I argue that Cartesian skepticism about the external world leads to a vicious regress of skeptical attitudes, the only principled and unproblematic response to which requires refraining from taking the very first skeptical step.

Section III of part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise entitled “Of the ancient philosophy” has been virtually ignored by most Hume scholars. Although philosophers seem to concentrate on sections II and VI of part IV and pay little or no attention to section III, the latter section is paramount in showing how serious Hume's skepticism is, and how Hume's philosophy, contrary to his intention, is far removed from "the sentiments of the vulgar". In this paper I shall first (...) explore Hume's view on ancient philosophy as it is presented in section III, and I shall particularly focus on his discussion of identity and simplicity of bodies. Second, I shall argue that Hume's account of identity and simplicity in terms of qualities is at best unsatisfactory. Finally, I shall try to show that Hume's advice to hold a "moderate" skepticism cannot be taken seriously. On the contrary, Hume seems to hold an "extravagant" skepticism, since he claims that there is a contradiction between our most fundamental natural beliefs, as well as between our natural beliefs and philosophical reasoning. (shrink)

J. L. Schellenberg has provided a rigorous and robust philosophical defense of religious skepticism through various modes of reasoning and employs an epistemic defeat strategy that appeals to unrecognized evidence. He contends on this framework that reason requires religious skepticism. This essay focuses on Schellenberg’s basic epistemic defeat strategy. I argue that his methodology is problematic because his key skeptical argument rests on an equivocation on the notion of total evidence, which makes it difficult to implement his epistemic defeat strategy (...) in favor of his claim that reason requires us to be religious skeptics. (shrink)

Skeptical theists assume that that God may be thought justified in his actions and permissions through the consequences to which those actions and permissions lead. They also assume that we may not be aware of all the goods and evils there are, so we may not always be able to discern the reasons that justify God's actions and permissions. On this basis, they conclude that we should be skeptical about any claim to know what it would be evil for God (...) to do or permit. I argue that this conclusion poses certain epistemic challenges for theism. First, it seems to undermine arguments from design. And second, it seems to undermine the presumption that God could not be a deceiver because deception is something that it would be evil for God to do. (shrink)

In _The School of Doubt_ Orazio Cappello presents a study of Cicero’s fragmentary philosophical treatise on sense-perception, the _Academica_, examining the dialogue’s literary, historiographical and theoretical texture.

Chattopadhyaya (philosophy, Jadavpur U., Calcutta) examines the epistemological and methodological implications of induction and probability.

The pairing of Hegel with skepticism may seem at first to be an “odd couple.” But such a mistaken first impression dissipates upon a closer examination of Hegel’s early essay, “Relationship of Skepticism to Philosophy: Exposition of its Different Modifications and Comparison of the Latest Form with the Ancient One.” Far from the standard picture of someone oblivious to critical epistemological issues, this essay reveals a Hegel who is not only a student, but also a defender of ancient skepticism against (...) its modern Humean counterpart. Authentic skepticism, he tells us, has no positive side. By this measure, modern skepticism is not authentic, for while it attacks rationalist metaphysics, it is itself dogmatic in taking sense impressions, facts of consciousness, and immediacy as truth. In contrast, ancient skepticism attacked sense perception and immediacy first of all, and knew how to demonstrate that immediate certainty is nothing. (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the forms and uses of doubt in works by Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Cicero, Machiavelli, Shakespeare and Montaigne. Based on close analysis of literary and philosophical texts by these important authors, Michelle Zerba argues that doubt is a defining experience in antiquity and the Renaissance, one that constantly challenges the limits of thought and representation. The wide-ranging discussion considers issues that run the gamut from tragic loss to comic bombast, from psychological collapse to skeptical (...) dexterity and from solitary reflection to political improvisation in civic contexts and puts Greek and Roman treatments of doubt into dialogue not only with sixteenth-century texts but with contemporary works as well. Using the past to engage questions of vital concern to our time, Zerba demonstrates that although doubt sometimes has destructive consequences, it can also be conducive to tolerance, discovery and conversation across sociopolitical boundaries. (shrink)

Skepticism is regularly a target for the _apraxia_ challenge, namely, that skepticism robs us of the cognitive means for life (or at least the life well-lived). Skeptics have replied to the _apraxia_ challenge in various manners, and anti-skeptics have then answered with objections to these skeptical replies. St. Augustine’s crossroads case in _Contra Academicos_ is one such second-stage pragmatic anti-skepticism, one targeting Academic probabilism in particular. This dialectical assessment challenges Augustine’s case as inappropriately comparing the possible errors and their costs (...) in the crossroads decision, but this assessment opens Academics to a potentially devastating dilemma for their probabilism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scepticism in the Enlightenment ed. by Richard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso, Giorgio Tonelli, and: The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society ed. by Johan van der Zande, Richard H. PopkinHeiner F. KlemmeRichard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso and Giorgio Tonelli, editors. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiii + 192. Cloth, $99.00.Johan van der Zande and Richard H. Popkin, (...) editors. The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xix + 462. Cloth, $150.00.Who could reasonably question the importance of skepticism for the philosophical achievements of the period known as the Enlightenment? Skepticism seems to be the most appropriate means for illuminating a philosophical landscape shrouded in fog. The relatively restrained metaphor of “Aufklären” was used first by German philosophers to describe their project of removing prejudice and obscurity. British philosophers instead used the concept of “improvement,” and in France, the endeavours of the philosophes were largely associated with a determined fight against the dogmatic teachings of an all-powerful church and for religious and political freedom. But not every philosopher who employed skeptical arguments or the method of skepticism was therefore a skeptic, or someone who intended to establish a form of skepticism. And [End Page 171] some who sought to provide philosophy with a firm anti-skeptical foundation found themselves being accused of being skeptics themselves. Berkeley’s dogmatic Immaterialism was accused immediately of leading right away to the most abstruse kind of skepticism ever heard of, and Kant’s critical philosophy was forbidden in Hessia because of its alleged skepticism. Furthermore, many philosophers were indebted to some form of skepticism while not being skeptics themselves. Thus Reid’s common-sense-philosophy owed as much to Hume’s skeptical philosophy as did J. G. Hamann and F. H. Jacobi.Modern skepticism goes back to ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism, which many philosophers of the Enlightenment for one reason or another still considered as a live option. But exactly what kind of skepticism their own writings entail and to what extent they were influenced by more modern types of skepticism—like that to be found in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and others—is not always easy to decide. In addition, skepticism was sometimes viewed as a kind of systematic philosophy and the skeptic was considered to be a specific kind of philosopher, different from a Platonist, Stoic, or Epicurean, as in Hume for instance. But the vast majority of philosophers used skeptical arguments as instruments, or as the first step in laying the foundation for a new philosophical system. Finally, there are many much more subtle traces of skepticism in Enlightenment thought, which cannot always be put together easily in a comprehensive picture. The many-sided history of skepticism in the eighteenth century is accordingly difficult to tell.Richard H. Popkin’s work has been decisive for a further investigation of eighteenth century skepticism. His early “Scepticism in the Enlightenment” (1963) was seminal. Popkin pointed out in this article Hume’s central position. Hume marked the beginning of an increasing debate about different and variable types and contents of Enlightenment skepticism. Scepticism in the Enlightenment contains articles by Popkin himself, as well as articles by the late Giorgio Tonelli, known to many as an expert in Kant’s precritical philosophy, and by the late Ezequiel de Olaso, which were directly or indirectly occasioned by Popkin’s work. Only two of the ten articles are new (de Olaso on “Scepticism Old and New,” and Popkin’s very useful contribution on “Berkeley in the History of Scepticism”). But Tonelli’s “Kant and the Ancient Skeptics,” which appeared in 1967 in German, appears here for the first time in English translation. Although Tonelli’s scholarly article is still of interest today, Hume’s influence on Kant’s thought in the middle of the 1760’s should not be underestimated. Tonelli also seems to be too sceptical about Kant’s first-hand knowledge of ancient skepticism. For instance, Johann Matthias Gesner’s Chrestomathia Graeca (Leipzig, 1731), the school book used in the Greek class Kant attended as a... (shrink)

Many see narrative as important for life in terms of its persuasive value, including through the process of identification. This article examines narrative and argument with particular attention to how desire and self-image warp processes of narrative judgment and appropriation. In seeking a way to transcend only accepting narratives or storied accounts of important events that confirm what we want to believe, this article proposes the idea of narrative skepticism as a limiting disposition to our reactions to narratives we are (...) poised to accept and those accepted by our partisan opponents. Narrative skepticism, if employed in a positive and pluralistic fashion, can follow through on the ideals posited by thinkers such as John Dewey that involve deeply democratic and unified communities of diverse but respectful partisans. (shrink)

How should we react to philosophical skepticism? Whitman answers this question by examining analytic and post-analytic responses to the problem. He tests analytic theories of knowledge and the post-analytic responses of Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty against skeptical arguments. Whitman concludes that embracing a theoretical version of philosophical skepticism has advantages over post-analytic responses—both in the realm of philosophical inquiry and in everyday life.

Two strikingly similar critiques of epistemological foundationalism are examined: J. L. Austin's critique of A. J. Ayer in the former's "Sense and Sensibilia," and part of Candrakīrti's critique of Dignāga in the first chapter of the "Prasannapadā." With respect to Austin, it is argued that his writings on epistemology in fact relate quite closely to his better-known philosophy of speech acts, and that the appeal to ordinary language is part of a transcendental argument against the possibility of radical skepticism. It (...) is then argued that Candrakīrti makes some very similar moves, and that his argument against Dignāga makes still clearer the sense in which both Austin and Candrakīrti can be characterized as making transcendental arguments. In particular, if a condition of the possibility of meaningful discourse is the making of certain kinds of assents, then the epistemologist's demand for the justification of those assents is unreasonable. (shrink)

Neo-Kantian constructivism aspires to respond to moral skepticism by compelling agents to act morally on pain of irrationality. According to Christine Korsgaard, a leading proponent of constructivism, we construct all reasons for action by following correct deliberative procedures. But if we follow these procedures we will find that we only have reasons to act in morally permissible ways. Thus, we can show the skeptic that he is rationally constrained to act morally. Unfortunately, as I argue in my first chapter, this (...) strong response to moral skepticism renders deliberate immoral action unintelligible. This result is problematic since we often do interpret ourselves and others as deliberately choosing to do wrong. I further suggest that this problem follows from central commitments of Korsgaard’s constructivism, so that any adequate account of immoral action must abandon constructivist metaethics in favor of moral realism, a suggestion reinforced by the argument of my second chapter. There, I call attention to Kant’s solution to a similar problem in his own account of morality. I argue that Korsgaard’s constructivist commitments prevent her from embracing Kant’s solution. I proceed in my third chapter to argue that there is a further tension between Korsgaard’s response to moral skepticism and her work in non-ideal theory. In particular, Korsgaard maintains that, when confronted with injustice, the virtuous person may have reason to do what is wrong in the name of morality. She thus relies on the assumption that one can deliberately do wrong. I argue that this assumption undermines the response to skepticism that motivated Korsgaard’s constructivism in the first place. But despite the problems with constructivism, we may worry that moral realism fails to offer an adequate response to moral skepticism. Indeed, Korsgaard rejects realism in part because she believes that realists simply refuse to respond to moral skepticism. I thus conclude by arguing that moral realists can offer adequate responses to moral skepticism. In fact, I believe Korsgaard’s response is no more effective than those suggested by some moral realists. (shrink)

We invited five Cavell scholars to write on this topic. What follows is a vibrant exchange among Paola Marrati, Andrew Norris, Jörg Volbers, Cary Wolfe and Thomas Dumm addressing the question whether, in the contemporary political context, Cavell’s skepticism and his Emersonian perfectionism amount to a politics at all.

Bacon’s project suggests in theory that the obtaining of absolute certain knowledge is possible but in fact such knowledge is revealed to be impossible. Th e description of the human mind on which Bacon’s account is based seems to imply that the impossibility of obtaining absolute certainty does not depend on the contingent historical situation of a preliminary stage of the scientifi c endeavor. Consequently, a gap emerges between the proposed goal of science and the ways to reach it: Bacon (...) tried to obtain absolute certainty but he only could arrive at degrees of certainty and probability both in theories and in facts. Malgrè lui, Bacon shows himself developing in fact a kind of probabilistic science instead of surpassing the limits to knowledge posed by the skeptical arguments. Th at is the reason why many of his followers could develop a mitigated skepticism in the framework of a Baconian science. (shrink)

Certainty and Practical Reason is concerned with Kant's practical response to epistemological skepticism and radical doubt. ;It begins from Kant's remark that the concept of freedom is the keystone of the arch of reason, theoretical as well as practical, and sustains reason against skepticism; and from Kant's account of the practical motives of transcendental realism, the source of skepticism, in the First and Second Critiques. The Critiques suggest both that Kant's response to skepticism is practical, and that skepticism is itself (...) both practically motivated and associated with practical error. ;In the first chapter, it is argued that the Transcendental Analytic of the First Critique is not a final refutation of skepticism and radical doubt, and that Kant does not see it as such. The theoretical arguments of the Transcendental Analytic need to be completed with an appeal to practical reason if we are to ground Kant's starting assumption, the fact of experience. ;The second chapter considers epistemological skepticism as involving a practical error answered by the practical cure of the categorical imperative. ;The third chapter begins by considering Cartesian doubt as a practically motivated attempt to pose the problem of practical rationality, and Kant's response to this problem. It then discusses Kant's view that the transcendental realist demand for knowledge of the noumenal, which gives rise to skeptical doubt, is a pursuit of the unconditioned whose hidden meaning is practical; and explains how Kant responds to the doubt by responding to and interpreting transcendental realism as a practical project. ;The fourth chapter discusses the Critique of Judgment as a response to "enthusiasm" or the transcendental realist claim to knowledge of the unconditioned, and thereby to skepticism as well. (shrink)

A single argument template---the EPH template---can be used to generate versions of the best known and most challenging skeptical problems. In his brilliantly groundbreaking book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson presents a theory of knowledge and evidence which he clearly intends to provide a response to skepticism in its most important forms. After laying out EPH skepticism and reviewing possible ways of responding to it, I show how elements of Williamson’s theory motivate a hitherto unexplored way of responding to (...) EPH-generated skeptical arguments. Then I offer reasons to doubt the correctness of Williamson’s response. (shrink)

The intent of this work is to discover suitable terms for harmonizing the dispositions of both theorist and skeptic and for providing balance between them. Towards reaching balance, the work, in dialectic ways, advances a reconsideration of concepts basic to any epistemology: doubting and affirming, truth and existence, knowing and perceiving, and necessity and contingency. A new account of hypothetical and relative modalities furnishes the mechanism of balance. The work also provides a critical examination of recent defense and criticism of (...) skepticism. (shrink)

There is widespread and warranted skepticism about the usefulness of inclusive and epistemically rigorous public debate in societies that are modeled on the Habermasian public sphere, and this skepticism challenges the democratic form of government worldwide. To address structural weaknesses of Habermasian public spheres, such as susceptibility to mass manipulation through “ready-to-think” messages and tendencies to privilege and subordinate perspectives arbitrarily, interdisciplinary scholars should attend to traditions of knowledge and public debate that are not rooted in western colonial/modern genealogies, such (...) as the Sanskritic traditions of pramā ṇ avāda and vāda. Attention to vāda, pramā ṇ avāda, and other traditions like them can inspire new forms of social discussion, media, and digital humanities, which, in turn, can help to place trust in democracy on foundations that are more stable than mere (anxious) optimism. (shrink)

A necessary refinement of the concept of circular reasoning is applied to the self-and-universally-referential inductive justification of induction. It is noted that the assumption necessary for the circular proof of a principle of induction is that one inference is valid, not that the entire principle or rule of induction governing that inference is true. The circularity in an ideal case is demonstrated to have a value of lin where n represents the number of inferences asserted valid by the conclusion of (...) the justifying argument, and the ‘I’ represents the inference necessarily assumed valid.An induction antinomy modeled after Russell’s antinomy of the set of all and only non-self-containing sets is derived. Isomorphic antinomies are noted to be derivable for other arguments of philosophical interest, including those purported to undermine theories of determinism, relativism, and skepticism, and including the one that Descartes reduced and converted to ‘Cogito, ergo sum’. (shrink)

During the first few decades of the twentieth century, legal theory on both sides of the Atlantic was characterized by a tremendous amount of skepticism toward the private law concepts of property and contract. In the United States and France, Oliver Wendell Holmes and François Gény led the charge with withering critiques of the abuse of deduction, exposing their forebears' supposedly gapless system of private law rules for what it was, a house of cards built on the ideological foundations of (...) laissez faire capitalism. The goal was to make the United States Constitution and the French civil code more responsive to the realities of industrialization. Unlike the other participants in this transatlantic critique, François Gény simultaneously insisted on the immutability of justice and social utility. His “ineluctable minimum of natural law” would guide judges and jurists toward the proper social ends, replacing deduction with teleology. The problem was that nearly all of Gény's contemporaries were perplexed by his conception of natural law, which lacked the substance of the natural rights tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the historicist impulse of the early twentieth. No one was more perplexed than Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose more thorough going skepticism led him to see judicial restraint as the only solution to the abuse of deduction. The ultimate framework for this debate was World War I, in which both Holmes and Gény thought they had found vindication for their views. Events on the battlefield reaffirmed Gény's commitment to justice just as they reignited Holmes' existential embrace of the unknown. In a sense, the limits of their skepticism would be forged in the trenches of the Great War. (shrink)

This book is the 6th book in a series of Socratic explorations of some of the Great Books. The books in this series are intended to be short, clear, and non-technical, thus fully understandable by beginners. Through such Socratic dialogues, Peter Kreeft introduces the basic questions in the fundamental divisions of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, anthropology, ethics, logic, and method. In Socrates Meets Hume, Kreeft presents a Socratic examination of enquiry concerning human understanding in relation to the skepticism of Hume, posing (...) questions that challenge the concepts that Hume proposed. Kreeft states that Hume is the "most formidable, serious, difficult-to-refute skeptic in the history of human thought." Kreeft invites you to take part in the process of refuting Hume's skeptical arguments, with the aid of Socrates. Based on an imaginary dialogue between Socrates and Hume that takes place in the afterlife, this profound and witty book makes an entertaining and informative exploration of modern philosophy. (shrink)

We can identify two broad categories of post-modernist political views: a "weak" view and a "strong" view. The latter cannot support a practice of democratic politics. In contrast, the "weak" view is compatible with a conception of democratic politics that is pluralistic, liberal, and pragmatic. The central issue over which the two views part ways is whether human beings have enough in common to permit mutual comprehension. The strong view implies that they do not, and for this reason must be (...) rejected. Within the weak view, disagreements are really a matter of emphasis: When and in what circumstances should we emphasize difference rather than commonality? (shrink)

Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In the tradition of the 18th century Scottish (...) philosopher, Thomas Reid, Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition joins this discussion by taking up four main tasks. First, it identifies the strongest arguments for radical skepticism, namely, underdetermination arguments, which emphasize the gap between our evidence and our ordinary beliefs based on that evidence. Second, it rejects all inferential or argument-based responses to radical skepticism, which aim to lay out good noncircular reasoning from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs to the conclusion that those beliefs are probably true. Third, it develops a commonsense noninferential response to radical skepticism with two distinctive features: it consciously and extensively relies on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality, and it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Fourth, and finally, it defends this commonsense epistemic-intuition-based response to radical skepticism against a variety of objections, including those connected with underdetermination worries, epistemic circularity, disagreement problems, experimental philosophy, and concerns about whether it engages skepticism in a sufficiently serious way. (shrink)

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. R. Bett (Ed.), New York: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. 380+xii, ISBN 780521697545. -/- The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, edited by Richard Bett, consists of an Introduction and fifteen papers written by international authors (three of them have been diligently translated into English by the editor). The volume presents the major figures of ancient skepticism and the major interpretational problems. Separate papers are devoted to Pyrrho of Elis (Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson), Arcesilaus and Carneades (...) (Harald Thorsrud), Aenesidemus (R.J. Hankinson) and Sextus Empiricus (Pierre Pellegrin). Agrippa seems to be the only missing figure on the list. Moreover, we can also find a lot of information about the minor figures of ancient skepticism. Mi-Kyoung Lee presents skeptical ideas in early Greek philosophy and Carlos Levy writes about the later academic skeptics, especially Clitomachus, Philo of Larissa and Cicero. Richard Bett in his Introduction lists the most important problems in interpreting ancient skepticism: What kinds of belief, if any, are open to a skeptic? Can a skeptic allow for choice and action and if so, then how? Is skepticism compatible with an ethical outlook? Is there a real difference between the Academic and Pyrrhonist varieties of skepticism? Casey Perin takes on the first one, Katja Maria Vogt—the second, Richard Bett—the third, and Gisela Striker—the last one. We also have the next five papers presenting other important aspects of ancient skepticism. Paul Woodruff writes about skeptical modes, James Allen about the relation between Pyrrhonism and medical schools, Emidio Spinelli about the critique of specialized sciences, Luciano Floridi about the modern rediscovery of ancient skepticism, and Michael Williams about its Cartesian transformation. The Companion is very rich in content and very up-to-date, presenting the latest hypotheses. Here I would like to discuss the problem of Pyrrho’s place within the skeptical tradition. (shrink)

Are Hume's skeptical principles reconcilable with his naturalistic 'science of man'? This is the 'riddle' of Hume's Treatise. Without a solution to this riddle (specifically, one that offers an affirmative answer to the question), Hume's project seems self-defeating, with his skeptical principles undermining his attempt to develop the new 'science' (pp. 3, 270ff; cf. p. vii). Thus, the riddle has understandably been both a major point of contention among Hume scholars as well as a source of intriguing and helpful discussions (...) for philosophers interested in Hume's work. Paul Russell attempts to solve the riddle by fundamentally reorienting the way that people read the Treatise (see, e.g., pp. 61, 69, 270-2)..... All things considered, Paul Russell's The Riddle of Hume's Treatise is an excellent and thought-provoking text that is a pleasure to read. It provides a compelling case regarding the nature and significance of Hume's 'irreligious' motives. In so doing, it lends further support for a naturalistic reading of Hume, according to which Hume's skepticism serves his naturalism and, ultimately, his 'anti-Christian' motives. It deserves to have an important impact not only on Hume research, but on the narrative that drives undergraduate survey courses in the history of early modern philosophy as well. (shrink)

De Pierris offers a reading that unites radical skepticism and normative naturalism as “two equally important and mutually complementary aspects of Hume’s philosophical position”. The “modern theory of ideas” shapes skepticism, and Newtonian methodology is the basis for naturalism. The “modern theory of ideas” holds that evidence for optimal human cognition is grounded in the “immediate acquaintance with ostensive presentations that are or have been given to the mind”. This is the “presentational-phenomenological model of apprehension”. Descartes introduces to the model (...) pure intellectual items, that is, clear and distinct ideas, which have “‘immutable and eternal’ essences or forms” as referents... (shrink)

This second volume in the Journal of the History of Philosophy book series (JHP Books) is devoted to the resurgence of skepticism in the Renaissance and after. It contains eight original essays by historians of early modern philosophy from Europe and North and South America, with concluding remarks by Richard H. Popkin, who reviews fifty years of scholarship on the history of early modern skepticism and evaluates its present stage. The essays uncover new material relevant to the history of skepticism (...) in the period and propose new interpretations of the nature, role, and influence of skepticism from Montaigne to Berkeley. The contributors discuss such important figures as Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Hobbes, Pierre Bayle, Henry More, René Descartes, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Pierre Gassendi, and George Berkeley. By indicating a number of new problems brought about by the early modern philosophers’ engagement with and reaction to skepticism, the authors of the important essays in this volume make a major contribution to our understanding of ancient and modern skepticism. (shrink)

Skepticism and the New World: The Anthropological Argument and the Emergence of Modernity shows that the "discovery" of the New World had a transforming impact as a historical event with deep philosophical repercussions, especially for traditional presuppositions about human nature and knowledge.

The paper deals with a version of the principle that a belief source can be a knowledge source only if the subject knows that it is reliable. I argue that the principle can be saved from the main objections that motivate its widespread rejection: the claim that it leads to skepticism, the claim that it forces us to accept counterintuitive knowledge ascriptions and the claim that it is incompatible with reliabilist accounts of knowledge. I argue that naturalist epistemologists should reject (...) these claims. I introduce my treatment of the principle by considering the analogous situation posed by the closure principle. (shrink)

What is skepticism? -- Skepticism as selective doubt -- Scientific method and rational skepticism -- Skepticism and the new enlightenment -- The growth of antiscience -- Skepticism, science, and the paranormal -- Should skeptical inquiry be applied to religion? -- Skepticism and religion -- Are science and religion compatible? -- Skepticism and political inquiry -- Skepticism and ethical inquiry -- Moral faith and ethical skepticism reconsidered -- Skepticism and eupraxsophy -- The new skepticism: a worldwide movement -- Skeptical inquiry: my (...) personal involvement -- Science and the public: summing up thirty years of the skeptical inquirer -- The new skepticism: a statement of principles. (shrink)

On skepticism in the context of knowledge.