Jennifer Nagel: Why Universal Skepticism Defeats Itself
episodePreviously titled “Why Universal Skepticism Is Philosophy's Greatest Deception” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 3, 2026
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What is the basic intuition behind knowledge versus knowing?
You think you're watching a video, could just be dreaming. Is this even really happening? There's all kinds of tactics you can put in play. Start making you feel like, yeah, actually maybe I don't know anything. And that's very interesting. So there's this weird thing that some philosophers are very drawn to the pattern of intuitions you get when you get really self-conscious about knowing.
If you see your friend across a crowded room, you almost instantly recognize them. This is an effortless act of knowing. However, if I challenged you by saying, hey, are you sure that it's them? Couldn't it be a look-alike? etc., then your certainty may evaporate. Professor Jennifer Nagel of the University of Toronto argues that the boundary between knowing and not knowing holds the key to understanding knowing. Knowledge itself. As much as we love to say in our society that everything is an illusion, that we can't know anything, Professor Nagel's groundbreaking work argues that this universal skepticism itself is the most pestiferous illusion. It's the illusion of illusion in a sense. Today we talk about the alternative picture.
Knowledge is less like constructing a proof, that's been the philosopher's game since Descartes, and more. More like instant recognition, a fundamental capacity. Knowledge itself is primitive. This has implications for your conception of self. free will and consciousness, all of which we talk about today. Enjoy. What's the most significant unsolved problem in philosophy and why is it so consequential?
So I think all of our problems are significant. Don't make me pick one. Um if if I had to have some kind of ranking, I would say free will isn't right up there. Massive problem. And it's one that um that you face at every moment of your life as an agent. Uh my own skills are completely inadequate to solve that one. So I'm focused on something that actually might be related to it. My own work is on the nature of knowledge. I'm very, very interested in the line between knowing something and failing to know. And I like to think that actually has some connection to the massive, unsolved problem of free will. But the connection itself is something quite tenuous, and we can we can get into it later. But I think if we
We were very clear on our m in our minds about the relationship between knowing and not knowing. Um, free will wouldn't be so daunting philosophically.
So what is knowing?
Knowing is a state of mind of the type you can have only to the truth. Somehow I feel like that could that answer to your question might not have completely satisfied you, but that's the fastest way to describe it.
Is this a controversial answer?
Yes it is.
Okay, so then it requires some more expanding. So why don't you talk about what is the consensus or what was the consensus? Why don't you talk about how did philosophers used to think about knowledge? How do they think of it now? And how do you think about it?
So there is no consensus uh about this, and there's no consensus about Anything.
How do philosophers distinguish between knowing, believing, and being certain?
of significance in philosophy. There's some points on which we're at near consensus, um, but uh and of course within the logic, which is one branch of philosophy, there are some very well established results. But uh so that so there's n there's no clear consensus. Um I do think We as human beings are very, very sensitive to the difference between knowing and not knowing. This is just a a line that we're constantly navigating in everyday social exchanges. We have a very deep human familiarity with the difference between knowing and not knowing. You see the face of a friend or you meet a stranger. um you're playing some really difficult game of skill or you're playing tic-tac-toe, right? Uh um you you you have you you have an instant sense of ease if you're in a domain where you're knowledgeable.
Um and and challenge and confusion where you're not. I think any conversation that you engage in with another human being is really structured by your sense of what's known and what's unknown, right? That that when you're speaking to somebody, you constantly have to decide um, am I gonna tell or am I gonna ask?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the basic intuition behind knowledge versus knowing?
0:00–3:05
2
How do philosophers distinguish between knowing, believing, and being certain?
3:05–10:34
3
Can you know something without knowing that you know it?
10:34–22:11
4
Why do Gettier‑type counterexamples challenge the classic justified‑true‑belief analysis?
22:11–1:20:28
5
What does Socrates’ weapon‑borrowing story reveal about justice and skepticism?
1:20:28–2:04:38
6
How does Al‑Ghazali’s response to skepticism differ from classical philosophical solutions?
2:04:38–2:07:24
7
Why do conversational moves create epistemic imbalances and how are they resolved?
2:07:24–2:11:06
8
Can modern AI systems genuinely understand or know like humans do?
2:11:06–2:37:34
Speakers
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