The easy knowledge response is suggested by the following remarks from Bricker
(2001: 30), which appear in the context of his response to skepticism about whether
one is actual:
The most serious objection to realism with absolute actualization, as Lewis has emphasized, is
that it seems to allow for a coherent skepticism about one’s own actuality, whereas such
skepticism is absurd. Granted, such skepticism is absurd. When asked—how do I know that
I am actual?—I can give only one response: I just know it. I think that response is acceptable
when dealing with a fundamental ontological category; talk of“evidence”here is beside the
point. Moreover, anyone who accepts more than one fundamental ontological category, be it
individuals and classes, or particulars and universals, must face the same sort of question, and,
I claim, give the same answer. How do I know that I am an individual and not a class? I just
know it. How do I know that I am a particular and not a universal? I just do.
On the response under consideration, there are easy propositions, and for each
subjectS, the proposition thatSis present is one of them. I am present; I believe
that I am present; I have no positive evidence for a proposition that I know is
inconsistent with my being present; hence I know that I am present.
There might be an interesting connection between the easy knowledge response
and the phenomenological response. Suppose that among the easy propositions
forSare those propositions of the formS sees x as F. I believe that I see myself
and my surroundings as present; to the extent that I lack counter-evidence for
this fact, I know that I and my surroundings are present. But the easy knowledge
response could be adopted independently of any putative connection to the phe-
nomenological response.
There are two concerns one might have about the easy knowledge response. First,
how can anything be known without evidence? Perhaps the friend of easy knowledge
can argue that there are certain things that we know but couldn’t know unless they
were based on easy propositions. But, second, why would claims of fundamental
metaphysics be themselves good candidates for being easy propositions? Without the
phenomenological response in tow, the answer to this question is not easy to see.
Let’s turn now to the appeal to theoretical virtues, which has been recently
defended by Cameron (2015: ch. 1). According to this response, ifPis part of our
best overall theory of some phenomenon, andPis in fact true, then we can come to
knowPby knowing that it is part of our best overall theory of the phenomena in
question. According to Cameron, the claim that we are present is part of the best
overall theory of the nature of time, because it is a pre-theoretic belief that is widely
held and for which we have no direct countervailing evidence, and one factor that
makes for a good theory is consonance with pre-theoretic beliefs of which we have no
direct reason to think that they are false. A consequence of Cameron’s position,
which he happily accepts, is that most people do not know that they are present,
because most people have not thought about which package of views in the philoso-
phy of time provides the best overall explanation of temporal phenomena. So