Moore and Russell thought that perceptual knowledge of the external world is based on abductive inference from information about our experience. Sosa maintains that this ‘indirect realist’ strategy has no prospects of working. Vogel disagrees and thinks it can and does work perfectly well, and his reasoning (and variations on that reasoning) seem initially promising, moreso than other approaches. My aim, however, will be to adjudicate this dispute in favor of Sosa’s pessimistic answer, and in doing so, to better uncover the important role abductive inference does have in a wider theory of perceptual knowledge, even if it doesn’t feature in any promising vindication of (anti-skeptical) indirect realism.

摩尔和罗素认为，对外部世界的感性认识是基于从我们的经验信息中进行的溯因推理。索萨坚持认为，这种“间接现实主义”策略没有奏效的前景。沃格尔不同意，并认为它可以而且确实工作得很好，而且他的推理（以及该推理的变体）最初看起来很有希望，比其他方法更有希望。然而，我的目的是裁决这场争论，支持索萨的悲观答案，并在此过程中，更好地揭示溯因推理在更广泛的知觉知识理论中确实发挥的重要作用，即使它在任何理论中都没有出现。有希望证明（反怀疑的）间接实在论的正确性。