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Conciliationism and the Menace of Scepticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2015

DIEGO E. MACHUCA
DIEGO E. MACHUCA*
Affiliation:
CONICET (Argentina)
*
*<diegomachuca@gmail.com>
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Abstract

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a real problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is patently untenable or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted. Then, I show that those who reject both types of scepticism because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons.

On dit parfois que les positions conciliationistes sur le désaccord aboutissent à un scepticisme soit global soit étendu. Ceci est considéré comme un réel problème pour le conciliationisme, soit parce que ces deux types de scepticisme sont manifestement insoutenables, soit parce qu’ils constituent une menace sérieuse pour nos vies intellectuelle et sociale. Dans cet article, je montre d’abord que le caractère prétendument insoutenable de ces deux types de scepticisme est loin d’être évident et devrait donc être démontré au lieu d’être simplement présupposé. Je montre ensuite que ceux qui rejettent ces deux types de scepticisme à cause de la menace qu’ils représentent confondent de manière étonnante raisons pragmatiques et raisons épistémiques.

Type
Articles
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Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 469 - 488
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Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2015 

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