 But all is not well with the strong conception, or so philosophers have claimed over the past several decades. The strong conception seems to entail that we know nearly nothing at all about the material world outside of our own minds or about the past. For we could have had all the reasons we do in fact have, even if the world around us or the past had been different. (Think of Descartes’s evil genius.) This conflicts with commonsense and counts against the strong conception. But what is the alternative?