Understanding Scepticism
Abstract
It is my contention that a number of prominent commentators on the problem of radical epistemological scepticism labour under a certain erroneous conception of what this problem involves. In particular, I argue that they tend to both underestimate and overestimate the issue that faces them. On the one hand, they are confused as to what would constitute a satisfactory answer to the sceptic. On the other, they concede far too much to the sceptic by failing to recognise that there are a number of defensive moves available to them, especially insofar as they endorse a version of epistemological externalism. In order to illustrate these claims, I focus upon Edward Craig's analysis of knowledge that, by his own admission, is unable to satisfactorily answer the challenge of radical scepticism
© Philosophia Press 2000
Articles in the same Issue
- Rational Ends: Humean and Non-Humean Considerations
- Two kinds of methodological solipsism
- The Touch of Art: Adorno and the Sublime
- Understanding Scepticism
- Against Deontology
- The Passivity of Reason – On Heidegger's Concept of Stimmung
- The Undeflated Domain of Semantics
- Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 159 pp.
- Herbert Schnädelbach: Philosophie in der modernen Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000, 283 Seiten
- Gronke, Horst: Das Denken des Anderen: Führt die Selbstaufhebung von Husserls Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität zur transzendentalen Sprachpragmatik? (Epistemata: Reihe Philosophie Bd. 234) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 294 sider Zahavi, Dan: Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik. (Phaenomenologica 135) Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 204+xii sider
- Laura Otis. Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 210 pp.
- Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul. The Welfare State edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul, Cambridge University Press 1997, 292 sider
- Søren Kjørup. Kunstens filosofi: En indføring i œstetik. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitets Forlag, 2000, 213 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Rational Ends: Humean and Non-Humean Considerations
- Two kinds of methodological solipsism
- The Touch of Art: Adorno and the Sublime
- Understanding Scepticism
- Against Deontology
- The Passivity of Reason – On Heidegger's Concept of Stimmung
- The Undeflated Domain of Semantics
- Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. 159 pp.
- Herbert Schnädelbach: Philosophie in der modernen Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000, 283 Seiten
- Gronke, Horst: Das Denken des Anderen: Führt die Selbstaufhebung von Husserls Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität zur transzendentalen Sprachpragmatik? (Epistemata: Reihe Philosophie Bd. 234) Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 294 sider Zahavi, Dan: Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität: Eine Antwort auf die sprachpragmatische Kritik. (Phaenomenologica 135) Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1996, 204+xii sider
- Laura Otis. Membranes: Metaphors of Invasion in Nineteenth-Century Literature, Science, and Politics. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 210 pp.
- Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul. The Welfare State edited by Ellen Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller & Jeffrey Paul, Cambridge University Press 1997, 292 sider
- Søren Kjørup. Kunstens filosofi: En indføring i œstetik. Roskilde: Roskilde Universitets Forlag, 2000, 213 pp.
