs a stronger reading of favoring. In particular, he must hold that R doesn’t favor p over q unless R is also a reason against q, i.e., a reason in favor of q. Such a reading of favoring, however, is precisely that encoded in the too-strong Reasons Closure principle. Because Reasons Closure is too strong, no internalist need adopt the stronger reading of favoring, and on the weaker reading of favoring, the two-stage model offered by McDowell and Klein remains untouched by Pritchard’s objections.