Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 56
IdealismVsSkepticism: assumptions about the external world are anyway false.
I 55ff
Idealism/Husserl/DummettVsHusserl: Husserl's assertion that the slide into idealism is prevented by the distinction between noema and object is not at all plausible. We cannot say that the subject perceives the object only indirectly, since the object is mediated by the noema.
Kant and Frege are of the same opinion that every object must be given to us in a certain way. But that is why we cannot speak of indirect givenness, because the idea that an object is given, but not in a certain way, is incoherent in their view. There is nothing that can be called indirect, unless something more direct is at least conceivable.
This raises the sceptical question of whether an object is there at all, if every act of consciousness has its own noema, without an external object having to be there. >Noema/Dummett, >Noema/Husserl.
Dummett: Since it is an essential characteristic of Noema to be apparently directed at such an object, we have no choice but to take the view that we perceive just such an object, except in cases where we have indications to the contrary. Therefore, whenever we perceive a real object, the statement that such an object exists is justified.
I 56
Dummett: The skeptic is up to this argument: he can ask how we know that we know.
Idealism: From Husserl's point of view, of course, it would not be so easy to give the sceptic the idealist's answer, which is that one makes the doubts one's own, but declares them inappropriate, since what they question is untrue from the outset anyway.