Abstract

My concern is with a version of scepticism which, following a number of philosophers, I will entitle global scepticism. According to global scepticism no one is to any degree justified in holding any belief. Global scepticism is a live option, and has at least one compelling argument in its favour1 Nevertheless, one's first reaction to global scepticism is likely to be that it is self-refuting. The issue I will be discussing here is whether global scepticism is self-refuting. In the first section I consider arguments to the conclusion that global scepticism is self-refuting, and argue that the global sceptic need take only one of them seriously. In the next I examine a global sceptic's reply to the argument in question, and a response to that reply available to the anti-sceptic. What emerges is an apparent impasse. The global sceptic has a response to each reply that the anti-sceptic makes in support of the anti-sceptic's original argument. However, it seems that the anti-sceptic is able to effectively reply to each of the global sceptic's responses. In the last section I develop an argument to show that global scepticism is self-refuting which breaks the deadlock between the global sceptic and anti-sceptic.