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Exploring Skepticism and Doubt: A Philosophical and Critical Thinking Perspective
Philosophical thinking

From Socrates to the present day, skepticism and doubt have been at the forefront of philosophical thought. Skepticism has been used to challenge existing beliefs and assumptions, while doubt has been used to question and probe ideas, concepts, and beliefs. In this article, we explore the philosophical and critical thinking perspectives on skepticism and doubt. We will look at how they have been used throughout history to shape our thinking and inform our decisions.

We will also examine the implications of skepticism and doubt for our society today and how they can be used to foster greater understanding and collaboration. Skepticism and doubt have long been seen as tools of inquiry and analysis. They have been used to challenge established conventions, challenge accepted wisdom, and explore new ideas. As such, skepticism and doubt can be seen as essential elements of philosophical thinking. This article will explore the various ways in which skepticism and doubt have been employed by philosophers throughout history, as well as their implications for critical thinking. We will also examine the implications of skepticism and doubt in today's world.

We will look at how they can be used to promote greater understanding, collaboration, and progress in our society. We will also explore the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on skepticism and doubt, such as the tendency to become too skeptical or too trusting of ideas. Finally, we will discuss how skepticism and doubt can be used in a constructive manner to promote meaningful dialogue and progress. Skepticism and doubt are two closely related concepts that have been discussed in philosophy and critical thinking for centuries. They involve questioning beliefs or assumptions, and seeking evidence in order to form one’s own conclusions.

Historically, skepticism and doubt have been used to challenge existing beliefs and accepted truths

Today, skepticism and doubt can still be used to think more critically about our beliefs and assumptions, by questioning our beliefs and assumptions, we can avoid making decisions based on false information or our own biases, when we question our beliefs and assumptions, it can help us to think more deeply about our positions and arguments, if taken too far, they can lead to a sense of cynicism or apathy, which can prevent us from forming meaningful connections with others or taking meaningful action.

By questioning our beliefs and assumptions, we can avoid making decisions based on false information or biases. We can also identify potential pitfalls in our reasoning and uncover alternative perspectives that we may not have considered before. Finally, when engaging in debates or discussions, skepticism and doubt can help us to think more deeply about our positions and arguments. However, it is important to use skepticism and doubt judiciously in order to avoid falling into a state of cynicism or apathy. For those looking to learn more about skepticism and doubt, there are a number of resources available.

What is Skepticism and Doubt?

Philosophical skepticism can be divided into several different types, including Cartesian skepticism, Pyrrhonism, Academic skepticism, and Humean skepticism. Cartesian skepticism is the view that nothing can be known with absolute certainty, while Pyrrhonism holds that nothing can be known with absolute certainty and that one should suspend judgement until further evidence is obtained. Academic skepticism maintains that no knowledge is certain and that wisdom is achieved through doubt, while Humean skepticism suggests that knowledge is based on experience and can never be certain. Scientific skepticism is a form of inquiry that uses scientific methods to investigate claims made in the absence of definitive proof. This type of skepticism is based on the premise that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence in order to be accepted as valid.

The Historical Roots of Skepticism and Doubt

Descartes argued that people should use their own reason and experience to form beliefs, rather than relying solely on the teachings of others. He was an advocate of the “method of doubt”, which instructed people to doubt all of their beliefs until they could be proven true. Descartes’ ideas were highly influential and were taken up by other philosophers such as David Hume. Hume argued that humans are limited in their knowledge, and that we should not assume our beliefs to be true unless there is sufficient evidence for them.

The Application of Skepticism and Doubt

Additionally, by applying doubt to our problem-solving abilities, we can avoid the potential pitfalls of relying too heavily on instinct or intuition. For example, if we are presented with a complicated problem, we may be tempted to rush to a solution without considering the wider implications of our decision. However, by taking a moment to consider the implications of our decision and question any underlying assumptions, we can make sure that our solution is as informed and well-considered as possible. In addition to helping us think more critically, skepticism and doubt can help us develop a healthier sense of self-awareness. By questioning our own beliefs and assumptions, we can gain a better understanding of our own thought processes and the biases which might be influencing them.

Resources for Learning More About Skepticism and Doubt

Carroll 2.The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource 3.The Skeptics Society: Promoting Science and Reason Since 1992 4.Doubtful News: Keeping You Informed on Strange and Unusual Claims Podcasts: 1.Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena 2.The Partially Examined Life: Philosophy for the Rest of Us 3.Reasonable Doubts: Exploring the Claims of Christianity 4.Think Twice: Exploring the Relationship between Science and ReligionIn conclusion, skepticism and doubt are important philosophical and critical thinking tools that can help us better understand our world, beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. By engaging in questioning and challenging our beliefs and assumptions, we are able to think more critically and gain new insights. Furthermore, skepticism and doubt can be used to inform our decision-making processes, problem-solving abilities, and more. Finally, there are a variety of resources available for readers to learn more about skepticism and doubt and how to apply them to their everyday lives.

Skepticism , doubt , critical thinking , philosophical thinking , and decision-making are all key concepts explored in this article.

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Open-Mindedness and Skepticism in Critical Thinking

How the two traits work together..

Posted April 26, 2019

In my most recent post, 12 Important Dispositions for Critical Thinking, I presented a list of dispositions that are likely to enhance the quality of one’s thinking—specifically, disposition toward critical thinking refers to an inclination, tendency, or willingness to perform a given thinking skill (Dwyer, 2017; Facione, Facione & Giancarlo, 1997; Ku, 2009; Norris, 1992; Siegel, 1999; Valenzuela, Nieto & Saiz, 2011). Though there is overlap among some of the dispositions (e.g., inquisitiveness, truth-seeking, and resourcefulness), there are, of course, important distinctions. However, in one particular case—open-mindedness and scepticism—it almost seems that the dispositions are at odds with one another.

I received feedback on the piece, and one reader recommended that, though they agree that it's good to have an open mind, some viewpoints are simply foolish, and it would be a waste of time to dwell on them. I responded with agreement, to some extent. However, even if an idea appears foolish, sometimes its consideration can lead to an intelligent, critically considered conclusion. In this way, open-mindedness follows the same mechanics as ‘brainstorming’ ideas, in that no idea is a bad one because the ‘bad ones’ sometimes provide a foundation for a ‘good one.’ I advised, furthermore, that there are important subtleties that require consideration with respect to understanding the relationship between scepticism and open-mindedness.

To better understand this relationship, it is important to first operationally define the two dispositions. Open-mindedness refers to an inclination to be cognitively flexible and avoid rigidity in thinking; to tolerate divergent or conflicting views and treat all viewpoints alike, prior to subsequent analysis and evaluation; to detach from one’s own beliefs and consider, seriously, points of view other to one’s own without bias or self-interest; to be open to feedback by accepting positive feedback and to not reject criticism or constructive feedback without thoughtful consideration; to amend existing knowledge in light of new ideas and experiences; and to explore such new, alternative or ‘unusual’ ideas. On the other hand, seemingly, the disposition towards scepticism refers to an inclination to challenge ideas; to withhold judgment before engaging all the evidence or when the evidence and reasons are insufficient; to take a position and be able to change position when the evidence and reasons are sufficient; and to look at findings from various perspectives.

Though on a foundational level, the two dispositions may seem to reside on a kind of continuum (e.g., scepticism at one end and open-mindedness at the other end), they are distinct concepts, even if there is overlap. That is, an individual can be both sceptical and open-minded at the same time. Perhaps the key issue here is to recognise that open-mindedness doesn’t mean you have to accept divergent ideas, rather just consider them.

Even with that, isn’t consideration of a foolish idea still a ‘waste of time?' Well, the decision-making behind determining whether or not something is foolish is still consideration—some level of evaluation, no matter how easy, was required to make the decision. That’s where the scepticism comes in: rejection of the ‘foolish’ idea is the outcome of appropriate evaluation. However, knowing that the idea is foolish isn’t necessarily the end of the story. You may ask yourself whether anything can be salvaged from the bad idea or the thought process behind it, for the purpose of turning it into a good one; thus, being open-minded through idea generation, such as in the aforementioned example of the mechanics behind brainstorming. But with that, there’s more to open-mindedness than that.

Open-mindedness is about being open to changing your mind in light of new evidence. It’s about detaching from your beliefs and focusing on unbiased thinking void of self-interest. It’s about being open to constructive criticism and new ideas. People who are sceptical do all of this as well—they challenge ideas and they withhold judgment until sufficient evidence is provided—they are open to all possibilities until sufficient evidence is presented. Scepticism and open-mindedness go hand-in-hand, but they may not seem that way from the surface—not until they are adequately and comprehensively defined. Once described accordingly, it is hard not to equate both with critical thinking. Well, I’d be sceptical of it, anyway.

Dwyer, C.P. (2017). Critical thinking: Conceptual perspectives and practical guidelines. UK: Cambridge University Press.

Facione, P. A., Facione, N. C., & Giancarlo, C. A. (1997). Setting expectations for student learning: New directions for higher education. Millbrae: California Academic Press.

Ku, K. Y. L. (2009). Assessing students’ critical thinking performance: Urging for measurements using multi-response format. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 4(1), 70–76.

Norris, S. P. (Ed.). (1992). The generalizability of critical thinking: Multiple perspectives on an educational ideal. New York: Teachers College Press.

Siegel, H. (1999). What (good) are thinking dispositions? Educational Theory, 49(2), 207–221.

Valenzuela, J., Nieto, A. M., & Saiz, C. (2011). Critical thinking motivational scale: A contribution to the study of relationship between critical thinking and motivation. Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 9(2), 823–848.

Christopher Dwyer, Ph.D., is a lecturer at the Technological University of the Shannon in Athlone, Ireland.

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7.4 Skepticism

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Define skepticism as it is used in philosophy.
Compare and contrast global and local skepticism.
Offer and explain a skeptical hypothesis.
Outline the general structure of argument for global skepticism.

Philosophical skepticism is the view that some or all knowledge is impossible. A skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge—particularly justification—in some domain. A global skeptic rejects the possibility of knowledge in general. But one need not reject the possibility of all knowledge. A local skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge only in particular areas of study. One can be a local skeptic about moral knowledge or scientific knowledge. This section will first look at global skepticism and the arguments offered in support of it and then will briefly look at local skepticism.

Global Skepticism

Global skepticism is a view that questions the possibility of all knowledge. To make their case, global skeptics point to the lack of the possibility of certainty in our beliefs. Because we cannot know that our beliefs are true, we cannot know in general. Usually, global skepticism attempts to undermine the possibility of forming justified beliefs. Global skeptics target all beliefs, or all beliefs about the external world (which amounts to most beliefs). Most beliefs tacitly or explicitly assume the existence of an external world. When I have the experience of seeing a bird in a tree and think, “There is a bird in that tree,” I assume that there is an actually existing physical bird in an actually existing physical tree in an actually existing real world outside of me. There is means “there exists.” I believe the bird, tree, and world all exist independently of my thoughts. The global skeptic questions beliefs such as these.

The Dream Argument

How many times have you realized that you were dreaming while you were dreaming? Most people believe that whatever they are dreaming is real during the dream. Indeed, the fact that people think dreams are real while dreaming is what makes nightmares so terrible. If you knew the content of a nightmare was a dream, then it would not be nearly as scary. Zhuang Zhou (c. 369–286 BCE) was a Chinese Taoist philosopher who argued that for all we know, we could currently be dreaming while thinking we are awake. Imagine dreaming that you are a butterfly, happily flitting about on flowers. When you wake, how can you determine whether you have just woken from dreaming you are a butterfly or you are a butterfly who has just started dreaming that you are human? Zhuang Zhou explains:

While he is dreaming he does not know it is a dream, and in his dream he may even try to interpret a dream. Only after he wakes does he know it was a dream. And someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Yet the stupid believe they are awake, busily and brightly assuming they understand things, calling this man ruler, that one herdsman—how dense! Confucius and you are both dreaming! And when I say you are dreaming, I am dreaming, too. (Zhuangzi 2003, 43)

Zhaung Zhou puts forward the possibility that all of what we take to be conscious experience is actually a dream. And if we are dreaming, then all our beliefs about the external world are false because those beliefs take for granted that our current experience is real.

The Evil Demon Argument

Nearly two millennia after Zhuang Zhou, René Descartes also proposed a dream hypothesis. Descartes argued that because dreams often incorporate experiences we have in real life, it is impossible to distinguish between dreaming and waking life (Descartes 2008). But Descartes eventually concludes that even if he could be dreaming, there are still some beliefs he can know, specifically arithmetic. Even in dreams, 1 + 1 = 2, and a square will always have four sides. And so, Descartes devises an even stronger skeptical hypothesis: what if we are being tricked by an evil demon?

Descartes’s evil demon is powerful. It can make you believe things, and it can trick you by controlling your experience. The evil demon can make you believe you are currently eating a sandwich by directly feeding you the sensory experience of eating a sandwich (the sight, the smells, the taste, the feel). Under this scenario, you cannot tell the difference between actually eating a sandwich and merely believing you are eating one because the evil demon is tricking you. If we cannot reliably tell the difference between experiences caused by reality and experiences caused by an evil demon, then we cannot know anything. We can represent Descartes’s argument as follows:

If I cannot rule out the possibility that an evil demon is tricking me, then I do not have any knowledge of the external world.
I cannot rule out the possibility that an evil demon is tricking me.
Therefore, I do not have knowledge of the external world.

Why does Descartes claim we can’t have knowledge if we cannot rule out the evil demon hypothesis? If an evil demon is tricking us, then all our beliefs are wrong. And if we cannot rule out the possibility that we are wrong, then we are not justified. And if we are not justified in our beliefs, then we cannot have knowledge of them.

Putnam’s Brain in a Vat

If you don’t like evil demons, then consider a more modern version of a skeptical hypothesis: the “ brain in a vat ” conceived of by American philosopher and mathematician Hilary Putnam (1926–2016). Imagine that while you were asleep last night, a group of scientists kidnapped you and took you to their lab. There, they surgically removed your brain and placed it in a vat of nutrients. The scientists then hooked up your brain to a sophisticated new computer system. They were able to download your memories so as to create new experiences. The result is a seamless experience of consciousness between yesterday and today. When you woke this morning, your life seemed to proceed without disruption. Can you prove that you are not a brain in a vat? No, you cannot. The scenario stipulates that your experience will seem exactly the same whether you are a brain in a vat or not. Other, similar skeptical scenarios are easy to come up with. Consider the possibility that you are caught in a virtual reality world or that you are trapped in the Matrix.

General Structure of Global Skeptical Arguments

Skeptical hypotheses and the arguments that they inspire all have a similar structure:

If I cannot rule out the possibility of SH, then I cannot be justified in believing that P.
I cannot rule out the possibility of SH.
Therefore, I cannot be justified in believing that P.

SH is a skeptical hypothesis. P is any proposition about the external world. Premise 1 is the skeptic’s challenge—that you must rule out skeptical hypotheses. Premise 2 relies on limitations within your perspective. The skeptic claims that you can rule out the possibility of whatever skeptical hypothesis is at hand only if you are able to construct an argument that defeats that hypothesis using the evidence you have (and a priori knowledge). As demonstrated, this is difficult to do. The nature of the skeptical hypotheses used for global skepticism limits your evidence to the contents of your thoughts. What you take to be evidence of the external world (that you perceive things that seem to be separate from yourself) is effectively neutralized by the possibility of a skeptical hypothesis.

Responses to Global Skepticism

The philosopher who wishes to overcome philosophical skepticism must find reasonable grounds for rejecting the skeptic’s argument. The different skeptical arguments reveal a specific conception of the level of justification required for knowledge. Skeptical arguments rely on the existence of doubt. Doubt exists when we cannot rule out a possibility. If we have doubt, we are not certain. We cannot be certain that we are not, say, a brain in a vat. And if we cannot be certain, then we cannot know anything that implies we are not a brain in a vat. Certainty is a very strict measure of justification. One clear possible response is to simply deny that one needs certainty in order to be considered justified. This section looks at some of the classical responses to the skeptic’s argument that we cannot know anything.

British philosopher G. E. Moore (1873–1958) presented an argument against skepticism that relies on common sense. In his famous paper “Proof of an External World,” Moore begins by raising his right hand and claiming, “Here is one hand,” then raising his left hand and claiming, “Here is another hand” (Moore 1939). Therefore, he concludes that skepticism is false. At first glance, this argument may seem flippant. It is not. Moore means to replace the second premise in the skeptical argument with his own premise: I know I have hands . The skeptical argument starts with the premise that if you cannot rule out a skeptical hypothesis, then you do not have knowledge of some proposition pertaining to the external world. Moore uses “I have two hands” as his proposition about the external world. In effect, he accepts the skeptic’s first premise, then uses his commonsense belief in the truth of “I have two hands” to defeat the skeptical hypothesis . Here is the argument’s structure:

I am justified in believing that P.
Therefore, I can rule out the possibility of SH.

In claiming that he has two hands, Moore claims that he is justified in believing propositions about the external world. And if he is justified, then he can rule out the skeptical hypothesis. The skeptic’s argument takes the form of what is called modus ponens , meaning a valid inference where the antecedent of a conditional is affirmed. Moore’s argument takes the form of what is known as modus tollens , meaning a valid inference where the consequence of a conditional is denied.

But notice that the two arguments contradict each other. If we accept the first premise, then either Moore’s or the skeptic’s second premise must be false. So why did Moore think his second premise is better? The choice is between thinking you are justified in believing that you have two hands and thinking you are justified in believing the skeptical hypothesis might be true. Moore thinks he has better reason to believe that he has two hands than he does for believing the skeptical hypothesis is true. For Moore, it is just common sense. You have reason to believe that you have two hands—you can see them and feel them—while you have no reason to believe the skeptical hypothesis is true.

Many philosophers remain unconvinced by Moore’s argument. Any person who accepts the possibility of the skeptical hypothesis will disagree with his premise 2. The possibility of the skeptical hypothesis effectively undermines justification in the belief that you have two hands.

Contextualism

As we just saw, some theorists reject the notion that you must be certain of a belief—that is, rule out all possible defeaters—in order to have knowledge. Moore thinks he has more justification to believe he has two hands than he does that there’s an evil demon tricking him. And in determining whether I am justified in believing in the bird outside my office window, I rarely consider the possibility that I could be a brain in a vat. I’m more likely to focus on my poor vision as a defeater. In the context of bird identification, wild skeptical hypotheses seem out of place. Indeed, we often adjust how much justification we think is needed for a belief to the task at hand. Contextualism is the view that the truth of knowledge attributions depends on the context. Contextualism is a theory about knowledge and justification . When we attribute knowledge to a subject S, the truth of the knowledge claim depends on the context that S is in. The context of S determines the level of justification needed for a true belief to count as knowledge. Contextualism comes from the observation that the level of confidence needed for justification changes depending on what the belief is as well as its the purpose and its importance, among other things. We expect a high degree of justification from physicians when they diagnose disease but less justification from friends recalling the title of a movie because there’s much more at stake in medical diagnoses.

Contextualism deals with skepticism in a unique way. Rarely are we in situations where we must rule out skeptical hypotheses to consider ourselves justified. Indeed, it is generally only when a skeptical hypothesis has been explicitly raised that we think we need to rule it out to be justified. And in our daily lives, the skeptical hypothesis just does not seem relevant. Yes, the possibility that we are brains in a vat technically still exists; we just do not think of it.

Skepticism in Specific Domains

As explained above, local skepticism questions the possibility of knowledge only in particular areas of study. People can accept that knowledge of the external world is possible while also questioning whether knowledge is achievable in more specific domains. A common form of local skepticism focuses on religious belief, specifically knowledge of the existence of God. Another form of local skepticism concerns the ability to ever have moral knowledge. Skepticism in these domains does not entail that there is no God or that all moral claims are false. Rather, skepticism means that we can never be sufficiently justified in believing that there is a God or that moral claims are true. We simply can never know either way whether, for example, God exists.

Skepticism about morality arises due to the nature of its subject. Moral claims are normative, which means that they assert claims about what ought to be the case rather than what is the case. But moral claims are difficult to prove, given their normative nature. How can you prove what ought to be the case? Usually, moral claims are grounded in value claims. An ethicist may say that we ought to help a stranger because well-being is morally valuable. But the skeptic will point out that we cannot prove that something is valuable. We do not have sensors that can confirm moral value. Moral claims instead rest on arguments. The problem, as Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) explained, is that no amount of description can ever help us logically derive a normative claim (Hume 1985). This leaves room for doubt, and therefore skepticism.

Skeptical positions about God also focus on the lack of sufficient evidence. A skeptic can reasonably ask, What sorts of evidence would show the existence of God? Certainly, if God unambiguously appeared right now to everyone in the world simultaneously, then we would have reliable evidence. But God has not done so. The most we have is testimony in the form of religious texts. And testimony, particularly a chain of testimony stretching back hundreds and hundreds of years, is not necessarily reliable. Why believe, for example, the Christian Bible? Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), himself a devote Catholic, argued that the very nature of God—having no limits and existing beyond time—precludes the possibility of ever comprehending the full true nature of God or God’s existence. He states, “Who then can blame the Christians for not being able to give reasons for their belief, professing as they do a religion which they cannot explain by reason. . . . It is in lacking proofs that they do not lack sense” (Pascal 1973, 93). Pascal contends that not attempting to give proof of God is the sensible thing to do. A person can simply rely on faith, which is belief based on insufficient evidence.

Think Like a Philosopher

In your view, what is the relationship between reason and faith? Some theologians say that reason can establish the existence of a supreme being. Others think that reason can only partially justify religious belief and that full belief requires faith, or belief without reason. Reason for some is antithetical to faith, which requires blind obedience. For example, in the biblical story of the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham is willing to sacrifice his only son to God as an act of faith. How do you think we should understand the role of reason in religious belief?

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Authors: Nathan Smith
Publisher/website: OpenStax
Book title: Introduction to Philosophy
Publication date: Jun 15, 2022
Location: Houston, Texas
Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-philosophy/pages/1-introduction
Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-philosophy/pages/7-4-skepticism

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Much of epistemology has arisen either in defense of or in opposition to various forms of skepticism. Indeed, one could classify various theories of knowledge by their responses to skepticism. For example, rationalists could be viewed as skeptical about the possibility of empirical knowledge while not being skeptical with regard to a priori knowledge and empiricists could be seen as skeptical about the possibility of a priori knowledge but not so with regard to empirical knowledge. In addition, many traditional problems, for example the problem of other minds or the problem of our knowledge of God's existence, can be seen as restricted forms of skepticism which hold that we cannot have knowledge of any propositions in some particular domain thought to be within our ken. This essay will focus on the general forms of skepticism which question our knowledge in many, if not all, domains in which we ordinarily think knowledge is possible. Since this essay is not primarily devoted to a discussion of the history of philosophical skepticism, the general forms of skepticism to be discussed are those which contemporary philosophers still find the most interesting.

1. Philosophical Skepticism vs. Ordinary Incredulity

2. two basic forms of philosophical skepticism, 3. academic skepticism, 4. the argument for academic skepticism employing the closure principle.

5. The Cartesian-style Argument for Academic Skepticism Employing the Eliminate All Doubts Principle
6. Contextualism

7. Pyrrhonism

8. the mode to respond to the foundationalist, 9. the mode to respond to the coherentist, 10. the mode to respond to the infinitist, 11. the overall effect of the modes, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries.

Even before examining the various general forms of skepticism, it is crucial that we distinguish between philosophical skepticism and ordinary incredulity because doing so will help to explain why philosophical skepticism is so intriguing. Consider an ordinary case in which we think someone fails to have knowledge. Suppose Anne claims that she knows that the bird she is looking at is a robin and that I believe that if Anne were to look carefully, she would see that its coloration is not quite that of a robin. Its breast is too orange. Further, I believe that it flies somewhat differently than robins do. This bird seems to flitter more than a typical robin.

Thus, there are two grounds for doubting that Anne knows that this is a robin:

The color of this bird isn't typical of robins.
The flight pattern of this bird is not typical of robins.

Now, what makes this a case of ordinary doubt is that there are, in principle, two ways of removing the basis for doubt:

Anne could show that the alleged grounds for doubt are false; or
Anne could show that the grounds for doubt, though true, can be neutralized. [ 1 ]

Taking alternative (1), Anne could show that there are many robins with the coloration of the bird in question by citing the Audubon Field Guide for Birds in which many of the pictured robins have very orange breasts. In other words, Anne could show that (a) is false.

But in order to remove grounds for doubt, it is not necessary that Anne show that the alleged grounds are false. Alternative (2) is available. Consider ground (b). It could be granted that the bird in question flies in a way that is not at all typical of robins. But suppose that on closer inspection we see that some of its tail feathers have been damaged in a way that could account for the unusual flight pattern. Because the bird has difficulty gliding and flying in a straight line, it flaps its wings much more rapidly than is typical of robins. Thus, although we can grant that (b) is true, we would have explained away, or neutralized, the grounds for doubt.

The point here is that in this case, and in all ordinary cases of incredulity, the grounds for the doubt can, in principle, be removed. As Wittgenstein would say, doubt occurs within the context of things undoubted. If something is doubted, something else must be held fast because doubt presupposes that there are means of removing the doubt. [ 2 ] We doubt that the bird is a robin because, at least in part, we think we know how robins typically fly and what their typical coloration is. That is, we think our general picture of the world is right — or right enough — so that it does provide us with both the grounds for doubt and the means for potentially removing the doubt. Thus, ordinary incredulity, say about some feature of the world, occurs against a background of sequestered beliefs about the world. We are not doubting that we have any knowledge of the world. Far from it, we are presupposing that we do know some things about the world. To quote Wittgenstein, “A doubt without an end is not even a doubt” (Wittgenstein 1969, ¶ 625).

In contrast, philosophical skepticism attempts to render doubtful every member of a class of propositions that we think falls within our ken. One member of the class is not pitted against another. The grounds for either withholding assent to the claim that we can have such knowledge or denying that we can have such knowledge are such that there is no possible way to either answer them or neutralize them by appealing to another member of the class. Thus, philosophic doubt or philosophical skepticism, as opposed to ordinary incredulity, does not, in principle, come to an end. Or so the philosophic skeptic will claim!

To clarify the distinction between ordinary incredulity and philosophical doubt, let us consider two recent movies: “The Truman Show” and “The Matrix.” In the former, a character is placed, without his knowledge, in a contrived environment so that his “life” can be broadcast on television. But he begins to wonder whether the world surrounding him is, in fact, what it appears to be. Some events seem to happen too regularly and many other things are just not quite as they should be. Eventually, Truman obtains convincing evidence that all his world is a stage and all the men and women are merely players. The crucial point is that even had he not developed any doubts, there is, in principle, a way to resolve them had they arisen. Such doubts, though quite general, are examples of ordinary incredulity.

Contrast this with the deception practiced in The Matrix. When everything is running as programmed by the machines, there is no possible way for the “people” in the matrix to determine that the world as experienced is only a “dream world” and not the real world (the world of causes and effects). The only “reality” that it is possible to investigate is a computer generated one. (See Irwin 2002, 2005 for collections of articles on The Matrix.)

The Truman Story is a depiction of a case of ordinary incredulity because there is some evidence available for determining what's really the case; whereas The Matrix depicts a situation similar to that imagined by the philosophic skeptic in which it is not possible to obtain evidence for determining that things are not as they seem (at least when the virtual reality is perfectly created). Put another way, the philosophic skeptic challenges our ordinary assumption that there is evidence available that can help us to discriminate between the real world and some counterfeit world that appears in all ways to be identical to the real world. Ordinary incredulity arises within the context of other propositions of a similar sort taken to be known, and it can be removed by discovering the truth of some further proposition of the relevant type. On the other hand, philosophical skepticism about a proposition of a certain type derives from considerations that are such that they cannot be removed by appealing to additional propositions of that type — or so the skeptic claims.

These movies illustrate one other fundamental feature of the philosophical arguments for skepticism, namely, that the debate between the skeptics and their opponents takes place within the evidentialist account of knowledge which holds that knowledge is at least true, sufficiently justified belief. The debate is over whether the grounds are such that they can make a belief sufficiently justified so that a responsible epistemic agent is entitled to assent to the proposition. [ 3 ] The basic issue at stake is whether the justification condition can be fulfilled. A corollary of this is that strictly reliabilist or externalist responses to philosophic skepticism constitute a change of subject. A belief could be reliably produced, i.e., its causal pedigree could be such that anything having that causal etiology is sufficiently likely to be true, but the reasons available for it could fail to satisfy the standards agreed upon by both the skeptics and their opponents.

Consider some proposition, p . There are just three possible propositional attitudes one can have with regard to p 's truth when considering whether p is true. One can either assent to p , or assent to ~ p or withhold assenting both to p and to ~ p . Of course, there are other attitudes one could have toward p . One could just be uninterested that p or be excited or depressed that p . But those attitudes are either ones we have when we are not considering whether p is true or they are attitudes that result from our believing, denying or withholding p . For example, I might be happy or sorry that p is true when I come to believe that it is.

I just spoke of “assent” and I mean to be using it to depict the pro-attitude, whatever it is, toward a proposition that is required for knowing that proposition. Philosophers have differed about what that attitude is. Some take it to be something akin to being certain that p or guaranteeing that p (Malcolm 1963, 58-72). Others have taken it not to be a form of belief at all because, for example, one can know that p without believing it as in cases in which I might in fact remember that Queen Victoria died in 1901 but not believe that I remember it and hence might be said not to believe it (Radford 1966). For the purposes of this essay we need not attempt to pin down precisely the nature of the pro-attitude toward p that is necessary for knowing that p . It is sufficient for our purposes to stipulate that assent is the pro-attitude toward p required to know that p .

Let us use “EI-type” propositions to refer to epistemically interesting types of propositions. Such types of propositions contain tokens some of which are generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. Thus, it would not be epistemically interesting if we did not know exactly what the rainfall will be on March 3 ten years from now. That kind of thing (a fine grained distant future state) is not generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. But it would be epistemically interesting if we cannot know anything about the future, or anything about the contents of someone else's mind, or anything about the past, or anything at all about the “external world.” We think we know many propositions about those types of things.

Now, consider the (meta) proposition concerning the scope of our knowledge, namely: We can have knowledge of EI-type propositions. Given that there are just three stances we can have toward any proposition when considering whether to assent to it, we can:

Assent that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions.
Assent that we cannot have knowledge of EI-type propositions.
Withhold assent to both that we can and that we cannot have knowledge of EI-type propositions.

Let us call someone with the attitude depicted in (i) an “Epistemist.” [ 4 ] Such a person assents to the claim that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions.

The attitude portrayed in (ii) has gone under many names. I will follow the terminology suggested by Sextus Empiricus. He used the term “Academics” to refer to the leaders of the Academy (founded by Plato) during the 3rd to 1st century B.C. According to Sextus, they assented to the claim that we cannot have knowledge of what I have called EI-type propositions — although it is far from clear that this was an accurate description of their views. (See the entry on ancient skepticism .) Perhaps the prime example was Carneades (214-129 B.C.). Other philosophers will refer to this view as “Cartesian skepticism” because of the skeptical arguments investigated by Descartes and his critics in the mid-17th century. And still others will refer to it as “switched world skepticism” or “possible world skepticism” because the arguments for it typically involve imagining oneself to be in some possible world that is both vastly different from the actual world and at the same time absolutely indistinguishable (at least by us) from the actual world. What underlies this form of skepticism is assent to the proposition that we cannot know EI-type propositions because our evidence is inadequate.

Those assenting neither to the proposition that knowledge of EI-type propositions is possible nor to the proposition that such knowledge is not possible can be called “Pyrrhonian Skeptics” after Pyrrho who lived between ca 365 - ca 275 B.C. The primary source of Pyrrhonian Skepticism is the writing of Sextus Empiricus who lived at the end of the second century AD. The Pyrrhonians withheld assent to every non-evident proposition. That is, they withheld assent to all propositions about which genuine dispute was possible, and they took that class of propositions to include the (meta) proposition that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions. Indeed, they sometimes classified the Epistemists and the Academic Skeptics together as dogmatists because the Epistemists assented to the proposition that we can have knowledge, while the Academic Skeptics assented to the denial of that claim. [ 5 ]

Another difference between Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism is closely related to the charge by the latter that the former is really a disguised type of dogmatism. The Academic Skeptic thinks that her view can be shown to be the correct one by an argument (or by arguments). The Pyrrhonian would point out that the Academic Skeptic maintains confidence in the ability of reason to settle matters — at least with regard to the extent of our knowledge of propositions in the EI-class. One way of understanding the so-called problem of the “Cartesian circle” illustrates the Pyrrhonian point: Descartes is relying throughout the Meditations on his power of reasoning to remove the skeptical doubts that he raises, but to do so means that he has exempted the faculty of reasoning from the doubts that he raised in the “First Meditation” about the epistemic reliability of our faculties. A Cartesian reply could be as simple as paraphrasing Luther: Here I stand, as a philosopher with confidence in reason, and as such I can do no other. [ 6 ] Regardless of the adequacy of that kind of response, the point here is that the Pyrrhonians did not think that they had a convincing argument whose conclusion was that withholding assent to non-evident propositions was the appropriate epistemic attitude to have.

I think it is fair to say that Academic Skepticism is usually what is meant when most contemporary philosophers write about skepticism. Thus, it is that form of skepticism to which we will now turn and it is that form that will be the primary focus of this essay, although I will discuss some aspects of Pyrrhonism later.

A way to motivate Academic Skepticism and to clearly distinguish it from ordinary incredulity is to trace the way in which Descartes expanded the realm of what was doubtful (and hence not worthy of assent) in the “First Meditation.” [ 7 ] Descartes begins by noting that the senses have deceived him on some occasions and, in the voice of his skeptical interlocutor, he conjectures that it is never prudent to trust what occasionally misleads. So, we don't have “certain” knowledge of the external world based upon the testimony of our senses. However, in the voice of the non-skeptical interlocutor, he replies that even though the senses have misled him, he can neutralize that purported basis for doubt by pointing out that we are able to determine when our senses are not trustworthy. Thus, this is a case of ordinary incredulity because he appeals to some knowledge of the world gained through our senses to neutralize this basis for doubt. For example, in looking at a straight stick in water, even though it appears bent, we know not to accept the testimony of our senses at face value. We can neutralize the potentially knowledge-robbing proposition that my senses have deceived me on some occasions by adding to it another proposition to which we assent, namely, I can distinguish between the occasions when my senses are trustworthy and those when they are not. Some propositions in the EI-type (propositions about the external world) can be used to rebuff the grounds for ordinary incredulity. Thus, no basis for (philosophical) Academic Skepticism has been located.

Descartes next considers dreaming. What if he were dreaming at that very moment? Would he still have some knowledge of the external world? Yes; because in dreams and in waking life there are some common general features. So, if he were dreaming, he would not know in particular what is going on about him at that moment, but that does not imply that he fails to have any knowledge at that moment. For example, he still could know that there are hands. More importantly, even more simple things about nature “in general” are not thereby made doubtful. We have not found any reason for doubting that there are material objects or that they have a spatial location, or are in motion or at rest, or can exist for a long or short period of time. Again, no basis for Academic Skepticism has been established.

But then Descartes thinks of a grounds for doubt for which he says he “certainly has no reply.” He puts it this way:

… In whatever way [it is supposed] that I have arrived at the state of being that I have reached — whether [it is attributed] to fate or to accident, or [made] out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method — since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author of my being to whom [is assigned] my origin the less powerful. ( Meditations , 147)

In other words, at this point in the Meditations , since he lacks an argument for the claim that whatever is causally responsible for his “state of being” is capable of making his being such that to err would not be natural for it, assenting to propositions arrived at by his “state of being” is not legitimate. Thus, Descartes believes that he has located a basis for doubting all of his supposed former knowledge of the external world that cannot be repulsed by locating another such proposition to which he is entitled. He has found a proposition that, if true, would (by itself) defeat the justification he has for his assenting to propositions about the external world and which is such that (1) he does not (at least at this point in the Meditations ) have a way to reject it and such that (2) he has no way to neutralize its effect. Thus, a basis for philosophical skepticism has been found because an entire class of EI-type propositions — propositions that his “nature” has led him to assent to — is now thrown into doubt because he cannot use one member of the class to reject or neutralize the basis for doubting another member of the class.

Descartes apparently thinks that something is worthy of assent only if it is immune to genuine doubt. It appears that he thinks that something, d , is a grounds for genuine doubt of p for S iff:

d added to S 's beliefs makes assent to p no longer adequately justified;
S is not justified in denying d ; [ 8 ]
S has no way to neutralize d . [ 9 ]

The final step is to say that some proposition is not worthy of assent if there are genuine grounds for doubting it. Indeed, Descartes grants that even after d is located, p might still be more reasonable to believe than to deny ( Meditations , 148). The point is that the pro-attitude should not rise to the level required for knowledge because there is a genuine ground for doubt. Thus, a crucial feature of the Cartesian-style argument for Academic Skepticism is that it employs a very stringent requirement on the type of evidence required for knowledge. It must make a proposition immune to genuine doubt.

To make that clear, let us state the epistemic principle, which we can call the “Eliminate All Doubt Principle,” that apparently informs the Cartesian-style argument:

Eliminate All Doubt Principle [ EAD ]: For all propositions x and d , if d satisfies condition 1. in the definition of genuine doubt that x , then if assenting to x is adequately justified for S , then S is adequately justified in eliminating d (either by denying or neutralizing it).

In more contemporary terminology, the ground for doubt proposed by Descartes can be put like this:

U : My epistemic equipment is untrustworthy.

The Cartesian-style argument for Academic Skepticism can now be put like this:

If I know that p , then there are no genuine grounds for doubting that p .
U is a genuine ground for doubting that p .
Therefore, I do not know that p .

The Cartesian-style argument does not readily lend itself to the objection that by employing it the skeptic is contradicting herself on the grounds that the argument purportedly shows that she fails to know because her epistemic equipment is untrustworthy while at the same time she is employing the very equipment that, were the argument sound, would be unreliable. The reason is that she is neither asserting that her equipment is untrustworthy nor claiming that there is an argument which shows that her equipment is untrustworthy. She is merely claiming that U is a genuine ground for doubt. Thus she neither is holding contradictory beliefs nor is her practice somehow incompatible with her beliefs.

The Cartesian-style argument for Academic Skepticism should be contrasted with what many contemporary philosophers take to be the canonical argument for Academic Skepticism which employs the Closure Principle (CP). [ 10 ] Letting “ h ” stand for an EI-type proposition, for example, G. E. Moore's famous “here's a hand” and letting “ sk ” stand for “I am in a switched-world in which there are no hands, but it appears just as though there were hands,” we can state the canonical CP-style argument for Academic Skepticism as follows:

CP1. If I am justified in believing that h , then I am justified in believing that ~ sk . CP2. I am not justified in believing that ~ sk . Therefore, I am not justified in believing that h .

This argument appeals to a form of the Closure Principle in Premise 1. Letting “ Jsx ” stand for “ S is justified in having some pro-attitude, J , regarding x ,” that principle can be stated as:

Closure Principle [ CP ]: For all propositions x and y , if x entails y , and Jsx , then Jsy .

(In the CP-style argument: x = h and y = ~ sk .)

A crucial feature of CP is that it does not depend upon employing a stringent notion of justification. Suppose that (positive) justification comes in degrees, where the lowest degree is something like mere plausibility and the highest degree is absolute certainty. CP could be recast as follows:

CP*: For all propositions, x and y , if x entails y , and Jsx to degree u , then Jsy to degree v (where u ≤ v ).

Thus, when the Academic Skeptic employs CP (or CP*), she need not be employing a very stringent notion of justification. That is a primary difference between the CP-style and the Cartesian-style argument for Academic Skepticism.

Another difference is that the Cartesian-style argument concerns knowledge, whereas the CP-style argument concerns justification (to whatever degree). Nevertheless, that difference is insignificant because the debate about the merits of skepticism takes place within the evidentialist account of knowledge. Knowledge is taken to entail adequately justified assent and, hence, “knowledge” could be replaced by “adequately justified assent” in the Cartesian style argument.

Let us return to the central difference between Cartesian and CP-style arguments, namely the former employs EAD while the later employs CP (or CP*). EAD requires that we eliminate any genuine grounds for doubt and those include more than mere contraries (propositions which are such that they both cannot be true, but they both could be false). In addition, recall that according to the Cartesian to be adequately justified in eliminating d as a ground for doubt for x , either S is adequately justified in denying d (assenting to ~ d ) or S is adequately justified in assenting to some neutralizing proposition, n , such that adding ( n & d ) to S 's beliefs fails to make it the case that x is no longer adequately justified. [ 11 ] Thus, since every contrary of some proposition is a potential genuine ground for doubt in virtue of satisfying condition 1. in the definition of genuine doubt, EAD entails CP but CP does not entail EAD. [ 12 ] To see that, consider any contrary, say c , of a proposition, say h . The proposition, c , would be a potential genuine ground for doubting h since if c were added to S 's beliefs, h would no longer be adequately justified because S 's beliefs would then contain a proposition, c , that entailed the denial of h . Furthermore, the only way S could eliminate c as a ground for doubt would be by denying it, since nothing could neutralize it. Thus, EAD has the consequence that if S is justified in assenting to h , then S is justified in denying every contrary of h . But that is just an instance of CP, since (by hypothesis) h entails ~ c . That CP does not entail EAD should be clear since there are grounds for doubting h that are not contraries of h . For example, the proposition, U , considered above is a grounds for doubting h , but h and U could both be true.

Thus, there are two basic forms of Academic Skepticism: The Cartesian-style argument that employs the strong EAD principle and the CP-style that employs the weaker CP. Since the CP-style skeptic employs the weaker epistemic principle, it will be best to begin by focusing on it because any criticisms of it are likely to redound to the stronger form.

There appear to be only three ways that one can respond to the CP-style skeptical argument: deny at least one premise, deny that the argument is valid, or reluctantly accept the conclusion — if neither of the first two alternatives succeeds. (I say “appear” because I will mention later a fourth alternative that is available to the Pyrrhonian Skeptic.) The second alternative — denying the validity of the argument — has not been taken seriously by the anti-skeptic because it would lead to embracing an extremely severe form of skepticism. If one were to deny that modus tollens is a valid form of inference, one would also have to deny the validity of (i) disjunctive syllogism or (ii) modus ponens and contraposition, since it is easy to transform modus tollens arguments into ones employing the other forms of inference. Hence, if this alternative were chosen, reasoning would apparently come to a complete standstill. That, presumably, is why no one has ever seriously considered this alternative.

So, if we are not to reluctantly embrace the conclusion, it appears as though we must reject either the first premise — an instantiation of closure — or the second premise.

Consideration of CP1

Let us begin an examination of CP1 and the general closure principle of which it is an instantiation. The basic issue is this: Does closure hold for justified belief?

Closure certainly does hold for some properties, for example, truth. If p is true and it strictly implies q , then q is true. It just as clearly does not hold for other properties. If p is a belief of mine, and p strictly implies q , it does not follow that q is a belief of mine. I might fail to see the implication or I might be “wired” incorrectly (from birth or as the result of an injury) or I simply might be epistemically perverse. I might, for example, believe all of the axioms of Euclidean plane geometry, but fail to believe (or perhaps even refuse to believe) that the exterior angle of a triangle is equivalent to the sum of the two opposite interior angles.

What about justified belief? It is easy to see that, as stated above, CP (or CP*) is clearly false. Every necessary truth is entailed by every proposition, and we can be justified in believing a false proposition. But one surely does not want to claim that S is justified in believing every necessary truth whenever S has some justified belief in a false proposition. In addition, some entailments might be beyond S 's capacity to grasp. Finally, there might even be some contingent propositions that are beyond S's capacity to grasp which are entailed by some propositions that S does, indeed, grasp. And it might be thought that S is not entitled to believe anything that S cannot grasp.

But it also appears that CP can easily be repaired. We can stipulate (i) that the domain of the propositions in the generalization of CP includes only contingent propositions that are within S 's capacity to grasp and (ii) that the entailment is “obvious” to S . The skeptic can agree to those restrictions because the skeptical scenarios are posited in such a way as to render it obvious that our ordinary beliefs are false in those scenarios, and it is taken to be a contingent claim that S is in the actual circumstances as described in the antecedent.

There is one other required clarification of the restricted version of CP. “Justified belief” is ambiguous. It could be used to refer to a species of actually held beliefs — namely, those actually held beliefs of S that are justified. Or it could refer to propositions that S is entitled to hold — regardless of whether S does indeed hold them. If CP is to be acceptable, “justified belief” must be used so as to mean the latter for a reason already cited, i.e., belief does not transmit through entailment.

We are now in a position to ask: Does the restricted form of closure hold regarding what we are entitled to believe — even if we don't, in fact, believe it?

There appears to be a perfectly general argument for the restricted version. Let p entail q , and let us suppose that S is entitled to believe that p iff S has (non-overridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true: [ 13 ]

If S is entitled to believe that p , then S has (non-overridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true. [by the supposition]
If S has (non-overridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true, then S has (non- overridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true. [because p entails q ]
If S is entitled to believe that p , then S has (non-overridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true. [from 1,2]
If S has (non-overridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true, then S is entitled to believe that q . [by the supposition]
Therefore, if S is entitled to believe that p , S is entitled to believe that q . [from 2,3]

The supposition mentioned above seems plausible given that the debate over the merits of Academic Skepticism employs an evidentialist account of justification. That is, the debate between the Academic Skeptic and the Epistemist is over whether S has adequate grounds for EI-type propositions such that those grounds make p sufficiently likely to be true.

Premise 2 contains the key claim. In spite of the fact that the probabilities (whether subjective or objective) transmit through entailment, it has been challenged. Fred Dretske and others have produced cases in which they believe CP fails and fails precisely because Premise 2 in the general argument for CP is false. [ 14 ] Dretske writes:

… something's being a zebra implies that it is not a mule … cleverly disguised by the zoo authorities to look like a zebra. Do you know that these animals are not mules cleverly disguised? If you are tempted to say “Yes” to this question, think a moment about what reasons you have, what evidence you can produce in favor of this claim. The evidence you had for thinking them zebras has been effectively neutralized, since it does not count toward their not being mules cleverly disguised to look like zebras. (Dretske 1970, 1015-1016)

Dretske is speaking of “knowledge” rather than beliefs to which one is entitled, but that seems irrelevant since the issue concerns the supposed lack of a sufficient source of evidence or reasons for the claim that the animal is not a cleverly disguised mule. In other words, Dretske grants that S has (non-overridden) grounds that make it sufficiently likely that the animals are zebras, but he holds that S does not have (non-overridden) grounds making it sufficiently likely that the animals are not cleverly disguised mules because S's evidence for the former has been “effectively neutralized.”

The crucial thing to note about this proposed counterexample is that it works only if the Closure Principle entails that the very same source of evidence that justifies S in believing that the animals are zebras must justify S in believing that they are not cleverly disguised mules. Since the “evidence” for the former has been “effectively neutralized,” it is not available for the latter. Now, in response one could claim that once the question of whether the animals are disguised mules has been raised, the evidence is “effectively neutralized” for both the former and the latter, and S is no longer justified in believing that the animals are zebras. Thus, it could be held that this example could actually be used to support CP.

Nevertheless, let us grant that S 's evidence for the claim that the animals are zebras cannot be used to show that they are not cleverly disguised mules. It could be argued that this would not force giving up Premise 2 in the general argument for CP.

Such an argument could begin by recalling that Premise 2 claimed merely that whenever S had (non-overridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true, then S has (non-overridden) grounds for making q sufficiently likely to be true. It did not require that it was the very same grounds in both cases. Dretske's purported counterexample seems to require that CP implies that the adequate source of evidence is the same for both propositions. Thus, letting “ xRy ” mean that x provides an adequate evidence for y , the counter example depends upon assuming that if closure holds between p and q , then the evidence “path” must look like this:

Pattern 1 … Rp / / … Re \ \ … Rq

No doubt this constraint sometimes correctly portrays the relevant evidential relationships when some proposition, p , entails some other proposition, q . For example, suppose I have adequate evidence for the claim that Anne has two brothers, then it would seem that the very same evidence would be adequate for believing that Anne has at least one brother. But the defender of CP, and more particularly the Academic Skeptic, could point out that closure need not require that type of evidence path in all cases in which one proposition entails another.

Two are two other possibilities for instantiating closure that are captured by Premise 2 that can be depicted as follows:

Pattern 2 … ReRp … Rq pdf include--> Pattern 3 … Re (where e includes q ) Rp

In Pattern 2 cases there is some adequate evidence, e , for p ; and p , itself, is the adequate evidence for q , since p strictly implies q . For example, if I have adequate evidence for believing that 2 is a prime number, I can use that proposition as an adequate reason for believing that there is at least one even prime. Indeed, consider any belief arrived at as a result of deductive inference. In such a case, we legitimately infer the entailed proposition from the conjunction of the premises that entails it. The plausibility of the famous Gettier cases depends upon Pattern 2 type cases in which closure holds. Gettier says:

… for any proposition p , if S is justified in believing p , and p entails q , and S deduces q from p and accepts q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing q . (Gettier 1963, 122) [ 15 ]

In Pattern 3 cases the order of the evidence is reversed because q serves as part of the evidence for p . For example, I am justified in believing that water is present if I am justified in believing that there is present a clear, odorless, watery-tasting and watery-looking fluid at standard temperature and pressure. This pattern is typical of abductive inferences. In addition, there are cases in which some contraries of h need to be eliminated prior to h 's being justified. For example, in the zebra-in-the-zoo case, if I had some reason to think that the animals were cleverly disguised mules, then it could be argued that such a contrary would need to be eliminated before I would be justified in believing that the animals were zebras.

The crucial point for the discussion here is that granting that there is no Pattern 1 type evidence path available to S in the zebra-in-the-zoo case does not require relinquishing premise 2 in the general argument for CP. The reason is simply that CP does not entail that there is Pattern 1 type evidence available in every case in which p entails q . Indeed, it could be suggested that the animals looking like zebras in a pen marked “zebras” is, ceteris paribus , adequate evidence to justify the claim that they are zebras; and once S is entitled to believe that the animals are zebras, S can, using the principle stated by Gettier, justifiably deduce that they are not cleverly disguised mules. That is, S can employ an evidence path like that depicted in Pattern 2. (See Klein 1981, 1995, and 2000a.) Further, if S had some reason to think that the animals were cleverly disguised mules, then S might have to eliminate that possibility before she could justifiably believe that they are zebras. In other words, S might have to employ an evidence path like the one depicted in Pattern 3. The point is that the Dretske-like counterexamples appear to depend upon the false claim that if Premise 2 in the general argument for CP is true, then the evidential relationship between the entailing and the entailed proposition is always correctly depicted by Pattern 1.

In addition to the purported counterexamples to closure that we have just examined, there are some general theories of knowledge in which closure fails. Robert Nozick's account of knowledge is the best such example. Roughly his account is this (Nozick 1981, 172-187):

S knows that p iff : S believes p ; p is true; if p were true, S would believe p ; if p were not true, S would not believe p .

This account is often referred to as a tracking account of knowledge because whenever S knows that p , S 's beliefs track p . Think of a guided missile tracking its target. If the target moves left, the missile moves left. If the target moves right, the missile moves to the right. According to the tracking account of knowledge our beliefs must track the truth as a guided missile tracks its target.

There is one important clarification of conditions 3 and 4 discussed by Nozick, namely, that the method by which S acquires the belief must be held constant from the actual world to the possible world. A doting grandmother might know that her grandchild is not a thief on the basis of very good evidence, but would still believe that he wasn't a thief, even if he were, because she loves him. So, we must require that the grandmother use the same method in both the actual and the near possible worlds, for otherwise condition 4 would exclude some clear cases of knowledge. This is not the place to provide a full examination of Nozick's account of knowledge. [ 16 ] What is crucial for our discussion is that it is easy to see that closure will fail for knowledge in just the kind of case that the Academic Skeptic is putting forward because of condition 4. Suppose S knows that there is a chair before her. Would she know that she is not in a skeptical scenario in which it merely appears that there is a chair? If the fourth condition were true, she would not know that because if she were in such a scenario, she would be fooled into thinking that she wasn't. Thus, either condition 4 is too strong or CP fails.

There are some reasons for thinking that condition 4 is too strong. Consider a relatively simple case in which S seems to have knowledge but condition 4 does not obtain. S looks at a thermometer that is displaying the temperature as 72 degrees. The thermometer is working perfectly and S comes to believe that the temperature is 72 degrees by reading the thermometer and coming to believe what it says. But if the temperature were not 72, suppose that something would affect the thermometer in a way that made it read “72,” so that by employing the same method (looking at the thermometer and coming to believe what it reads) S would still believe that it was 72. (One could imagine all kinds of circumstances that would have that causal result. A comical one: Imagine a lizard that is now sleeping on the thermometer that would stir were the temperature to rise, thus dislodging a small rock that hits the thermometer breaking the mercury column in a way that makes the thermometer still read 72.)

Or consider this case in the literature: You put a glass of ice-cold lemonade on a picnic table in your back yard. You go inside and get a telephone call from a friend and talk for half an hour. When you hang up you remember that you had left the ice-cold lemonade outside exposed to the hot sun and come to believe that it isn't ice-cold anymore. It would seem that you could know that even if in some near world a friend of yours who just happened to be walking by noticed the glass and happening to have a cooler full of ice with him put the glass of lemonade in the cooler to keep it ice-cold for you. Thus, if the lemonade were still ice-cold, you would believe that it wasn't. (See Vogel 1987, 206.)

The moral of these cases seems to be that S can know that p even if there are some near possible worlds in which p is false but S still believes that p (employing the same method of belief formation). Indeed, it could plausibly be maintained that what is required for knowledge is that the method of belief formation work in this world — exactly as it is — even if the method would fail were there to be some slight variation in the actual world.

Further Clarification of Closure

In order to clarify CP further, it would be useful to contrast it with a stronger principle. I have already pointed out that in some cases some contraries of h need to be eliminated before h becomes justified. Suppose, however, that the skeptic requires that all contraries to h be eliminated before h is justified. That is much stronger than CP because CP is compatible with Pattern 1 and Pattern 2 type evidential relationships. In neither is every contrary to h eliminated prior to h . In Pattern 2, the contrary of h is eliminated after h ; in Pattern 1, h is arrived at and its contrary is eliminated simultaneously. Keith Lehrer might be appealing to the stronger principle when he writes:

… generally arguments about where the burden of proof lies are unproductive. It is more reasonable to suppose that such questions are best left to courts of law where they have suitable application. In philosophy [emphasis added] a different principle of agnoiology [the study of ignorance] is appropriate, to wit, that no hypothesis should be rejected as unjustified without argument against it. Consequently, if the sceptic puts forth a hypothesis inconsistent with the hypothesis of common sense, then there is no burden of proof on either side … . (Lehrer 1971, 53)

The passage is open to more than one interpretation, but it will serve to illustrate my point, namely that there is a very strong principle — call it the “ Eliminate All Contraries First Principle ” [EACF Principle] — which requires that all evidence paths exhibit Pattern 3 and that the denials of all contraries to a given proposition appear prior to that proposition.

If EACF were accepted, there is a really easy route to Academic Skepticism. If it were required that the evidence, e , for some hypothesis, h , must contain the denials of all the contraries of h , it is clear that e would have to entail h . To see that, note that (~ h & p ) as well as (~ h & ~ p ) are contraries of h , and that it is not possible for both ~(~ h & p ) and ~(~ h & ~ p ) to be true and h to be false. Thus, if the skeptic were to adopt the EACF Principle, the evidence for h would have to entail h . (See Klein 1981, 100-104.) That requirement seems to be too strong for many, if not most, empirically contingent propositions. Hence, it could be plausibly argued that this is an inappropriate way to motivate skepticism because in so far as skepticism remains an interesting philosophical position, the skeptic cannot impose such an outrageous departure from our ordinary epistemic practices.

There is a related point worth mentioning. Note that even EAD, although requiring that we be able to reject or neutralize every potential ground for doubt (i.e., a proposition satisfying condition 1. in the definition of genuine doubt), does not require what EACF does. EAD does not require that we eliminate all of the grounds for doubt (including contraries) before we are justified in believing a hypothesis. Indeed, EAD allows for the possibility that we could use h , itself, or something that h justifies as the basis for rejecting or neutralizing some grounds for doubt.

Consideration of CP2

Now, with those clarifications of CP (and EAD) in mind, we can turn to CP2. It claims that we are not justified in denying the skeptical hypothesis — in other words that we are not justified in believing that we are not being deceived. What arguments can be given for CP2? It is tempting to suggest something like this: The skeptical scenarios are developed in such a way that it is supposed that we could not tell that we were being deceived. For example, we are asked to consider that there is an Evil Genius “so powerful” that it could (1) make me believe that there were hands when there were none and (2) make it such that I could not detect the illusion. But the skeptic must be very careful here. She cannot require that in order for S to know (or be justified in assenting to) something, say x , that if x were false, she would not still assent to x . We have just seen (while examining Nozick's account of knowledge) that this requirement is too strong. So the mere fact that there could be skeptical scenarios in which S still believes that she is not in such a scenario cannot provide the skeptic with a basis for thinking that she fails to know that she is not (actually) in a skeptical scenario. But even more importantly , were that a requirement of knowledge (or justification), then we have seen that closure would fail and, consequently, the basis for the first premise in the CP-style argument for Academic Skepticism would be forfeited. [ 17 ]

In addition, we have also seen that if CP is true, and it did seem to be true, then there is one evidence pattern between entailing and entailed propositions that might prove useful to the Epistemist at this point in the discussion. If S could be justified in believing some proposition that entailed the denial of the skeptical hypothesis, then S could be justified in denying that hypothesis by employing evidence Pattern 2. Indeed, as G. E Moore suggested (1962, 242), what is to prevent the Epistemist from claiming that S is justified in denying that she is in a skeptical scenario because S is justified in believing that she has hands and CP is true? A plausible answer to Moore seems to be something like this: The issue that is under dispute is whether S is justified in assenting to (or knows that) she has hands. Thus, the Epistemist cannot reject CP2 by assuming the denial of the conclusion of the skeptical argument. All well and good. But the same sauce cooks the gander, and the skeptic cannot claim as the reason for CP2 that since S is not justified in believing that she has hands, she cannot avail herself of that as her reason for being justified in believing that she is not in a skeptical scenario.

So, what reason can the skeptic give for CP2? I do not know of one that has been offered that is consistent with the defense of CP and that does not beg the question. That is not to say that CP2 is false. Far from it. Perhaps it is true. The issue here is whether we are justified in accepting or rejecting it. It seems that in order to accept it and CP, the skeptic would have to assert that S is not justified in believing that she has hands because evidence Pattern 2 depicts one way in which S could be justified in denying the skeptical scenario. But that would beg the question because the conclusion of the CP-style argument is nothing other than S is not justified in believing that she has hands. [ 18 ]

I had mentioned earlier that although there seemed to be only three responses available when confronting the CP-style argument for Academic Skepticism (accept the conclusion, reject one or both of the premises, or deny the validity of the argument), there is, in fact, a fourth alternative. That alternative is simply to point out that given the required defense of CP1 against the counterexample proposed by Dretske, there is no good argument for CP2 (because it would beg the question), and, hence, there is no good way to motivate Academic Skepticism with a CP-style argument.

Of course, the Pyrrhonian Skeptic might point to the possibility that there is also no good argument to the conclusion that we do have knowledge of EI-type propositions. Some might think that the Academic Skeptic wins in such a stand-off. But recall that what distinguishes the Academic Skeptic from the Pyrrhonian Skeptic is that only the Academic Skeptic assents to the claim that we cannot have knowledge. The Pyrrhonian Skeptic withholds judgement regarding whether we can have knowledge. And in a stand-off, the Pyrrhonian would seem to have appropriate attitude.

This concludes the discussion of CP-style skepticism. I would now like to briefly consider the second form of Academic Skepticism, namely the Cartesian-style that employs the Eliminate All Doubt Principle. Then, before we conclude our discussion of Academic Skepticism, I would like to consider one quite popular response to it — contextualism.

5. The Cartesian-style Argument for Academic Skepticism Employing the Eliminate All Doubt Principle

This section can be brief because we can apply the lessons learned in the discussion of CP-style arguments to an evaluation of the Cartesian-style arguments that employ EAD. First, it should be clear that the general argument for the Closure Principle, considered earlier, cannot be used as a model for a general argument for EAD. That argument depended crucially on the fact that h entailed ~ sk . (That is what provided the basis for premise 2 in the general argument for CP.) As we saw, the negation of a genuine ground for doubt need not be entailed by h . So, the skeptic has a much harder task in motivating EAD.

Nevertheless, let us grant that some argument could be provided that makes EAD plausible. The same dialectical issues that we have considered in discussing potential counterexamples to CP will recur regarding EAD. Reconsider the zebra-in-the-zoo case. But this time instead of the (contrary) proposition “the animals (I am seeing) are cleverly disguised mules,” consider a potential ground for doubt, i.e., “there are cleverly disguised mules within my perceptual field,” which according to EAD would have to be rejected or neutralized. Now, if the evidence I had for believing that the animals are zebras wasn't adequate to deny the former, it is certainly not adequate for the denying the later. So the EAD skeptic will have to appeal to the analogs of Pattern 2 and Pattern 3 type cases in order to save the principle from a Dretske-like counterexample. Thus, the skeptic employing EAD would be put in the same dialectical situation as the CP-style skeptic because she must provide a basis for the second premise in her argument for Academic Skepticism that (1) is compatible with her required defense of EAD against Dretske-like objections and (2) does not beg the question or appeal to a requirement that all grounds for doubt must be eliminated prior to a proposition being justified.

To sum up: The Cartesian-style skeptic employing EAD is in a worse dialectical position than the skeptic employing CP. Whatever problems are associated with CP skepticism transfer to EAD skepticism and, in addition, there appears to be no plausible general argument for EAD while there was one for CP.

6. Contextualism [ 19 ]

Examining the contextualist diagnosis of Academic Skepticism and its suggested solution will allow us to explore a question that remains concerning CP and EAD. It could be held that such skeptics need not employ CP or EAD in general, but rather more restricted versions, namely merely their instantiations as they appear in their respective arguments. The skeptic could maintain that there is something quite special about the skeptical hypothesis such that even though closure might not hold in general between any entailing proposition and every proposition it entails, it does hold between such propositions as “here's a hand” and “it does not merely appear that here is a hand.” Even more strongly, the skeptic could maintain that only the Pattern 3 type evidence path correctly depicts the evidential relationships between those propositions. Hence, in order to be justified in believing the former I must first eliminate the latter, where to eliminate a proposition means (here) nothing more than to be justified in denying it. The requirement that we eliminate all contraries to some proposition, h , before we are entitled to believe that h is too stringent for ordinary contexts, for the reasons cited, but perhaps when engaged in philosophy we have to be justified in believing that the skeptical hypothesis is false before the propositions of common sense are justified. That is essentially what the contextualists claim. They hold that in some contexts — philosophical ones — more stringent standards of evidence obtain than obtain in ordinary contexts. (For defenses of contextualism, see Cohen 1987, 1988; Lewis 1996; DeRose 1992, 1995)

There are two questions we should consider: Is contextualism about knowledge (or justified belief) the correct view to hold? If so, will it shed light on Academic Skepticism?

In answering the first question, it could be argued that contextualism with regard to the attribution of virtually any property is true. (Perhaps it doesn't apply to highly technical ones that only occur in one type of context.) For example, suppose that Mr. Lax says that Sam is happy. We discover that Lax is using “happy” to mean that a person is happy just in case he/she has had more happy moments than unhappy moments during a lifetime. Mr. Stringent demurs. For him, a person is happy only if he/she hardly ever experiences an unhappy moment.

Who is right about whether Sam is happy? Contextualists would say that they both could be because they are not using “happy” with the same criteria in mind. But it is crucial to note that given that each person recognizes that the other is applying different standards, Mr. Lax and Mr. Stringent can agree that, given what Lax means , Sam is happy and that, given what Stringent means , Sam is not happy.

Now, of course, we cannot employ any standards we please and still be speaking a common language. For example, Mr. Lax cannot legitimately lower the standards so as to make it the case that Sam is happy simply because he once was happy for a very short period and, similarly, Mr. Stringent cannot require that Sam is happy only if it is logically impossible that Sam experience an unhappy moment. There is a limited range, albeit rather wide, of appropriate standards for the application of a term.

The predicates “having knowledge,” “having adequate evidence,” “being justified,” and the like, do appear to be similar to most other predicates in this respect: Within a wide but non-arbitrary range of standards, speakers can legitimately demand that S have more or less of the relevant evidence for p before they will agree that “ S knows that p ” or “ S has adequate evidence for p .” So, the answer to the first question about the truth of contextualism seems to be: Contextualism about knowledge attributions is correct. It is just one instance of the general truth that standards for the application of a term vary within a wide but non-arbitrary range as determined by various features of the context.

Let us turn to the second and much more philosophically interesting question: Does the truth of this version of contextualism shed much, if any, light on Academic Skepticism? If it did, then the correct way to diagnose the dispute between the Academic Skeptic and the Epistemist would be to note that the Epistemist is using a lax standard and the skeptic a more stringent one. Having one's ordinary cake is compatible with eating one's skeptical cake because in the ordinary context we do have knowledge, but as standards rise to those employed by the skeptics, we do not have knowledge.

In response, it might be objected that this is not the proper diagnosis of the disagreement between the Academic Skeptic and the Epistemist. What the Academic Skeptic seems to be claiming is that we do not know what we ordinarily claim to know. We don't know EI-type propositions. That is, the Academic Skeptic claims that our ordinary knowledge claims are false. If she is merely claiming that on her standards we don't know, the skeptic's claims — like those of Mr. Stringent — can be granted and then promptly ignored because nothing that we formerly believed that we knew turns out not to have been known. The scope of our knowledge or justified beliefs in the ordinary context is left intact.

Thus, the parallel with the case of Sam's putative happiness seems to break down. In that case, Mr. Stringent would grant that Mr. Lax is correct given what Lax meant by “happy.” But the Academic Skeptic will not grant that the Epistemist is correct when he asserts that he has knowledge. The skeptic reasons that the Epistemist doesn't know that h , even given what the Epistemist means by “know,” because the Epistemist's justification for h isn't good enough. Indeed, the Academic Skeptic employing CP (or the stronger EAD) thinks that there cannot be any evidence for ~ sk no matter how low the standards are set; thus, h could not be known.

The Epistemist could argue that this is not required. Suppose we are looking at Dretske's zebras and someone asks whether we have eliminated the possibility that those are cleverly disguised aliens from some planet thousands of light years from our solar system? Or that they are not super-robots newly invented by some very clever third graders in Mrs. Johnson's English class? Or that they are not members of the lost tribe of Israel disguised as zebras who have been hiding out from the Assyrians since the 8th century BC.

Those are so far-fetched, the Epistemist could claim, that even if someone advancing those alternatives happens to believe them, there appears to be no reason why one should have to rise to the bait and eliminate those alternatives prior to being justified in believing that the animals are zebras. The Epistemist could continue by claiming that the skeptical hypothesis — that we are not in the actual world but rather in one which seems identical to it — is just as, or possibly even more, farfetched.

Thus the Epistemist could argue that try as she might, the Academic Skeptic cannot impose the burden of eliminating a farfetched hypothesis merely by raising it, even were she to believe it. On the other hand, the Epistemist could agree that in Dretske's zebra-in-the zoo case, if there really were some evidence, however slight, for the claim that the animals are painted mules, then Mr. Stringent might be able to legitimately require that S rule out that possibility prior to being justified in believing that the animals are zebras. But absent any evidence of that sort, the skeptic's requirements will fall on deaf ears. In parallel fashion, if there really were some evidence, however slight, that there is an evil genius making it merely appear that there are hands, then, perhaps the Academic Skeptic could legitimately require that S eliminate that possibility prior to being justified in believing that there are hands.

Put another way: The Epistemist can claim that the range of relevant alternatives is bounded by those propositions for which there is some, even minimal, evidence. The Epistemist will claim that it is a context-invariant feature of knowledge attributions that the relevant evidence does not include the denial of contraries for which there is no evidence whatsoever. The issue seems to be whether our ordinary knowledge claims are true — not whether they would be true in some context with requirements more stringent that those ordinarily applied.

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, what distinguishes Pyrrhonian Skepticism from Academic Skepticism is that the former does not deny that we can have knowledge of what I have called EI-type propositions. They also would not assent to the Epistemist's claim that we can have such knowledge. Let us see how they arrived at that position.

To deny something is merely to assent to its negation. Since the Pyrrhonians took assent, i.e., the pro-attitude required for knowledge, to involve a kind of certainty that the matter had been finally and fully resolved, they did not assent to what they took to be non-evident propositions.

In distinguishing Pyrrhonism from the Academic Skeptics (in particular, Carneades and Cleitomachus), Sextus writes in Outlines of Pyrrhonism , [ PH ]:

… although both the Academics and the [Pyrrhonian] Skeptics say that they believe some things, yet here too the difference between the two philosophies is quite plain. For the word “believe” has different meanings; it means not to resist but simply to follow without any strong impulse or inclination, as the boy is said to believe his tutor; but sometimes it means to assent to a thing of deliberate choice and with a kind of sympathy due to strong desire, as when the incontinent man believes him who approves of an extravagant mode of life. Since, therefore, Carneades and Cleitomachus declare that a strong inclination accompanies their credence … while we say that our belief is a matter of simply yielding without any consent, here too there must be difference between us and them. ( PH I:230)

So, the Pyrrhonians would not assent to non-evident propositions. Of course, a crucial issue concerns the scope of the non-evident. To try to resolve that is beyond the scope of this essay (but see Burnyeat & Frede 1997). For our discussion we can suppose that a sufficient condition for some proposition being non-evident obtains whenever there can legitimately be disagreement about it. And, taking the cue from our discussion of Academic Skepticism, I think we can also safely stipulate that there can be legitimate disagreement about some proposition if there is some evidence for it and some evidence against it. So, the question is whether the proposition S can have knowledge of EI-type propositions can be the subject of legitimate disagreement.

Putting the matter that way seems to make the answer obvious. There are arguments for Academic Skepticism which have some plausibility, and some plausible objections to those arguments that support the Epistemist's view. Plausible arguments for something constitute some evidence for it. So, we can safely conjecture both that it is not evident that we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions and that it is not evident that such propositions necessarily fall outside our cognizance. Thus, the primary question then becomes this: What prompted the Pyrrhonian to withhold assent to all non-evident propositions?

The answer is that they found over and over again that neither experience nor reason was able to settle disputes about the non-evident. But the Pyrrhonians did not eschew what they called “appearances” or reasoning. Quite the contrary, the Greek for “skeptic” is closely related to the verb “ sképtomai ” which means “to inquire.” Thus, calling oneself a Pyrrhonian Skeptic did not imply a disregard for inquiry or reasoning. Indeed, the modes, to be discussed later, were not designed to inhibit reasoning. Rather, they were designed to assist the Pyrrhonian in continuing to inquire by shielding her from the disquieting state of dogmatism.

Pyrrhonian skepticism was thus a way of life without assent. As such, it has been ridiculed. The Pyrrhonian was likened to someone with Alzheimer's — surviving only if someone else were around to save him from all sorts of perils: falling into pits, being attacked by a dog or run over by a chariot. That caricature seems to miss the point that the Pyrrhonian only withheld assent with regard to the non-evident propositions. [ 20 ] Assent to what was evident (i.e., what appears to be) or a weaker pro-attitude toward the non-evident were commonplace.

As mentioned above, the Pyrrhonians would practice what they called the “modes” in order to try to assure that they were not “perturbed” by assenting. Like piano exercises for the fingers that would result in semi-automatic responses to the printed notes on a sheet of music, the modes were mental exercises that would result in semi-automatic responses to claims being made by the dogmatists — those who assented to the non-evident.

The Pyrrhonians believed that (but would not have assented to the claim that) there were two potential sources of knowledge: perception and reasoning. When the results of perception were introduced to settle a non-evident matter — say the actual color of an object (as opposed to how it appeared to someone), they would point out some or all of the following (Sextus Empiricus, PH I:40-128):

Members of different species of animals probably perceive colors quite differently because their eyes are constructed differently.
Members of the same species would have different perceptions of the color depending upon such things as the condition of their eyes, the nature of the medium of perception (varying light conditions for example), and the order in which objects were perceived.

… When we question whether the underlying object is such as it appears, we grant the fact that it appears, and our doubt does not concern the appearance itself, but the account given of the appearance. ( PH I:19-20)

Now, perhaps a careful analysis of what is meant by “real” properties coupled with a Cartesian-like answer to some of the doubts raised earlier in the Meditations would suffice to respond to the Pyrrhonian concerning the relativity of our senses. For example, if we took the “real” color of objects to be that property (or state) of the object, whatever it is, that produces perceptions of a certain sort in humans under “normal” circumstances and if we could distinguish (as Descartes suggested) normal from abnormal circumstances, then we might have a basis for resisting the Pyrrhonian modes concerning perception. But be that as it may, whether we can have knowledge of EI-type propositions is not a matter that is potentially resolvable by direct appeal to our senses. It will only be resolved if either the Epistemist or the Academic Skeptic has a compelling argument. Thus, the issue here is whether reasoning can settle matters.

The Pyrrhonians thought that there were modes which could induce withholding assent to the results of reasoning. It is to those modes that we should turn.

Perhaps the most influential passage in the corpus of the Pyrrhonian literature is a section from PH entitled “Five Modes of Agrippa.” Although the chapter title mentions five modes, two of them repeat those found elsewhere and are similar to the ones just discussed concerning perception. They are the modes of discrepancy and relativity and are important because they provide the background for understanding the description of the three modes concerning reasoning. Specifically, it is presumed that the relevant object of inquiry is subject to legitimate dispute and that reasoning is employed to resolve the dispute. The issue before us then is whether reasoning can legitimately lead to assent. Sextus writes:

The Mode based upon regress ad infinitum is that whereby we assert that the thing adduced as a proof of the matter proposed needs a further proof, and this again another, and so on ad infinitum , so that the consequence is suspension [of assent], as we possess no starting-point for our argument … We have the Mode based upon hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being forced to recede ad infinitum , take as their starting-point something which they do not establish but claim to assume as granted simply and without demonstration. The Mode of circular reasoning is the form used when the proof itself which ought to establish the matter of inquiry requires confirmation derived from the matter; in this case, being unable to assume either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both. ( PH I:166-169)

The question is this: Supposing that the dogmatist assents to something, say p , on the basis of a reason, say q , and gives r as his reason for q , etc., how should the Pyrrhonian react in order to avoid the snares of dogmatism? The suggestion in this passage appears to be to force the dogmatist into either an apparently never ending regress or an arbitrary assertion or begging the question.

This strategy seems to be based upon the claim that there are (only) three possible patterns which any instance of reasoning can take. I will call the first pattern “infinitism.” Today we commonly refer to the second account as “foundationalism.” Finally, I will refer to the third possibility as “coherentism.”

The so-called “regress problem,” can be stated briefly in this way: There are only three possible patterns of reasoning. Either the process of producing reasons stops at a purported foundational proposition or it doesn't. If it does, then the reasoner is employing a foundationalist pattern. If it doesn't, then either the reasoning is circular, or it is infinite and non-repeating. There are no other significant possibilities. [ 21 ] Thus, if none of these forms of reasoning can properly lead to assent, then no form can.

So, we must look briefly at the reasons that a Pyrrhonian might have for thinking that foundationalism, coherentism and infinitism are inherently incapable of providing an adequate basis for assent. [ 22 ]

The Pyrrhonian is not (and cannot consistently be) assenting to the claim that foundationalism is false. Rather, a Pyrrhonian employing this mode would be attempting to reassure herself (and perhaps show the Epistemist) that the so-called foundational proposition stands in need of further support. In other words, the Pyrrhonian believes that a foundationalist cannot rationally practice his foundationalism because it inevitably leads to arbitrariness — i. e., assenting to a proposition which can legitimately be questioned but is, nevertheless, assented to without rational support.

So, how could the Pyrrhonian proceed? To begin to answer that question it is important to note that foundationalism comes in many forms. But all forms hold that the set of propositions can be partitioned into basic and non-basic propositions. Basic propositions have some autonomous bit of warrant that does not depend (at all) upon the warrant of any other proposition. [ 23 ] Non-basic propositions depend (directly or indirectly) upon basic propositions for all of their warrant.

Suppose that an inquirer, say Fred D'Foundationalist, has given some reasons for his beliefs. Fred offers q (where q could be a conjunction) for his belief that p , and he offers r (which could also be a conjunction) as his reason for q . Etc. Now, being a foundationalist, Fred finally offers some basic proposition, say b , as his reason for the immediately preceding belief. Sally D'Pyrrhonian asks Fred why he believes that b is true. Sally adds the “is true” to make clear to Fred that she is not asking what causes Fred to believe that b . She wants to know why Fred thinks that b is true. Now, Fred could respond by giving some reason for thinking that b is true even if b is basic, because basic propositions could have some non-autonomous warrant that depends upon the warrant of other propositions. But that is merely a delaying tactic since Fred is not a coherentist. In other words, he might be able to appeal to the conjunction of some other basic propositions and the non-basic propositions that they warrant as a reason for thinking that b is true. But Sally D'Pyrrhonian will ask whether he has any reason that does not appeal to another member in the set of basic propositions for thinking that each member in the set is true. If he says that he has none, then he has forfeited his foundationalism because he is really a closet coherentist. Being true to his foundationalism, he must think that there is some warrant that each basic proposition has that does not depend upon the warrant possessed by any other proposition.

The crucial point to note here is that Sally can grant that the proposition has autonomous warrant but continue to press the issue because she can ask Fred whether the possession of autonomous warrant is at all truth conducive. That is, she can ask whether a proposition with autonomous warrant is, ipso facto , at all likely to be true. If Fred says “yes,” then the regress will have continued. For he has this reason for thinking that b is true: “ b has autonomous warrant and propositions with autonomous warrant are somewhat likely to be true.” If he says “no” then Sally can point out that he is being arbitrary since she has asked why he thinks b is true and he has not been able to provide an answer.

Let us look at an example. Often it is held that first-person introspective reports are basic because they have some “privileged” status. My basic reason for thinking that there is an “external” object of a certain sort is that I am having an experience of a certain sort. Now, what Sally should ask is this: “Why do you think you are having an experience of that sort?” Or, again to emphasize that she is not asking for an explanation of the etiology of Fred's belief that he is having an experience of that sort, she could ask: “Why do you think that the proposition ‘I am having an experience of a certain sort’ is true?”

The dilemma is that either Fred has a reason for thinking that proposition is true or he doesn't. If he does, then the regress has not stopped — in practice . If he doesn't, then he is being arbitrary — in practice .

Once again, it is crucial to recall that Pyrrhonians are not claiming that foundationalism is false. They could grant that some propositions do have autonomous warrant which is truth-conducive and that all other propositions depend for some of their warrant upon those basic propositions. What lies at the heart of their view is that there is a deep irrationality in being a practicing self-conscious foundationalist. The question to Fred can be put this way: On the assumption that you cannot appeal to any other proposition, do you have any reason for thinking that b is true? Fred not only won't have any such reason for thinking b is true, given that assumption, he cannot have one (if he remains true to his foundationalism). Arbitrariness seems inevitable. Of course, foundationalists typically realize this and, in order to avoid arbitrariness, tell some story (for example, about privileged access) that, if true, would provide a reason for thinking basic propositions are at least somewhat likely to be true. But then, the regress of reasons has continued.

At its base, coherentism holds that there are no propositions with autonomous warrant. But it is important to note that coherentism comes in two forms. What I choose to call the “warrant-transfer form” responds to the regress problem by suggesting that the propositions are arranged in a circle and that warrant is transferred within the circle — just as basketball players standing in a circle pass the ball from one player to another. (See Sosa 1980, and BonJour 1978.) I could, for example, reason that it rained last night by calling forth my belief that there is water on the grass and I could reason that there is water (as opposed to some other liquid, say glycerin, that looks like water) on the grass by calling forth my belief that it rained last night.

Long ago, Aristotle pointed out that this process of reasoning could not resolve matters. As he put it: This is a “simple way of proving anything” ( Posterior Analytics , I, iii, 73a5). The propositions in the circle might be mutually probability enhancing, but the point is that we could just as well have circular reasoning to the conclusion that it did not rain last night because the liquid is not water and the liquid is not water because it did not rain last night. In this fashion anything could be justified — too simply! It is ultimately arbitrary which set of mutually probability enhancing propositions we believe because there is no basis for preferring one over the other.

The warrant-transfer coherentist could reply to this objection by claiming that there is some property, P , in one of the two competing circles that is not present in the other and the presence of that property makes the propositions in one and only one of the circles worthy of assent. For example, in one and only one of the circles are there propositions that we actually believe, or perhaps believe spontaneously. [ 24 ] But, then, it seems clear that the warrant-transfer coherentist has adopted a form of foundationalism since he is now claiming that all and only the propositions in circles with P have some autonomous bit of warrant. And, all that we have said about the dilemma facing the foundationalist transfers immediately. Is the possession of P truth conducive or not? If it is … You can see how that would go.

So much for the warrant-transfer version of coherentism. The second form of coherentism, what we can call the “warrant-emergent form” does not imagine the circle as consisting of propositions that transfer their warrant from one proposition to another. Rather warrant for each proposition in the circle obtains because it is a member of a set of mutually probability enhancing propositions. Coherence itself is the property in virtue of which each member of the set of propositions has warrant. Warrant emerges all at once, so to speak, from the web-like structure of the set of propositions. The coherentist can then argue that the fact that the propositions cohere provides each of them with some prima facie credibility.

This might initially seem to be a more plausible view since it avoids the circularity charge. But, aside from the problem that are too many competing circles that are coherent, the coherentist has, once again, embraced foundationalism. The coherentist is now explicitly assigning some initial positive warrant to all of the individual propositions in a set of coherent propositions that does not depend upon the warrant of any other proposition in the set. In other words, he is assigning to them what we have called the autonomous bit of warrant and, once again, the dilemma facing the foundationalist returns.

The third mode is designed to provide the Pyrrhonian with a way of responding to a dogmatist who assents to some EI-type proposition, x , and ceaselessly provides new answers to the question “What reason do you have for x ?” Since there is always another reason, one that has not already been employed, that needs to be given for any offered reason, assenting to x would be inappropriate. Since the Pyrrhonian (or the Epistemist) does not know either whether there is such an infinite set of reasons available or whether there is no such set available, withholding assent to the proposition that knowledge of EI-type propositions is possible seems appropriate.

For those reasons, infinitism (as far as I can tell) has never been seriously considered as a model of reasoning suitable for the dogmatist because it is obvious that it cannot provide a model of reasoning that could lead to assent. A disputed proposition could never be fully justified for whenever a reason is provided the infinitist is committed to thinking that in order to settle the matter another, as yet “unused,” reason must be provided. Since that process can never be completed, infinitism cannot provide the dogmatist with a model that will settle matters. [ 25 ]

It appears that the Pyrrhonian has a viable strategy for resisting dogmatism because no process of reasoning is such that assent — that is, holding that the matter in question has been settled — is the appropriate attitude to have toward any non-evident proposition.

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Descartes, René: epistemology | justification, epistemic: coherentist theories of | justification, epistemic: foundationalist theories of | justification, epistemic: internalist vs. externalist conceptions of | skepticism: ancient

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Anne Ashbaugh and Laurence BonJour for their help with this entry. I should also note that some parts of the entry rely upon and, in some cases, significantly repeat sections of Klein 2002. I also relied on parts of Klein 1995, 1999, 2000a, and 2003.

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Critical thinking, skepticism and the special nature of Philosophical

In the present paper we attempt to determine the distinct character of teaching philosophy by revealing the distinct character of critical thinking which is unique in philosophical reflection. We describe the problems of determining the subject matter of philosophical thinking by providing an analogy with art and by sketching a brief outline of the different metaphilosophical conceptions in the history of philosophy. Furthermore, we refer to an additional problem of determining the subject matter of teaching philosophy, that is, the ambiguity of the notion of teaching. In the fifth section, we argue for the central role of critical thinking in the educational process. Despite these difficulties, we argue that we can determine the distinct character of philosophical critical thinking by appealing to the notion of skeptical tests. We employ Hegel’s argumentation in order to reveal that while all genuine philosophical thinking includes skeptical tests, genuine philosophical thinking does not necessarily end up at skepticism. We conclude that the application of skeptical tests is an essential feature of philosophical reflection, and therefore, of teaching philosophy.

Annas, J., & Barnes, J. (2000). Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aristotle. (1998). Metaphysics (Trans. by H. L. Tancred). London: Penguin Books.

Cherry, C., & Robinson, G. (1977). Scepticism about Scepticism. In Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 51, 221-253.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Bruner, J. (1997). The culture of education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Descartes, R. (2017). Descartes: Meditations on first Philosophy with selections from the Objections and Replies (Ed. and trans. by J. Cottingham). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York: Putnam.

Forster, M. (1989). Hegel and Skepticism. Cambridge. Mass: Harvard University Press.

Friedman, M. (2001). Dynamics of Reason Stanford. CA: CSLI Publications.

Goodman, A. (1995). Aesthetic Value. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press.

Harré, R. (2003). Positivist thought in the nineteenth century. In T. Baldwin (Ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 (pp. 7-26). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1802/1985). The Relation of Scepticism to Philosophy. In H. George di Giovanni (Ed.), Between Kant and Hegel (pp. 311-354). Albany: SUNY Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1807/1977). Phenomenology of Spirit (Trans. by A. V. Miller). New York: Oxford UP.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1816/2010). The Science of Logic (Tran. by G. di Giovanni). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1840/1995). Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. 2 (Translated by E. S. Haldane & F. H. Simson). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Kant, I. (1998). Critique of Pure Reason (Trans. by P. Guyer & A. W. Wood). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lazerowitz, M. (1970). A note on “Metaphilosophy”. Metaphilosophy, 1(1), 91.

Mialaret, G. (1966). L'Éducation nouvelle et le monde moderne. Paris: PUF.

Popper, Κ. (2005). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Routledge.

Sagriotis, G. (2016). Emancipative educational practices under materialistic premises. In A. Le Moli & A. Cicatello (Eds.), Understanding Matter (Vol. 2, pp. 7-19). Palermo: New Digital Frontiers.

Sellars, W. (1968). Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Stewart, J. (1996). Hegel’s doctrine of determinate negation: An example from “sense-certainty” and “perception”. Idealistic Studies, 26(1), 57-78.

Vaos, A., & Mouriki, A. (2016). Artistic activities in school as a question and a challenge: Dilemmas about the boundaries of art education. Educational Journal of the University of Patras, UNESCO Chair, 3(1), 28-36.

Vaos, A., Sotiropoulos, L., & Berthoud-Papandropoulou, I. (2014). The artist as teacher. Examining the boundaries of art education. Educational Journal of the University of Patras UNESCO Chair, 1(1), 3-10.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge. Mass: Harvard University Press.

Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (Trans. by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness). Abingdon: Routledge.

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11 Skepticism

Peter Klein is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University.

Published: 02 September 2009
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This article divides philosophical skepticism into two basic forms. The “Academic Skeptic” proposes that one cannot have knowledge of a certain set of propositions. The “Pyrrhonian Skeptic,” on the other hand, refrains from opining about whether one can have knowledge. This article outlines two arguments for Academic Skepticism: a “Cartesian-style” argument based on the claim that knowledge entails the elimination of all doubt; and a “Closure Principle–style” argument based on the claim that if x entails y and S has justification for x , then S has justification for y . It turns to contextualism and outlines the background of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, pointing out that the Pyrrhonist withholds assent concerning one's knowledge-bearing status because reason cannot provide an adequate basis for assent. It assesses three possible patterns of reasoning (foundationalism, coherentism, and infinitism), and concludes that the Pyrrhonist view, that reason cannot resolve matters concerning the nonevident, is vindicated.

This essay is devoted to a discussion of the types of skepticism that have seemed most interesting to contemporary philosophers. It is divided into ten sections.

1. Two Basic Forms of Philosophical Skepticism

With regard to any proposition, say p, there are just three possible propositional attitudes one can have with regard to p's truth when considering whether p is true. One can either assent to p, or assent to ∼p, or withhold assenting to both p and ∼p. Of course, there are other attitudes one could have towards p. For example, one could ignore p or be excited or depressed about p. But those attitudes are either ones we have when we are not considering whether p is true, or they are attitudes that result from our believing, denying, or withholding p.

I just spoke of “assent” and I mean to be using it to designate the pro‐attitude, whatever it is, towards a proposition's truth that is required for knowing that proposition. Philosophers have differed about what that attitude is. Some take it to be a strong form of believing—something akin to being sure that p or being willing to guarantee that p. 1 Others have taken it not to be a form of belief at all because they think one can know that p without believing it, as in cases in which I might in fact remember that Queen Victoria died in 1901 but not believe that I remember it and hence might be said not to believe it all. For the purposes of this essay we need not attempt to pin down precisely the nature of the pro‐attitude towards p's truth that is necessary for knowing that p. It is sufficient for our purposes to say that assent is that pro‐attitude towards p's truth required for knowing p.

There are only three relevant possible pro‐attitudes one can have toward any proposition when considering whether it is true; hence, there are just three such attitudes towards the proposition that we can have knowledge of each member of some epistemically interesting class, C, of propositions:

We assent that we can have knowledge of C‐type propositions.

We assent that we cannot have knowledge of C‐type propositions.

We withhold assent to both that we can and that we can't have such knowledge.

By an “epistemically interesting” type of proposition I mean a type such that some propositions of that type are generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. Thus, it would not be epistemically interesting if we didn't know exactly what the temperature will be a year from now. That kind of thing (a fine‐grained distant future state) is not generally thought to be known given what we ordinarily take knowledge to be. But it would be interesting if we cannot know someone else's mental states, or anything about the past, or anything about the external world.

Let us call someone holding (1) an “epistemist.” 2 The skepticism involved in holding (2) has gone under many names. Following the terminology suggested by Sextus, I will call it “Academic Skepticism” because it was endorsed by various members of the New Academy, especially Carneades (214–129 b . c .). 3

The third view can be called “Pyrrhonian Skepticism” after its founder, Pyrrho, who lived about 365–275 b . c . The Pyrrhonians withheld assent to all members of the set of nonevident propositions, which includes the proposition that we do have knowledge of C‐type propositions. Indeed, the Pyrrhonians often classified the Epistemists and the Academic Skeptics as “dogmatists” because they thought both types assented to a nonevident claim. 4

Thus, philosophical skepticism is the view that either the attitude represented in 2 or 3 is the appropriate one. I think it is fair to say that it is Academic Skepticism that is usually meant when most contemporary philosophers write about skepticism. Thus, it is that form of skepticism which will be the primary focus of this essay.

2. Academic Skepticism

A way to motivate Academic Skepticism is to trace how Descartes expanded the realm of what was doubtful (and hence from his point of view not worthy of assent) in the “First Meditation.” 5 Descartes begins by noting that the senses have deceived him on some occasions and that it is never prudent to trust what has occasionally misled one. But that ground for doubting the deliverance of our senses can be neutralized because, as he points out, we seem to be able to determine when our senses are not trustworthy. To neutralize a ground for doubt, d, is to grant that d is true but conjoined with something else worthy of assent such that the conjunction no longer provides a basis for doubt. So, the proposition that my senses have deceived me on some occasions is not a genuine ground for doubt because, even if it were granted as true, there is a way of neutralizing its effect.

Next, Descartes considers dreaming. What if we are dreaming now? We could still have knowledge of features of the external world because there are some features shared by dream images and those “real and true” objects of which they are distorted copies. So, if we were dreaming now, we would not know what is going on about us right now, but general things such as the existence of hands are not called into doubt. And even more simple things about nature “in general” are not thereby doubtful. We still know that material objects have a spatial location, can be in motion or at rest, and can exist for a long or short period of time. So, some putative knowledge has not yet been cast into doubt because, although we might be dreaming now, there is a way to neutralize that skeptical objection.

Descartes, then, proposes a ground for doubt to which he “certainly has no reply.” He puts it this way:

In whatever way [it is supposed] that I have arrived at the state of being that I have reached—whether [it is attributed] to fate or to accident, or [made] out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method—since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author of my being to whom [is assigned] my origin the less powerful. 6

In other words, at this point in the Meditations , since he lacks an argument for the claim that whatever is causally responsible for his “state of being” is capable of making it such that to err would be unnatural, assenting to propositions arrived at by his “state of being” is not appropriate. Thus, Descartes believes that he has identified a ground for doubting all of his supposed former knowledge by locating a proposition which, if true, would (by itself) defeat the justification he has for C‐type propositions and which is such that (1) he does not (at least at this point in the Meditations ) have a way to reject it and such that (2) he has no legitimate way to neutralize its effect.

Put another way, Descartes apparently thinks that something is worthy of assent only if it is immune to genuine doubt. And something, d, is a ground for genuine doubt of p for S iff :

d added to S's beliefs makes assenting to p no longer adequately justified;

S is neither justified in rejecting d nor has a way to neutralize d. 7

The final step is to say that some proposition is not worthy of assent if there are genuine grounds for doubting it. In more contemporary terminology, the ground for doubt proposed by Descartes can be put like this:

U: My epistemic equipment is untrustworthy.

The Cartesian‐style Argument for Academic Skepticism can be stated as:

If I can know C‐type propositions, then I can eliminate all genuine grounds for doubting them.

U is a genuine ground for doubt that I cannot eliminate.

Therefore, I can not know C‐type propositions.

Note that this Cartesian‐style argument does not easily lend itself to the objection that the skeptic is contradicting herself in some way by proposing that there is an argument that shows that she fails to know because her epistemic equipment is untrustworthy while at the same time trusting her epistemic equipment to provide that very argument. She is considering the possibility that U is true and claiming that she cannot eliminate U. Thus she is neither holding contradictory beliefs nor is her practice somehow incompatible with her beliefs as it would be, for example, if she believed that M was the only good method of arriving at true beliefs and used some method other than M to arrive at the belief that X was the only good method.

The Cartesian‐style argument for Academic Skepticism should be compared with what many contemporary philosophers take to be the canonical argument for Academic Skepticism that employs the Closure Principle (CP). Letting “h” stand for a C‐type proposition, for example, Moore's famous “here's a hand” and letting “sk” stand for “I am in a switched‐world in which there are no hands, but it appears just as though there were hands,” we can state the canonical CP‐style argument for Academic Skepticism as follows:

If I am justified in believing that h, then I am justified in believing that ∼sk.

I am not justified in believing that ∼sk.

Therefore, I am not justified in believing that h.

This argument appeals to a form of the Closure Principle in CP1. Letting “Jsx” stand for “S is justified in having some pro‐attitude, J, regarding x,” that principle can be stated as:

For all propositions, (x, y), if x entails y, and Jsx, then Jsy. 8

One important point to note about CP is that it does not necessarily appeal to a very stringent notion of justification. Suppose that (positive) justification comes in degrees, where the lowest degree is something like mere plausibility and the highest degree is absolute certainty. CP could be recast as follows:

For all propositions, (x, y), if x entails y, and Jsx to degree u , then Jsy to degree v (where v ≥ u)

The point is that the when the Academic Skeptic employs CP, she need not be employing a very stringent notion of justification. Indeed, a “very low standards” CP‐style skeptic could hold that knowledge requires only positive justification to a very low degree.

Another apparent difference between the CP‐style and the Cartesian‐style argument is that the latter but not the former concerns knowledge. But that is an insignificant difference since the debate about the merits of skepticism takes place within the evidentialist account of knowledge. The issue is whether we have adequate reasons for any C‐type proposition. Thus, since knowledge is taken to entail adequately justified assent, “knowledge” could be replaced by “adequately justified assent” in the Cartesian‐style argument.

Let us return to the central difference between Cartesian and CP‐style arguments and state the epistemic principle, which we can call the “Eliminate All Doubt Principle,” that apparently lies behind the Cartesian‐style argument:

(x, d)(if d provides a basis for genuine doubt that x, then, if assenting to x is adequately justified for S, then S is adequately justified in eliminating d.)

EAD requires that we eliminate any genuine grounds for doubt and those include more than mere contraries. In addition, recall that, according to the Cartesian, to be adequately justified in eliminating d as a ground for doubt for x, either S is adequately justified in denying d (assenting to d) or S is adequately justified in assenting to some neutralizing proposition, n, such that adding (n & d) to S's beliefs fails to make it the case that x is no longer adequately justified. 9 Thus, since every contrary of some proposition is a potential genuine ground for doubt, EAD entails CP but CP does not entail EAD. 10 To see that, consider any contrary, say c, of a proposition, say h. The proposition, c, would be a potential genuine ground for doubting h since if c were added to S's beliefs, h would no longer be adequately justified, because S's beliefs would then contain a proposition, c, that entailed the denial of h. Furthermore, the only way S could eliminate c as a ground for doubt would be by denying it, since nothing could neutralize it. Thus, EAD has the consequence that if S is justified in assenting to h, then S is justified in denying every contrary of h. But that is just an instance of CP, since (by hypothesis) h entails ∼c. That CP does not entail EAD should be clear since there are grounds for doubting h that are not contraries of h. For example, the proposition, U, considered above is a grounds for doubting h, but h and U could both be true.

Thus, there are two basic forms of Academic Skepticism: the Cartesian‐style that employs EAD and the CP‐style that employs CP. Since the CP‐style skeptic employs the weaker epistemic principle, we will begin by focusing on that form of skepticism. Any criticisms of it are likely to redound to the stronger form.

3. The Argument for Academic Skepticism Based on the Closure Principle

There appear to be only three ways that one can respond to the CP‐style skeptical argument: deny at least one premise, deny that the argument is valid, or reluctantly accept the conclusion. I say “appear” because I will suggest later that there is a fourth alternative. The second alternative—denying the validity of the argument—is equivalent to embracing an extremely severe form of skepticism because it would involve denying that modus tollens is a valid form of inference. And since it is easy to transform any modus tollens argument into one employing disjunctive syllogism (by the equivalence of a hypothetical statement to a disjunctive one with the negation of the antecedent as one of the disjuncts), either that equivalence or disjunctive syllogism would have to be rejected. Similarly, modus ponens or contraposition would have to be rejected. Hence, if this alternative were chosen, reasoning would come to a complete standstill. That, presumably, is why no one has ever seriously considered this alternative.

So, if we are not to embrace the conclusion of the CP‐style argument, it appears that we must reject either CP1 or CP2. Let us examine each.

Consideration of CP1

Let us begin by examining closure. The issue is: Does closure hold for justified belief? Closure certainly does hold for some properties, for example, truth. If p is true and it strictly implies q, then q is true. It just as clearly does not hold for other properties. If p is a belief of mine, and p strictly implies q, it does not follow that q is a belief of mine. For I might fail to see the implication or I simply might be epistemically perverse or I might be “wired” incorrectly (from birth or as the result of an injury).

What about justified belief? As it is stated above, CP (or CP*) is clearly false. Every necessary truth is entailed by every proposition. But one surely does not want to claim that S is justified in believing every necessary truth whenever S has any justified belief. In addition, some entailments might be beyond S's capacity to grasp. Finally, there might even be some contingent propositions that are beyond S's capacity to grasp which are entailed by some propositions that S does, indeed, grasp. And it might be thought that S is not entitled to believe anything that S cannot grasp.

But CP can easily be repaired. We can stipulate that the domain of the propositions in the generalization of CP includes only contingent propositions that are within S's capacity to grasp and that the entailment is “obvious” to S. The skeptic can agree to those restrictions because the skeptical scenarios are posited in such a way as to render it obvious that our ordinary beliefs are false in those scenarios, and it is taken to be a contingent claim that S is in the actual circumstances as described in the antecedent.

There is one other required clarification of the restricted version of CP. “Justified belief” is ambiguous. It could be used to refer to a species of actually held beliefs—namely, those actually held beliefs of S that are justified. Or it could refer to propositions that S is entitled to hold—regardless of whether S does indeed hold them. If CP is to be acceptable, “justified belief” must be used so as to mean the latter for a reason already cited, that is, belief does not transmit through entailment.

We are now in a position to ask: Does the restricted form of closure hold regarding what we are entitled to believe—even if we don't, in fact, believe it? There appears to be a perfectly general argument for the restricted version. Let p entail q, and let us suppose that S is entitled to believe that p iff S has (nonoverridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true: 11

If S is entitled to believe that p, then S has (nonoverridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true. [by the supposition]

If S has (nonoverridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true, then S has (nonoverridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true. [because p entails q]

If S is entitled to believe that p, then S has (nonoverridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true. [from 1, 2]

If S has (nonoverridden) grounds making q sufficiently likely to be true, then S is entitled to believe that q. [by the supposition]

Therefore, if S is entitled to believe that p, S is entitled to believe that q. [from 2, 3]

The supposition mentioned above seems plausible given that the debate over the merits of Academic Skepticism employs an evidentialist (as opposed to an externalist) account of justification. Premise 2 is key; and in spite of the fact that the probabilities (whether subjective or objective) transmit through entailment, it has been challenged. Fred Dretske and others have produced cases in which they believe CP fails and fails precisely because Premise 2 is false. 12

Dretske writes:

[S]omething's being a zebra implies that it is not a mule… cleverly disguised by the zoo authorities to look like a zebra. Do you know that these animals are not mules cleverly disguised? If you are tempted to say “Yes” to this question, think a moment about what reasons you have, what evidence you can produce in favor of this claim. The evidence you had for thinking them zebras has been effectively neutralized, since it does not count toward their not being mules cleverly disguised to look like zebras. 13

Dretske is speaking of “knowledge” rather than beliefs to which one is entitled, but that seems irrelevant since the issue concerns the supposed lack of a sufficient source of evidence or reasons for the claim that the animal is not a cleverly disguised mule. In other words, Dretske grants that S has (nonoverridden) grounds that make it sufficiently likely that the animals are zebras, but he holds that S does not have (nonoverridden) grounds making it sufficiently likely that the animals are not cleverly disguised mules because S's evidence for the former has been “effectively neutralized.”

Let us grant that S's evidence for the claim that they are zebras can not be used to show that they are not cleverly disguised mules. Would that require giving up the argument for CP? I do not think so. To see that, recall that Premise 2 claimed merely that whenever S had (nonoverridden) grounds that make p sufficiently likely to be true, then S has (nonoverridden) grounds for making q sufficiently likely to be true. It did not require that it be the very same grounds in both cases. Dretske's purported counterexample seems to require that CP implies that the adequate source of evidence is the same for both propositions. Thus, letting “xRy” mean that x provides an adequate evidence for y, the counterexample depends upon assuming that if closure holds between p and q, then the evidence “path” must look like this:

Evidence paths specify what propositions serve as good enough reasons, ceteris paribus , for believing other propositions. Dretske is supposing that the very same evidence, e, that I have for p must be adequate for q whenever p entails q.

No doubt this constraint sometimes correctly portrays the relevant evidential relationships when some proposition, p, entails some other proposition, q. For example, suppose I have adequate evidence for the claim that Anne has two brothers, then it would seem that the very same evidence would be adequate for believing that Anne has at least one brother. The defender of CP, and more particularly the Academic Skeptic, could point out that closure need not require that type of evidence path in all cases in which one proposition entails another.

There are two other possibilities for instantiating closure that are captured by Premise 2 that can be depicted as follows:

Pattern 2 … ReRp… Rq

Pattern 3 … Re(wheree includes q) Rp

In Pattern 2 cases there is some adequate evidence, e, for p; and p, itself, is the adequate evidence for q, since p strictly implies q. For example, if I have adequate evidence for believing that 2 is a prime number, I can use that proposition as an adequate reason for believing that there is at least one even prime. Indeed, consider any belief arrived at as a result of deductive inference. In such a case, we legitimately infer the entailed proposition from the conjunction of the premises that entails it. The plausibility of the famous Gettier cases depends upon Pattern 2 type cases in which closure holds. Gettier says:

… for any proposition p, if S is justified in believing p, and p entails q, and S deduces q from p and accepts q as a result of this deduction, then S is justified in believing q. 14

In Pattern 3 cases the order of the evidence is reversed because q serves as part of the evidence for p. For example, I am justified in believing that water is present if I am justified in believing that there is present a clear, odorless, watery‐tasting and watery‐looking fluid at standard temperature and pressure. This pattern is typical of abductive inferences. In addition, there are cases in which some contraries of h need to be eliminated prior to h's being justified. For example, in the zebra‐in‐the‐zoo case, if I had some reason to think that the animals were cleverly disguised mules, then it could be argued that such a contrary would need to be eliminated before I would be justified in believing that the animals were zebras.

The crucial point for the discussion here is that granting that there is no Pattern 1 type evidence path available to S in the zebra‐in‐the‐zoo case does not require relinquishing premise 2 in the general argument for CP. The reason is simply that CP does not entail that there is pattern 1 type evidence available in every case in which p entails q. Indeed, it could be suggested that the animals looking like zebras in a pen marked “zebras” is, ceteris paribus , adequate evidence to justify the claim that they are zebras; and once S is entitled to believe that the animals are zebras, S can, using the principle stated by Gettier, justifiably deduce that they are not cleverly disguised mules. That is, S can employ an evidence path like that depicted in Pattern 2. 15 Hence, the counterexamples to closure appear to fail.

In addition to the purported counterexamples to closure, there are some general theories of knowledge in which closure fails that should be examined. Robert Nozick's account of knowledge is the best such example. Roughly, his account is this:

S knows that p iff :

S believes p;

If p were true, S would believe p;

If p were not true, S would not believe p.

This account is often referred to as a tracking account of knowledge since when S knows that p, S's beliefs track p. 16

This is not the place to provide a full examination of Nozick's account of knowledge. 17 What is crucial for our discussion is that it is easy to see that Closure will fail for knowledge in just the kind of case that the Academic Skeptic is putting forward because of condition 4. Suppose S knows that there is a chair before her. Would she know that she is not in a skeptical scenario in which it merely appears that there is a chair? If the fourth condition were true, she would not know that because if she were in such a scenario, she would be fooled into thinking that she wasn't. Thus, either condition 4 is too strong or CP fails.

There are some reasons for thinking that condition 4 is too strong. Consider a relatively simple case in which S seems to have knowledge but condition 4 does not obtain. S looks at a thermometer that is displaying the temperature as 72 degrees. The thermometer is working perfectly and S comes to believe that the temperature is 72 degrees by reading the thermometer and coming to believe what it says. But if the temperature were not 72, suppose that something affected the thermometer in a way that made it read 72, so that by employing the same method (looking at the thermometer and coming to believe what it read) S would still believe that it was 72. (One could imagine all kinds of circumstances that would have that causal result. A comical one: Imagine a lizard that is now sleeping on the thermometer that would stir were the temperature to rises, thus dislodging a small rock that hits the thermometer breaking the mercury column in a way that makes the thermometer still read 72.)

Or consider this case in the literature: You put a glass of ice‐cold lemonade on a picnic table in your backyard. You go inside and get a telephone call from a friend and talk for half an hour. When you hang up you remember that you had left the ice‐cold lemonade outside exposed to the hot sun and come to believe that it isn't ice‐cold anymore. It would seem that you could know that, even if in some near world a friend of yours who just happened to be walking by noticed the glass and, happening to have a cooler full of ice with him, put the glass of lemonade in the cooler to keep it ice‐cold for you. Thus, if the lemonade were still ice‐cold, you would believe that it wasn't. 18

The moral of these cases seems to be that S can know that p even if there are some near possible worlds in which p is false but S still believes that p (employing the same method of belief formation). Perhaps what is required for knowledge is that the method work in this world—exactly as it is—even if the method would fail were there to be some slight variation in the actual world.

Further Clarification of Closure

If that requirement were accepted, there is a really easy route to Academic Skepticism. Consider any two contraries, c 1 and c 2 . In order to be justified in believing c 1 , S would first have to eliminate c 2 . And in order to be justified in believing that c 2 , S would first have to eliminate c 1 . So, of course, S could never either be justified in believing c 1 or be justified in believing c 2 . So, there would be a too quick and too dirty argument for skepticism, because, in so far as skepticism remains an interesting philosophical position, the skeptic cannot depart so outrageously from our ordinary epistemic practices.

Note that even EAD, although requiring that we be able to reject or neutralize every ground for doubt, does not require that we do that before we are justified in believing an hypothesis. Indeed, EAD allows for the possibility that we could use h, itself, or something that h justifies, as the basis for rejecting or neutralizing some grounds for doubt.

Consideration of CP2

It is tempting to say “yes.” After all, the skeptical scenarios are developed in such a way that it is supposed that we could not tell that we were being deceived. For example, we are asked to consider that there is an Evil Genius “so powerful” that it could (1) make me believe that there were hands when there were none and (2) make it such that I could not detect the illusion. But we must be very careful here. The skeptic cannot require that in order for S to know (or be justified in assenting to) something, say x, that if x were false, she would not still assent to x. We have just seen (while examining Nozick's account of knowledge) that this requirement is too strong. So the mere fact that there could be skeptical scenarios in which S still believes that she is not in such a scenario cannot provide the skeptic with a basis for thinking that she fails to know that she is not (actually) in a skeptical scenario. But even more important , were that a requirement of knowledge (or justification), then we have seen that closure would fail and, consequently, the basis for the first premise in the CP‐style argument for Academic Skepticism would be forfeited. 19

In addition, we have also seen that if CP is true, and it did seem to be true, then there is one evidence pattern between entailing and entailed propositions that might prove useful to the epistemist at this point in the discussion. If S could be justified in believing some proposition that entailed the denial of the skeptical hypothesis, then S could be justified in denying that hypothesis by employing evidence Pattern 2. Indeed, as G.E. Moore suggested, what is to prevent the epistemist from claiming that S is justified in denying that she is in a skeptical scenario because S is justified in believing that she has hands and CP is true? 20 A plausible answer to Moore seems to be something like this: The issue that is under dispute is whether S is justified in assenting to (or knows that) she has hands. Thus, the epistemist cannot reject CP2 by assuming the denial of the conclusion of the skeptical argument. All well and good. But the same sauce covers the gander, and the skeptic cannot claim as the reason for CP2 that since S is not justified in believing that she has hands, she cannot avail herself of that as her reason for being justified in believing that she is not in a skeptical scenario.

So, what reason can the skeptic give for CP2? I do not know of one that is both consistent with the defense of CP and that does not beg the question. That is not to say that CP2 is false. Far from it. Perhaps it is true. The issue is whether we are justified in accepting or rejecting it. It seems that in order to accept CP2 and CP, the skeptic would have to assert that S is not justified in believing that she has hands because evidence Pattern 2 depicts one way in which S could be justified in denying the skeptical scenario. 21

I had mentioned earlier that there seemed to be only three responses available when confronting the CP‐style argument for Academic Skepticism: accept the conclusion, reject one or both of the premises, or deny the validity of the argument. The fourth alternative is simply to point out that given the required defense of CP1, there appears to be no good argument for CP2.

Of course, there is the possibility that there is also no good argument to the conclusion that we do have knowledge of C‐type propositions. Some might think that the Academic Skeptic wins in such a standoff. But recall that what distinguishes the Academic Skeptic from the Pyrrhonian Skeptic is that only the Academic Skeptic assents to the claim that we can not have knowledge. The Pyrrhonian Skeptic withholds judgment regarding whether we can have knowledge. And in a standoff, the Pyrrhonian would seem to have the appropriate attitude.

Before turning briefly to Pyrrhonism, there are a couple of loose ends that should be tied up. First, I want to briefly discuss EAD‐style skepticism, and second, I want to look at one quite popular diagnosis of the CP‐style argument in order to see whether it correctly portrays the dispute between the Academic Skeptic and the Epistemist.

4. Cartesian(EAD)‐Style Arguments for Academic Skepticism

Mercifully, this section can be brief because we can apply the lessons learned in the discussion of CP‐style arguments to an evaluation of EAD‐style arguments. First, it should be clear that the general argument for CP cannot be used as a model for a general argument for EAD. The argument for CP depended crucially on the fact that h entailed ∼sk. (That is what provided the basis for premise 2 in the general argument for CP.) As we saw, the negation of a genuine ground for doubt need not be entailed by h. So, the skeptic has a much harder task of motivating EAD.

But let us grant that some argument could be provided that makes EAD plausible. The same dialectical issues that we have considered in discussing potential counterexamples to CP will recur regarding EAD. Reconsider the zebra‐in‐the‐zoo case. This time instead of the (contrary) proposition “the animals (I am seeing) are cleverly disguised mules,” consider the proposition “there are cleverly disguised mules within my perceptual field,” which according to EAD would have to be rejected or neutralized. If the evidence I had for believing that the animals were zebras wasn't adequate to deny the former, it is certainly not adequate for denying the latter. So the EAD skeptic will have to appeal to the analogs of Pattern 2 and Pattern 3 type cases in order to save the principle from a Dretske‐like counterexample. Thus, this skeptic would be in the same dialectical situation as the CP‐style skeptic because she must provide a basis for thinking that the second premise in her argument is compatible with a defense of EAD against Dretske‐like objections that does not beg the question or appeal to a requirement that all grounds for doubt must be eliminated prior to a proposition being justified.

To sum up: The EAD skeptic is in a worse dialectical position than the CP skeptic. Whatever problems are associated with CP skepticism transfer to EAD skepticism and, in addition, there appears to be no plausible general argument for EAD, while there was one for CP.

5. Contextualism and Academic Skepticism

Contextualists have developed a variety of sophisticated approaches to Academic Skepticism, but what they all share is the view that the truth of sentences attributing or denying knowledge or the possession of adequate evidence to someone will vary according to some features of the context. 22 For example, one context can be such that someone, S, must satisfy relatively high standards of evidence in order to have knowledge or beliefs worthy of assent, and hence can truly be said to lack knowledge on the basis of evidence, e. While in another context, lower standards apply so that with the very same evidence, e, S can have knowledge. Just as my height could be such that in one context I'm tall and in another I'm not tall even though I remain the same height, my evidence could be such that in one context I have knowledge based upon that evidence and in another I do not have knowledge based upon the same evidence. “S knows that p” and “S does not know that p” can both be true because the truth value of each utterance depends in part upon the standards appropriate to the context in which the sentences are uttered. 23 So, in the ordinary context, S might have a justified belief because it is not required that the skeptical hypothesis be eliminated first, whereas in the more demanding “skeptical context” S would not be justified because S has not yet eliminated the skeptical hypothesis.

There are two questions to ask: Is this version of contextualism about knowledge or justified belief true? And will its truth shed light on Academic Skepticism?

In answering the first question, it could be argued that such a version of contextualism with regard to the attribution of virtually any property is true. Suppose that Mr. Lax says that Sam is happy. We discover that Lax is using “happy” to mean that a person is happy just in case he/she has had more happy moments than unhappy moments during a lifetime. Mr. Stringent demurs. For him, a person is happy only if he/she hardly ever experiences an unhappy moment.

Who is right about whether or not Sam is happy? Contextualists would say that they both are. But it is crucial to note that, given that each person recognizes that the other is applying different standards, Mr. Lax and Mr. Stringent can agree that, given what Lax means , Sam is happy and that, given what Stringent means , Sam is not happy.

The predicates “having knowledge,” “having adequate evidence,” “being justified,” and the like, seem to me to be like most other predicates in this respect: Within a wide but nonarbitrary range of standards, speakers can legitimately demand that S have more or less of the relevant evidence for p before they will agree that “S knows that p” or “S has adequate evidence for p.” So, the answer to the first question about the truth of contextualism seems to be: Contextualism about knowledge attributions is true. It is just one instance of the general truth that standards for the application of a term vary within a wide but nonarbitrary range according to the context of application.

Let us turn to the second and much more philosophically interesting question: Does the truth of this version of contextualism shed any light on Academic Skepticism? If it did, then the correct way to diagnose the dispute between the skeptic and the epistemist would be to note that the epistemist is using a lax standard and the skeptic a more stringent one. Having one's ordinary cake is compatible with eating one's skeptical cake, because in the ordinary context we do have knowledge, but as standards rise to those demanded by the skeptics, we do not have knowledge.

In response, it could plausibly be objected that this is not the proper diagnosis of the disagreement between the skeptic and the epistemist. The view that we are considering holds that in the skeptical context, S must first eliminate the skeptical hypothesis, but that in the ordinary context, S's epistemic burden is much more relaxed. Thus, there would be no genuine dispute between the skeptic and the epistemist—just as there is no real disagreement between Mr. Lax and Mr. Stringent about Sam's happiness.

That would be an elegant “solution” were the epistemist and the skeptic to agree that it is all a matter of whose standards one is employing. But is that right? What the skeptic claims is that we don't know what we ordinarily claim to know. We don't know C‐type propositions. It's our ordinary knowledge claims that are false. If the skeptic were merely claiming that on her standards we don't know, the skeptic's claims—like those of Mr. Stringent—can be granted and then promptly ignored because nothing that we formerly believed that we knew turns out to be not known. The scope of our knowledge or justified beliefs in the ordinary context is left intact.

Thus, the parallel with the case of Sam's putative happiness seems to break down. In that case, Mr. Stringent would grant that Mr. Lax was correct given what Lax meant by “happy.” But the skeptic will not grant that the epistemist is correct. The skeptic reasons that the epistemist doesn't know that h, even given what the epistemist means by “know.” Both the epistemist and the skeptic accept CP, but the skeptic thinks that there cannot be any evidence for ∼sk. Thus, h could not be known no matter whose standards apply.

The issue seems to boil down to this: In the ordinary context is it true—as the Academic Skeptic claims—that in order to know that there are hands, we must first eliminate the skeptical hypothesis? The epistemist might argue as follows: Suppose we are looking at Dretske's zebras and someone asks, “Do you know that those are not cleverly disguised aliens from a recently discovered planet outside our solar system? Or that they are not newly invented super‐robots? Or that they are not members of the lost tribe of Israel who have been hiding out from the Assyrians disguised as zebras since the eighth century b . c . (They've had lots of time to perfect the disguise!)” Of course those are far‐fetched; and even if someone advancing those alternatives happens to believe them, there appears to be no reason why one should have to rise to the bait and eliminate those alternatives prior to being justified in believing that the animals are zebras. And isn't the skeptical hypothesis—that we are not in the actual world but rather in one which just seems identical to it—just as far‐fetched?

Now a contextualist might object as follows: This portrayal of contextualism is too restricted. The context not only establishes more or less stringent standards for knowledge or the possession of adequate evidence, but also establishes what is to count as a relevant alternative that must be eliminated prior to the acceptance of h. For example, the contextualist could claim that the skeptic can make the skeptical hypothesis relevant by doing something—perhaps merely mentioning it in a serious tone of voice.

The epistemist can reply to this objection by granting that although the skeptic can try to expand the set of relevant evidence, she will not always succeed. In Dretske's zebra‐in‐the zoo case, if there really were some evidence, however slight, for the claim that the animals are painted mules, then Mr. Stringent could legitimately require that S rule out that possibility prior to truly claiming that he knows that the animals are zebras. In parallel fashion, if there really were some evidence, however slight, that there is an evil genius making it merely appear that there are hands, then, and only then, could the skeptic legitimately require that S eliminate that possibility prior to being justified in believing that there are hands.

In other words, the epistemist will claim that the range of relevant alternatives is bounded by those propositions for which there is some, even minimal, evidence. It is a context‐invariant feature of knowledge attributions that the relevant evidence does not include the denial of contraries for which there is no evidence whatsoever. The issue, according to the epistemist, is whether our ordinary knowledge claims are true—not whether they would be true in some context with requirements more stringent that those that are ordinarily applied.

6. Pyrrhonian Skepticism

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, what distinguishes Pyrrhonian Skepticism from Academic Skepticism is that the former does not deny that we can have knowledge. For to deny something is merely to assent to its negation and the Pyrrhonian refrains from assenting to every “nonevident” proposition. Now, of course, a primary question concerns the scope of the nonevident. 24 But to try to resolve that is not the purpose of this essay. For our discussion I think we can suppose that a sufficient condition for some proposition being nonevident obtains whenever there can legitimately be disagreement about it. And, taking the cue from our discussion about Academic Skepticism, we can also stipulate that there can be legitimate disagreement about some proposition if there is some evidence for it and some evidence against it. So, the question is whether the proposition S can have knowledge that there are hands can be the subject of legitimate disagreement.

Putting the matter that way makes the answer obvious. There are arguments for Academic Skepticism which have some plausibility, and some plausible objections to those arguments which support the Epistemist's view. Plausible arguments for something constitute some evidence for it. So, we can safely conjecture that it is not evident that we have knowledge. The primary question then becomes this: What prompted the Pyrrhonian to withhold assent to all nonevident propositions?

The Pyrrhonians would practice what they called the “modes.” Like piano exercises for the fingers that would result in semiautomatic responses to the printed notes on a sheet of music, the modes were mental exercises that would result in semiautomatic responses to claims being made by the dogmatists—those who assent to the nonevident. When the results of perception were introduced to settle a nonevident matter—say the actual color of an object (as opposed to how it appeared to someone), they would point out some or all of the following: 25

Members of different species of animals probably perceived colors quite differently because their eyes are constructed differently.

Members of the same species would have different perceptions of the color depending upon such things as the condition of their eyes, the nature of the medium of perception (varying light conditions for example), and the order in which objects were perceived.

Being reminded of the relativity of perception could incline a person to refrain from assenting to judgements of perception, when those judgements were about the “real” properties of the objects. Now, perhaps a careful analysis of what is meant by “real” properties coupled with a Cartesian‐like answer to some of the doubts raised earlier in the Meditations would suffice to respond to the Pyrrhonian concerning the relativity of our senses. For example, if we took the “real” color of objects to be that property of the object, whatever it is, that produces perceptions of a certain sort under “normal” circumstances, and if we could distinguish (as Descartes suggested) normal from abnormal circumstances, then we might have a basis for resisting the Pyrrhonian modes concerning perception. But be that as it may, whether we can have knowledge of C‐type propositions is not a matter that is potentially resolvable by appeal to our senses. It will only be resolved if either the Epistemist or the Academic Skeptic has a compelling argument. Thus, the question here is whether reasoning can settle matters.

Perhaps the most influential passage in the corpus of the Pyrrhonian literature, the “Five Modes of Agrippa” in Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism , seeks to answer that question. Although the chapter title mentions five modes, two of them repeat those found elsewhere and are similar to the ones just discussed concerning perception. They are the modes of discrepancy and relativity and these two modes are important here because they provide the background for understanding the description of the three modes concerning reasoning. Specifically, it is presumed that the relevant object of inquiry is subject to legitimate dispute and that reasoning is employed to resolve the dispute. The issue before us then is whether reasoning can legitimately lead to assent. Sextus writes:

The Mode based upon regress ad infinitum is that whereby we assert that the thing adduced as a proof of the matter proposed needs a further proof, and this again another, and so on ad infinitum , so that the consequence is suspension [of assent], as we possess no starting‐point for our argument … . We have the Mode based upon hypothesis when the Dogmatists, being forced to recede ad infinitum , take as their starting‐point something which they do not establish but claim to assume as granted simply and without demonstration. The Mode of circular reasoning is the form used when the proof itself which ought to establish the matter of inquiry requires confirmation derived from the matter; in this case, being unable to assume either in order to establish the other, we suspend judgement about both. 26

It is important to keep in mind that the modes were practices meant to discourage and, perhaps, reform the dogmatists who did assent to matters that were still the subject of legitimate dispute. These modes were designed not to undermine the utility of reasoning. Indeed, the Greek for “skeptic” is closely related to the verb “σκέπτομαι,” which means “inquire.” Thus, calling oneself a Pyrrhonian Skeptic did not imply a disregard for inquiry or reasoning. The modes were designed to dissuade a dogmatist from assenting on the basis of reasoning. They were not designed to inhibit reasoning.

Suppose that the dogmatist assents to something, say p, on the basis of a reason, say r. What the modes prescribe are ways of dealing with the dogmatist. Either one forces the dogmatist into an apparently never ending regress, or forces the dogmatist to beg the question, or forces the dogmatist to assert something arbitrarily.

As the quotation from Sextus suggests, the modes are based upon the claim that there are three possible patterns which any instance of reasoning can take. I will call the first pattern “infinitism.” Today we commonly refer to the second account as “foundationalism.” Finally, I will refer to the third possibility as “coherentism.”

The so‐called regress problem can be stated briefly in this way: There are only three possible patterns of reasoning. Either the process of producing reasons stops at a purported foundational proposition or it doesn't. If it does, then the reasoner is employing a foundationalist pattern. If it doesn't, then either the reasoning is circular, or it is infinite and nonrepeating. There are no other significant possibilities. 27 Thus, if none of these forms of reasoning can properly lead to assent, then no form can.

So, we must look briefly at the reasons that a Pyrrhonian might have for thinking that infinitism, foundationalism, and coherentism are inherently incapable of providing an adequate basis for assent. 28

7. Foundationalism

Foundationalism comes in many forms. But all forms hold that the set of propositions can be partitioned into basic or nonbasic propositions. Basic propositions have some autonomous bit of warrant that does not depend (at all) upon the warrant of any other proposition. 29 Nonbasic propositions depend (directly or indirectly) upon basic propositions for all of their warrant.

The Pyrrhonian holds, I think, that a foundationalist cannot rationally practice his foundationalism because it inevitably leads to arbitrariness, that is, asserting a proposition which can legitimately be questioned but is, nevertheless, asserted without being so scrutinized. It is important to remember that the Pyrrhonian is not (and cannot consistently be) assenting to the claim that foundationalism is false. A Pyrrhonian employing this mode would be attempting to show the epistemist that her so‐called foundational proposition stands in need of further support.

Suppose that an inquirer, say Fred D'Foundationalist, has given some reasons for his beliefs. Fred offers q (where q could be a conjunction) for his belief that p, and he offers r (which could also be a conjunction) as his reason for q. Etc. Now, being a foundationalist, Fred finally offers some basic proposition, say b, as his reason for the immediately preceding belief. Sally D'Pyrrhonian asks Fred why he believes that b is true. Sally adds the “is true” to make certain that Fred realizes that she is not asking what causes Fred to believe that b. She wants to know why Fred thinks that b is true. Now, Fred could respond by giving some reason for thinking that b is true even if b is basic, because basic propositions could have some nonautonomous warrant that depends upon the warrant of other propositions. But that is merely a delaying tactic since Fred is not a coherentist. In other words, he might be able to appeal to the conjunction of some other basic propositions and the nonbasic propositions that they warrant as a reason for thinking that b is true. But, Sally D'Pyrrhonian will ask whether he has any reason that does not appeal to another member in the set of basic propositions for thinking that each member in the set is true. If he says that he has none, then he is a closet coherentist. Being a foundationalist, he must think that there is some warrant that each basic proposition has that does not depend upon the warrant possessed by any other proposition.

The crucial point to note here is that Sally can grant that the proposition has autonomous warrant but continue to press the issue, because she can ask Fred whether the possession of autonomous warrant is at all truth conducive. That is, she can ask whether a proposition with autonomous warrant is, ipso facto , at all likely to be true. If Fred says “yes,” then the regress will have continued. For he has this reason for thinking that b is true: “b has autonomous warrant and propositions with autonomous warrant are somewhat likely to be true.” If he says “no,” then Sally can point out that he is being arbitrary, since she has asked why he thinks b is true and he has not been able to provide an answer.

Let us look at an example. Often it is held that first‐person introspective reports are basic because they have some “privileged” status. My basic reason for thinking that there is an “external” object of a certain sort is that I am having an experience of a certain sort. Now, what Sally should ask is this: “Why do you think you are having an experience of that sort?” Or, again, to emphasize that she is not asking for an explanation of the etiology of Fred's belief that he is having an experience of that sort, she could ask: “Why do you think that the proposition ‘I am having an experience of a certain sort’ is true?”

The dilemma is that either Fred has a reason for thinking that proposition is true or he doesn't. If he does, then the regress has not stopped— in practice . If he doesn't, then he is being arbitrary— in practice.

Once again, it is crucial to recall that Pyrrhonians are not claiming that foundationalism is false. They could grant that some propositions do have autonomous warrant which is truth‐conducive and that all other propositions depend for some of their warrant upon those basic propositions. What lies at the heart of their view is that there is a deep irrationality in being a practicing self‐conscious foundationalist. The question to Fred can be put this way: On the assumption that you can not appeal to any other proposition, do you have any reason for thinking that b is true? Fred not only won't have any such reason for thinking b is true, given that constraint, he can not have one (if he remains true to his foundationalism). Arbitrariness seems inevitable. Of course, foundationalists typically realize this and, in order to avoid arbitrariness, tell some story (for example, about privileged access) that, if true, would provide a reason for thinking basic propositions are at least somewhat likely to be true. But then, the regress of reasons has continued.

8. Coherentism

At its base, coherentism holds that there are no propositions with autonomous warrant. But it is important to note that coherentism comes in two forms. What I choose to call the “warrant‐transfer form” responds to the regress problem by suggesting that the propositions are arranged in a circle and that warrant is transferred within the circle—just as basketball players standing in a circle pass the ball from one player to another. 30 I could, for example, reason that it rained last night by calling forth my belief that there is water on the grass, and I could reason that there is water (as opposed to some other liquid, say glycerin, that looks like water) on the grass by calling forth my belief that it rained last night.

Long ago, Aristotle pointed out that this process of reasoning could not resolve matters. As he put it: This is a “simple way of proving anything.” 31 The propositions in the circle might be mutually probability enhancing, but the point is that we could just as well have circular reasoning to the conclusion that it did not rain last night because the liquid is not water and the liquid is not water because it did not rain last night. In this fashion anything could be justified—too simply! It is ultimately arbitrary which set of mutually probability enhancing propositions we believe because there is no basis for preferring one over the other.

The warrant‐transfer coherentist could reply to this objection by claiming that there is some property, P, possessed by the propositions in one of the two competing circles that is not present in the other and the presence of that property makes the propositions in one and only one of the circles worthy of assent. For example, in one and only one of the circles are there propositions that we actually believe, or perhaps believe spontaneously. 32 But, then, it seems clear that the warrant‐transfer coherentist has adopted a form of foundationalism, since he is now claiming that all and only the propositions in circles with P have some autonomous bit of warrant. And, all that we have said about the dilemma facing the foundationalist transfers immediately. Is the possession of P truth‐conducive or not? If it is… You can see how that would go.

So much for the warrant‐transfer version of coherentism. The second form of coherentism, what we can call the “warrant‐emergent form” does not imagine the circle as consisting of propositions that transfer their warrant from one proposition to another. Rather, warrant for each proposition in the circle obtains because they are mutually probability enhancing. Coherence itself is the property in virtue of which each member of the set of propositions has warrant. Warrant emerges all at once, so to speak, from the weblike structure of the set of propositions. The coherentist can then argue that the fact that the propositions cohere provides each of them with some prima facie credibility.

This might initially seem to be a more plausible view since it avoids the circularity charge. But, aside from the fact that there are, again, just too many competing circles that are coherent, the coherentist has, once again, embraced foundationalism. The coherentist is now explicitly assigning some initial positive warrant to all of the individual propositions in a set of coherent propositions that does not depend upon the warrant of any other proposition in the set. In other words, he is assigning to them what we have called the autonomous bit of warrant and, once again, the dilemma facing the foundationalist returns.

9. Infinitism

The third mode is designed to show the dogmatist that if he assents to some C‐type proposition, p, and if he keeps providing new answers to the question “What reason do you have for x?” he will not have resolved whether p is true. For there is always another reason, one that has not already been employed, that needs to be given for a belief. A self‐conscious infinitist would recognize that he should not assent to the proposition that he knows that p because he has not yet seen whether he can provide the required infinite set of nonrepeating reasons. Of course, since he also doesn't know whether there is such an infinite set of reasons available, he should not assent to the proposition that he doesn't know C‐type propositions. Again, withholding seems to be the apt attitude.

As far as I can tell, infinitism has never been seriously considered as a model of reasoning suitable for the dogmatic epistemist. Some philosophers have argued that beliefs are infinitely revisable because they can always be overridden, but that is not what is essential to infinitism. 33 What is essential is the claim that reasons for a belief, p, must be infinite and nonrepeating if S knows that p. Since it is clear that such a process can never be completed, dogmatic epistemists could not endorse infinitism. (I should note, parenthetically, that this does not imply that infinitism is an inappropriate model for the Pyrrhonian Skeptic or that it cannot be practiced rationally. 34 )

10. (Very) Short Assessment of Pyrrhonism

It appears that the Pyrrhonist is correct that no process of reasoning is such that it can resolve matters concerning what is nonevident. Thus, withholding assent about whether we can or can not have knowledge of C‐type propositions seems plausible. Is that a surprising result? I should think many foundationalists and coherentists will find it so.

I wish to thank Anne Ashbaugh for her help with this essay.

For discussions of the relationships between belief and knowledge see Peter Unger, Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 63; Norman Malcolm, Knowledge and Certainty (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1963 ), 58–72; Colin Radford, “Knowledge—By Example,” Analysis 27 (1966): 1–11; and Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 2000),124–125.

There is no readily available term. A natural one would be “cognitivist,” but that term already has a very specific application in ethics.

3. Sextus Empiricus , Outlines of Pyrrhonism , trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967) , I,226–230.

4. Ibid. , I,226.

For a contrasting discussion of the same issue, see Barry Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984 ), chap. 1.

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , in Philosophical Works of Descartes , ed. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York: Dover, 1931), I,147.

In the “First Meditation,” Descartes does not suggest a potential ground for doubt that he rejects unless, perhaps, that he is mad (insane). He asks whether he could be mad, like people who imagine that they are kings when they are poor, or that they are clothed when they are naked, or that they are pumpkins or made of glass. His answer is, “But they are mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant” (145). That is a puzzling response. Is the evil genius hypothesis less “extravagant?” Or from his point of view, is the possibility that his creator was something other than a perfect god any less extravagant? Nevertheless, he at least seems to be giving reasons for rejecting that grounds for doubt. Of course, later in the Meditations he rejects the claim that his maker might have been less than perfect.

For an interesting discussion of rejecting or neutralizing the skeptic's objections, see Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge ,131–136.

In the Argument from Closure, x: h and y: ∼sk, and sk: ∼h & in the switched world it appears that h.

For the sake of clarity, it is important to point out that the restoring proposition could itself have genuine grounds for doubt, so that even if (r & d) did not reduce the warrant for x, [(r&d) & d 1 ] could defeat the justification for x since d 1 would defeat the restoring effect of r. But then, (d & d 1 ) would be a new ground for doubt. So, we need not include this epicycle.

Two propositions, {x, y}, are contraries just in case x entails ∼y, but ∼x does not entail y. Here are some examples: The ball is red all over, the ball is yellow all over; X is an aunt, X is an uncle. More to the point, h and sk are contraries since h entails ∼sk, but ∼h does not entail sk. For example, it could be the case that there is no hand before me and I am not in a switched‐world (or it doesn't appear that there is a hand before me).

The probability could be either subjective or objective. The reason for including “nonoverridden” in the supposition is that it would not be sufficient for S to be entitled to believe something if S only had good enough grounds to render a proposition sufficiently likely to be true because S might also have counterevidence that overrides those positive grounds.

Robert Audi, Belief, Justification and Knowledge (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1988), 77.

Fred Dretske, “Epistemic Operators,” Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 1015–1016.

Edmund Gettier, “Is Knowledge True Justified Belief?” Analysis 23 ( 1963 ): 122. For the sake of employing consistent terminology, I have changed “P” to “p” and “Q” to “q.”

I have argued for that in Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981 ); “Skepticism and Closure: Why the Evil Genius Argument Fails,” Philosophical Topics 23, no. 1 (1995),213–236; and “Contextualism and the Real Nature of Academic Skepticism,” Philosophical Issues 10 (2000): 108–116.

Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981 ), 172–187.

For a full discussion of Nozick's account of knowledge, see Steven Luper‐Foy, The Possibility of Knowledge (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987).

Jonathan Vogel, “Tracking, Closure and Inductive Knowledge,” in Luper‐Foy, The Possibility of Knowledge ,206.

It is crucial to note that the truth of CP does not depend upon the antecedent being fulfilled.

G. E. Moore, “Certainty,” Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier, 1962),242.

The claim here is not that the evidential relationship between h and ∼sk is such that S must use Pattern 2. The claim is merely that such a path is available.

Much of the material in this section incorporates material from my article “Contextualism and the Real Nature of Academic Skepticism.”

This is essentially the view put forth by Stewart Cohen in “Knowledge, Context and Social Standards,” Synthese 73 (1987): 3–26, and his “How to Be a Fallibilist,” Philosophical Perspectives 2 ( 1988 ): 91–123; David Lewis in “Elusive Knowledge,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996): 549–567; and Keith DeRose in “Solving the Skeptical Problem,” Philosophical Review 104 (1995): 1–52, and his “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (1992): 913–929.

This issue is fully discussed in Myles Burnyeat and Michael Frede, The Original Sceptics: A Controversy (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997).

25. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism , I, 40–128.

26. Ibid. , 166–169.

Strictly speaking, there is a fourth possibility, namely that there are foundational propositions and that there are an infinite number of propositions between the foundational one and the one for which reasons are initially being sought. Interestingly, such a hybrid view might be indistinguishable in practice from infinitism and hence not subject to the “foundationalist's dilemma” to be discussed later. Thus, I think for our purposes we can treat this as a form of infinitism.

These are my own glosses on what I take to be the best arguments. I do not claim that the Pyrrhonians gave these very arguments.

I put it that way in order to make clear that foundationalism can embrace some‐aspects of coherentism. Propositions with only minimal justification can mount up, so to speak, by gaining extra credibility. Thus, the definition of foundationalism includes both weak and strong foundationalism as characterized by Laurence BonJour in “Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?”

For further discussion of these two forms of coherentism, see Ernest Sosa's “The Raft and the Pyramid,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980): 3–25, and Laurence Bon‐Jour “Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?”

Aristotle, Posterior Analytics , I, iii, 73a5.

This is the suggestion put forward by Laurence BonJour in The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985 ).

See Charles Sanders Peirce, “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man,” Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1965), vol. 5, bk. 2,152–153.

Indeed, I think infinitism is the right “solution” to the regress problem and have so argued in “Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons,” Philosophical Perspectives , vol. 13, ed. J. Tomberlin ( 1999 ), 297–325; “Why Not Infinitism?” in Epistemology: Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress in Philosophy , ed. Richard Cobb‐Stevens (2000), vol. 5,199–208; and “How a Pyrrhonian Skeptic Might Respond to Academic Skepticism” in The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays , ed. Steven Luper (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, forthcoming). It is crucial to note that infinitism, if it is a solution, is a nondogmatic one, and the issue under consideration here is whether infinitism (or foundationalism or coherentism) can provide the dogmatist with a model that can lead to resolving matters.

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1: Knowledge and Skepticism

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Philosophy 1

Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia , literally "love of wisdom") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC). Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation. Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it? What is most real? However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust (if one can get away with it)? Do humans have free will?

Historically, "philosophy" encompassed any body of knowledge. From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural philosophy" encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize. In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology, linguistics and economics.

Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy. For example, is beauty objective or subjective? Are there many scientific methods or just one? Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy? Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics ("concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being"), epistemology (about the "nature and grounds of knowledge [and]...its limits and validity" ), ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science and the history of Western philosophy.

Since the 20th century professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. However, many of those who study philosophy in undergraduate or graduate programs contribute in the fields of law, journalism, politics, religion, science, business and various art and entertainment activities.

Introduction

Traditionally, the term "philosophy" referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is closely related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education and politics. Newton's 1687 "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" is classified in the 2000s as a book of physics; he used the term "natural philosophy" because it used to encompass disciplines that later became associated with sciences such as astronomy, medicine and physics.

Philosophy was traditionally divided into three major branches:

Natural philosophy (" physics") was the study of the physical world ( physis, lit: nature);
Moral philosophy (" ethics" ) was the study of goodness, right and wrong, beauty, justice and virtue ( ethos, lit: custom);
Metaphysical philosophy ("logos") was the study of existence, causation, God, logic, forms and other abstract objects (" meta-physika" lit: "what comes after physics").

This division is not obsolete but has changed. Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory (including aesthetics, ethics, political philosophy, etc.). Metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others.

Philosophical progress

Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today. Colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, while Talbot Brewer argued that "progress" is the wrong standard by which to judge philosophical activity.

Historical overview

In one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as "how are we to live" and "what is the nature of reality". A broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations.

Western philosophy

Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world and dates to Pre-Socratic thinkers who were active in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BC such as Thales (c. 624 – c. 546 BC) and Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) who practiced a "love of wisdom" ( philosophia ) and were also termed physiologoi (students of physis , or nature). Socrates was a very influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom. Western philosophy can be divided into three eras: Ancient (Greco-Roman), Medieval philosophy (Christian European), and Modern philosophy.

The Ancient era was dominated by Greek philosophical schools which arose out of the various pupils of Socrates, such as Plato who founded the Platonic Academy, and was one of the most influential Greek thinkers for the whole of Western thought. Plato's student Aristotle was also extremely influential, founding the Peripatetic school. Other traditions include Cynicism, Stoicism, Greek Skepticism and Epicureanism. Important topics covered by the Greeks included metaphysics (with competing theories such as atomism and monism), cosmology, the nature of the well-lived life (eudaimonia), the possibility of knowledge and the nature of reason (logos). With the rise of the Roman empire, Greek philosophy was also increasingly discussed in Latin by Romans such as Cicero and Seneca.

Medieval philosophy (5th – 16th century) is the period following the fall of the Roman empire and was dominated by the rise of Christianity and hence reflects Judeo-Christian theological concerns as well as retaining a continuity with Greco-Roman thought. Problems such as the existence and nature of God, the nature of faith and reason, metaphysics, the problem of evil were discussed in this period. Some key Medieval thinkers include St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Boethius, Anselm and Roger Bacon. Philosophy for these thinkers was viewed as an aid to Theology ( ancilla theologiae ) and hence they sought to align their philosophy with their interpretation of sacred scripture. This period saw the development of Scholasticism, a text critical method developed in medieval universities based on close reading and disputation on key texts. The Renaissance (1355–1650) period saw increasing focus on classic Greco-Roman thought and on a robust Humanism.

Early modern philosophy in the Western world begins with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and René Descartes (1596–1650). Following the rise of natural science, Modern philosophy was concerned with developing a secular and rational foundation for knowledge and moved away from traditional structures of authority such as religion, scholastic thought and the Church. Major modern philosophers include Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. 19th-century philosophy is influenced by the wider movement termed the Enlightenment, and includes figures such as Hegel a key figure in German idealism, Nietzsche a famed anti-Christian, J.S. Mill who promoted Utilitarianism, Karl Marx who developed the foundations for Communism and the American William James. The 20th century saw the split between Analytic philosophy and Continental philosophy, as well as philosophical trends such as Phenomenology, Existentialism, Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and the Linguistic turn.

The school of Athens, where many philosophical concepts took shape.

The Philosophical Approach to Skepticism

Most people are familiar with the word skeptic: a person who doubts commonly accepted opinions. But where does the notion of skepticism fit in philosophy ? Philosophy poses many big questions about the self, the nature of reality, the pursuit of knowledge, and generally attempts to understand the world around us. A philosophical skeptic is someone who denies the possibility of knowledge. This idea dates back to early philosophical ideas. Here, we will explore what philosophical skepticism is and why it is an integral component of philosophy.

What is Philosophical Skepticism?

When hearing the word skepticism, one may define it as an attitude of doubt and uncertainty. This idea is indeed at the heart of skepticism; however, philosophical skepticism is slightly different. Philosophical skepticism questions the possibility of knowledge and argues that there are varying degrees of skepticism. A skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge in a specific area; a global skeptic rejects the possibility of knowledge at all. A local skeptic is a small-scale skeptic who examines the possibility of knowledge in a specific subject. For example, one could be a local skeptic about moral knowledge. These ideas are not new and have been around since ancient times .

Ancient Skepticism

Greece Socrates reflects on the meaning of life.

Western skepticism is an attitude that dates back to around the 5th century BCE in ancient Greece . There was disagreement amongst philosophers about the nature of reality. Xenophanes, a Greek poet and philosopher, doubted anyone's ability to distinguish truth from fiction. He is the founder of Eleatic philosophy, which is the view that there is a static, eternal 'One' reality.

Later, Socrates developed a more concrete form of skepticism. Socrates always questioned the claims of knowledge that others made. In his dialogue, Apology, with Plato, Socrates sets out to see if anyone is smarter than he is. Socrates does not believe he is wise and admits in the dialogue that all he really knows is that he knows nothing - a quote that may be familiar to some readers.

In another dialogue, Phaedo and The Republic, Socrates extends his skepticism to everyday claims. He points out how perception can change the truth from person to person. For example, a chocolate bar that is small to someone might be big to someone else. This was the foundation for the idea of Western skepticism.

The Two Varieties

There are two different kinds of skepticism in Western philosophy. The first is Academic Skepticism, also known as Cartesian Skepticism. This is a weaker form of skepticism since it focuses on suspending belief in certain areas but does not question higher-order claims. While there are specific claims questioned, higher-order claims are safe to believe.

The other type of skepticism is Pyrrhonian Skepticism. This is a stronger form of skepticism because it questions higher-order claims about skepticism itself. This type of skepticism is even skeptical about skepticism. It questions claims skepticism makes, such as 'We should suspend belief in perceptual claims.'

The Dream Argument

Monument to the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu.

There are various popular arguments for skepticism and its different branches. One of the most famous is the dream argument. Zhuang Zhou invented the dream argument in 369-286 BCE. He was a Chinese Taoist philosopher who argued that any individual could be currently dreaming even though we believe we are awake. For example, imagine you dream you are a butterfly flying amongst flowers. When you wake up, how do you determine you are waking up from a dream of being a butterfly and not a butterfly dreaming that you are human? Zhou concludes that all conscious experience is actually just a dream. He applies philosophical skepticism to his ideas by questioning the whole world around him. He places doubt on whether or not one can trust their own experiences. His philosophy stresses the importance of not taking our reality for granted.

The Evil Demon Argument

Famous Enlightenment philosopher, Rene Descartes.

Another philosopher who explored a dream argument was Rene Descartes . Descartes argued that dreams are similar to real life and are often based on real-life experiences. This makes it difficult to decipher if a dream is real or not. However, whether you are dreaming or not, Descartes realized that mathematical ideas are consistent throughout both experiences. For example, whether you are dreaming or awake, 2 + 2 always equals 4.

Descartes also proposes that maybe humans are being tricked by an evil demon. This demon can trick you into believing anything it wants. If this is true, we cannot trust anything. Since we cannot deny that any evil demon is tricking us, we don't really have accurate knowledge of the external world. In this hypothesis, Descartes is a true skeptic. He claims that since we can't rule out the evil demon hypothesis, we cannot rule out the possibility that we are wrong and are not justified in our beliefs.

Skepticism Versus Critical Thinking

After learning about skepticism, one might notice it is similar to critical thinking . Critical thinking is the process of analyzing an argument and evaluating it logically. Critical thinking focuses on logically understanding an argument to make the best decision. However, while skepticism has a place and is necessary for the thinking process, it is not the same as critical thinking.

Skepticism is an attitude of doubt and questioning knowledge and beliefs. This is different than analyzing and evaluating information. While critical thinking and skepticism are different, they both have an essential role in making well-informed decisions.

Why is Skepticism Important?

Doubting that an idea is trustworthy is essential to the critical thinking process. Being skeptical allows us to question our behaviors, what we believe, and who we believe, which is helpful for humans to make informed decisions. Instead of following along with what everyone else is doing or believing what someone tells us without question, skepticism asks us to stop and ask questions. This can stop us from getting into situations where people are manipulating us. It also allows us to take more control over our lives and be more open-minded, which is a practice that can benefit everyone.

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What is Skepticism?

The word “skepticism” comes from the ancient Greek skepsis, meaning “inquiry.” Skepticism is, therefore, not a cynical rejection of new ideas, as the popular stereotype goes, but rather an attitude of both open mind and critical sense.

The ancient skeptics simply doubted that human beings can achieve certain knowledge, and preferred to be agnostic about a number of notions which they felt we just did not grasp securely.

That philosophical tradition eventually informed the beginnings of science in the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is best captured by David Hume’s advice that wise persons proportion their beliefs to the evidence. Or, as Carl Sagan put it much later, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The modern skeptical movement is a grassroots phenomenon that aims at helping the public navigate the complex borderlands between sense and nonsense, science and pseudoscience.

Skepticism does so by way of investigation of alleged extraordinary phenomena, mindful cultivation of critical thinking, and an honest attitude toward intellectual inquiry.

The Burden of Skepticism

Following is an excerpt from the Skeptical Inquirer archives ( Vol. 12 Issue No.1 ) where Carl Sagan describes skepticism in his own words.

What Is Skepticism? It’s nothing very esoteric. We encounter it every day. When we buy a used car, if we are the least bit wise we will exert some residual skeptical powers—whatever our education has left to us. You could say, “Here’s an honest-looking fellow. I’ll just take whatever he offers me.” Or you might say, “Well, I’ve heard that occasionally there are small deceptions involved in the sale of a used car, perhaps inadvertent on the part of the salesperson,” and then you do something. You kick the tires, you open the doors, you look under the hood. (You might go through the motions even if you don’t know what is supposed to be under the hood, or you might bring a mechanically inclined friend.) You know that some skepticism is required, and you understand why. It’s upsetting that you might have to disagree with the used-car salesman or ask him questions that he is reluctant to answer. There is at least a small degree of interpersonal confrontation involved in the purchase of a used car and nobody claims it is especially pleasant. But there is a good reason for it—because if you don’t exercise some minimal skepticism, if you have an absolutely untrammeled credulity, there is probably some price you will have to pay later. Then you’ll wish you had made a small investment of skepticism early. Now this is not something that you have to go through four years of graduate school to understand. Everybody understands this. The trouble is, a used car is one thing but television commercials or pronouncements by presidents and party leaders are another. We are skeptical in some areas but unfortunately not in others.

Skeptics and Science Deniers

Public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term “skeptic.” A Nov. 10, 2014, New York Times article incorrectly referred to Sen. James Inhofe as “a prominent skeptic of climate change.” Two days later Scott Horsley of NPR’s Morning Edition called him “one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress.” These are not equivalent statements.

There is a concern that “skeptic” and “denier” have been conflated. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.

It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration.

As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong.

The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is “denial.” Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers.

Skeptics are those who have devoted much of their careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism.

Critical Thinking

I. definition.

Critical thinking is the ability to reflect on (and so improve ) your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. It’s a combination of several skills and habits such as:

Curiosity : the desire for knowledge and understanding

Curious people are never content with their current understanding of the world, but are driven to raise questions and pursue the answers. Curiosity is endless — the better you understand a given topic, the more you realize how much more there is to learn!

Humility : or the recognition that your own understanding is limited

This is closely connected to curiosity — if you’re arrogant and think you know everything already, then you have no reason to be curious. But a humble person always recognizes the limitations and gaps in their knowledge . This makes them more receptive to information, better listeners and learners.

Skepticism : a suspicious attitude toward what other people say

Skepticism means you always demand evidence and don’t simply accept what others tell you. At the same time, skepticism has to be inwardly focused as well! You have to be equally skeptical of your own beliefs and instincts as you are of others’.

Rationality or logic: The formal skills of logic are indispensable for critical thinkers

Skepticism keeps you on the lookout for bad arguments, and rationality helps you figure out exactly why they’re bad. But rationality also allows you to identify good arguments when you see them, and then to move beyond them and understand their further implications.

Creativity: or the ability to come up with new combinations of ideas

It’s not enough to just be skeptical and knock the holes in every argument that you hear. Sooner or later you have to come up with your own ideas, your own solutions, and your own visions. That requires a creative and independent mind, but one that is also capable of listening and learning.

Empathy : the ability to see things from another person’s perspective

Too often, people talk about critical thinkers as though they’re solitary explorers, forging their own path through the jungle of ideas without help from others. But this isn’t true at all. Real critical thinking means you constantly engage with other people, listen to what they have to say, and try to imagine how they see the world. By seeing things from someone else’s perspective, you can generate far more new ideas than you could by relying on your own knowledge alone.

II. Examples

Although video games are sometimes simply a passive way to enjoy yourself, they sometimes rely on critical thinking skills. This is particularly true of puzzle games and role playing games (RPGs) that present your character with puzzles at critical moments. For example, at one stage in the classic RPG Neverwinter Nights , your character has the option to serve as a juror on another character’s trial. In order to save the innocent man, you have to talk to people throughout the town and, using a combination of empathy and skepticism, figure out what really happened.

In one episode of South Park , Cartman becomes obsessed with conspiracy theories and sings a song about needing to think for himself and find out the truth. The show is poking fun at conspiracy theorists, who often think that they are exercising critical thinking when in fact they are simply exercising too much skepticism towards common sense and popular beliefs, and not enough skepticism towards new, unnecessarily complicated explanations.

III. Critical Thinking vs. Traditional Thinking

Critical thinking, in the history of modern Western thought, is strongly associated with the Enlightenment, the period when European and American philosophers decided to approach the world with a rational eye, rejecting blind faith and questioning traditional authority. It was this moment in history that gave us modern medicine, democracy , and the early forms of industrial technology.

At the same time, the Enlightenment also came with many downsides, particularly the fact that it was so hostile to tradition. This hostility is understandable given the state of Europe at the time — ripped apart by bloody conflict between different religions, and oppressed by traditional monarchs who rooted their power in that of the Church. Enlightenment thinkers understandably rejected traditional thinking, holding it responsible for all this violence and injustice. But still, the Enlightenment sometimes went too far in the opposite direction. After all, rejecting tradition just for the sake of rejecting it is not really any better than accepting tradition just for the sake of accepting it! Traditions provide valuable resources for critical thinking, and without them it would be impossible. Think about this: the English language is a tradition, and without it you wouldn’t be sitting there reading these (hopefully useful) words about critical thinking!

So critical thinking absolutely depends on traditions. There’s no question that critical thinking means something more than just accepting traditions; but it doesn’t mean you necessarily reject them, either. It just means that you’re not blindly following tradition for its own sake ; rather, your relationship to your tradition is based on humility, creativity, skepticism, and all the other attributes of critical thinking.

IV. Quotes about Critical Thinking

“If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” (Isaac Newton)

Until Einstein, no physicist was ever more influential than Isaac Newton. Through curiosity and probable skepticism, he not only worked out the basic rules for matter and energy in the universe — he also realized that the force causing objects to fall was the same as the force causing celestial objects to orbit around each other (thus discovering the modern theory of gravity). He was also known for having a big ego and being a little arrogant with those he considered beneath his intellect — but even Newton had enough humility to recognize that he wasn’t doing it alone. He was deeply indebted to the whole tradition of scientists that had come before him — Europeans, Greeks, Arabs, Indians, and all the rest.

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses… and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.” (Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism )

In this quote, Carl Sagan offers a sensitive analysis of a tension within the idea of critical thinking. He points out that skepticism is extremely important to critical thinking, but at the same time it can go too far and become an obstacle. Notice, too, that you could replace the word “new” with “old” in this quote and it would still make sense. Critical thinkers need to be both open to new ideas and skeptical of them; similarly, they need to have a balanced attitude toward old and traditional ideas as well.

V. The History and Importance of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking has emerged as a cultural value in various times and places, from the Islamic scholars of medieval Central Asia to the secular philosophers of 18th-century America or the scientists and engineers of 21st-century Japan. In each case, critical thinking has taken a slightly different form, sometimes emphasizing skepticism above the other dimensions (as occurred in the European Enlightenment), sometimes emphasizing other dimensions such as creativity or rationality.

Today, many leaders in science, education, and business worry that we are seeing a decline in critical thinking. Education around the world has turned increasingly toward standardized testing and the mechanical memorization of facts, an approach that doesn’t leave time for critical thinking or creative arts. Some politicians view critical and creative education as a waste of time, believing that education should only focus on job skills and nothing else — an attitude which clearly overlooks the fact that critical thinking is an important job skill for everyone from auto mechanics to cognitive scientists.

a. Creativity

b. Skepticism

d. These are all dimensions of critical thinking

a. They are opposites

b. They are synonyms

c. They are in tension, but not incompatible

d. None of the above

a. The Enlightenment

b. The Renaissance

c. The current era

d. All of the above

a. Being constantly skeptical

b. Not being skeptical

c. Having a balance between too much skepticism and too little

d. No relation to skepticism

Dr. Ian O'Byrne

<span class='p-name'>Making healthy skepticism happen in teaching and learning</span>

13 Comments → Making healthy skepticism happen in teaching and learning

Wondering Ian if Mike Caulfield’s work is useful here too?

Absolutely. Mike’s work definitely impacts and motivates my thinking.

Pingback: Den evangelikala rörelsen – en introduktion | Teaching and mentoring in theory and practice

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The business of thinking big – why managers should study philosophy.

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“Studying philosophy taught me two things. I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to ... [+] follow an argument all the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings.” Stewart Butterfield, CEO and Co-founder of Slack

What is a leader? If David Attenborough and his camera crew were to go stalking through Manhattan or the Silicon Valley for their next nature documentary, how would they identify the CEOs? Perhaps by their plumage – the flash of diamond-studded cufflinks and sharp suits on Wall Street, or the tell-tale black turtleneck, jeans and sneakers of Palo Alto. But alas, it’s not so simple.

Leaders present themselves in myriad ways and are not nearly as uniform in their appearances as, say, an alpha silverback gorilla. This is because their leadership stems not from natural physical advantages, but from a willingness to embrace new ideas and learning opportunities. What determines a leader is at heart a philosophical – not a physiological – question.

This may explain why a number of chief executives majored in philosophy.

Meet the executives who majored in philosophy

Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros is a great example. A philosophy major at the London School of Economics in the 1950s, Soros credits some of his financial success to understanding how concepts like reflexivity – being able to examine your own feelings, reactions and motivations, and how these influence what you do or thinik in a situation - apply to economics.

“I have developed a conceptual framework which has helped me both to make money as a hedge fund manager and to spend money as a policy-oriented philanthropist. But the framework itself is not about money, it is about the relationship between thinking and reality,” Soros wrote in the Financial Times .

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He stands in good company. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who many consider among the most ruthless individuals on Wall Street, graduated with an A.B. in philosophy from Princeton with a thesis on “The Problem of Formulating an Adequate Explication of the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning”.

Stewart Butterfield, CEO and Co-founder of Slack, has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in philosophy, focusing on the philosophy of the mind. In his own words , “Studying philosophy taught me two things. I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way down, which is invaluable in running meetings.”

Butterfield applied these skills in building a simple-to-use knowledge-management platform which is estimated to attract over 47 million daily users by 2025.

Similarly, Eva Chen channelled her background as a philosophy student at National Chengchi University in Taiwan into her role as CEO and Co-founder of Trend Micro, a global market leader in the field of cybersecurity software. Her lack of formal training as a software engineer allows her to bring a fresh perspective to the company.

“I am not that kind of CEO, who puts up a poker face and pretends to know everything. I keep asking why … Maybe it’s because I am a girl or I am not a hard-core electronic engineer; I am just never afraid of raising stupid questions,” she reflects .

According to chief development officer Oscar Chang, this might be one of her greatest strengths as a leader: “She has the gift of seeing beyond what engineers are blind to.”

Management is like a rollercoaster

It’s well attested that studying the humanities provides leaders with vital practical skills such as strong communication, critical thinking, and cultural awareness. But for Santiago Iñiguez, President of IE University in Spain, the connection between management and philosophy runs deeper still.

"True managers are humble and keep learning throughout their careers.” Santiago Iñiguez, President ... [+] of IE University

“I always believe that in management, which is a very pragmatic-oriented practice, there is philosophy in action behind every relevant management decision, behind any strategy to lead companies, behind the values and principles that guide the behaviour of managers,” he says.

“The important thing is that managers reflect and try to figure out what those principles and values are that guide their behaviour because this allows them to make much better decisions.”

Iñiguez draws on the teachings of philosophers throughout history, from Aristotle and Socrates in Ancient Greece to Ayn Rand and 17 th century Spanish cleric Baltasar Gracián, all of whom he believes still offer enrichment to today’s business leaders. Yet his voice is unmistakeably his own, combining the wisdom of generations past with a sense of relevancy lifted from the well of his own experiences.

“Renew your brilliance. Excellence grows old and so does fame,” said Gracián, to which Iñiguez expands, “Management is like a rollercoaster, so you cannot rest on your laurels – you have to perform well every day. You have to show that you are valid, committed, and can be the best.”

Indeed, the idea of ‘renewing your brilliance’ seems apt to IE University, an institution which was created through the expansion and diversification of IE Business School, but which now hosts four other schools, covering law, architecture and design, politics and global affairs, and science and technology. A new school focusing on humanities was announced last year.

“When I joined almost 33 years ago, the expansion and diversification at IE Business School was a fascinating experience. I was lucky enough to take part in the launch and creation of the first accreditation system for business schools in Europe, Equis, and then the creation of IE University 15 years ago,” Iñiguez explains.

“I learned the importance of working in a team. I’ve been lucky because I’ve worked on the shoulders of giants.”

The pursuit of happiness at work

In his latest book, Philosophy Inc.: Applying Wisdom to Everyday Management , Iñiguez credits Aristotle with getting it right when he said that “happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

However, most people will spend much of their lives at work. The Independent reports that the average Briton will put in the equivalent of 3,507 days at work, including 204 days of overtime, during their lifetime. The typical employee will experience six office romances, 812 workplace arguments, and will brew 7,967 cups of tea or coffee for their colleagues.

So, is it still possible to pursue happiness on your way to the coffee machine? In Iñiguez’s view, it is.

“We should probably try to make our workplace the best possible place where we can actually engage with other people, where we can have fun, share times for humour and, of course, meet our colleagues and learn more about them because we are social animals,” he says.

“We need to know our colleagues in depth and that’s why, if we have to find happiness at work, it’s not just a question of achieving professional goals or getting a good compensation or being recognized by your colleagues; it’s also about having fun and enjoying the time you spend at work.”

"You have to be open to many different sources of learning. Unless you keep an open mind, you are ... [+] not going to achieve happiness and you are not going to achieve success in your profession." Santiago Iñiguez, President of IE Universit

Achieving this means people must act with integrity, which Iñiguez defines as a form of authenticity. It involves being consistent with your beliefs, paying respect to colleagues, knowing their concerns and how you can help them both professionally and personally.

“It’s not just fulfilling; it results in success and effective management. I believe that good managers are good professors because they teach their junior colleagues how to perform better,” he says.

Avoid the charisma trap

Socrates is often credited as the father of Western philosophy. Ironically, one of his best known maxims is, “I only know that I know nothing.”

It speaks to the value of humility, especially for those in leadership positions, and for the IE University President it is integral to being able to find joy in the workplace. When pride enters the scene, it is usually flanked by insecurity and blame, neither of which contributes to pleasant work environments.

Iñiguez warns against falling into the charisma trap of hiring based purely on a candidate’s force of personality.

“Normally, charismatic leaders are selfish. They are arrogant and don’t listen to others. They talk quickly. They are not the sort of reflective leaders that many corporations need,” he argues. “This is why I recommend that people do not make charisma the main characteristic when picking candidates.”

In Philosophy Inc., Santiago Iñiguez outlines several red flags that indicate a charismatic candidate is not right for the job, including the discrediting of others, a history of short stays in various positions, and flattery. He also offers several positive traits to look out for, such as willingness to offer sincere praise and external references from people who know the candidate well attest to their management skills.

Yet how should this be communicated in executive education, where participants have impressive résumés and a wealth of experience under their belts?

Training your brain

Iñiguez focuses on the potential for future growth. No matter how knowledgeable you are, there is always room to develop, to tweak, to reconsider.

“You have to be open to many different sources of learning. Unless you keep an open mind, you are not going to achieve happiness and you are not going to achieve success in your profession. True managers are humble and keep learning throughout their careers,” he says.

This open-mindedness is the crux of why philosophy is relevant to business leaders. There is a thought process behind every decision and every interaction with peers or employees. The question is, how well do you understand that thought process? How disciplined is your mind?

“As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy,” said American writer Ayn Rand, addressing West Point graduates in 1974. “Your only choice is about whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation – or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions.”

The brain is a muscle which must be exercised if it is to grapple with powerful ideas. For a business leader, this struggle is inescapable. As Iñiguez illustrates, “management is philosophy in action.” The more you understand how people think, the easier it becomes to digest arguments, and the swifter you are able to act in situations that require a decisive response.

So, what is a leader? They are the practical philosophers, the disciplined dreamers, because every business starts as a dream. What was Apple before Steve Jobs and his co-founders pooled their ideas in the mid-1970s? It was nothing more than the name of a fruit, that famously fell on Newton’s head.

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Critical Thinking. Critical thinking is a widely accepted educational goal. Its definition is contested, but the competing definitions can be understood as differing conceptions of the same basic concept: careful thinking directed to a goal. Conceptions differ with respect to the scope of such thinking, the type of goal, the criteria and norms ...
Philosophical Skepticism: Explanation and Examples
What Is Philosophical Skepticism? Imagine you're playing a detective in a game, questioning every clue and witness you come across. That's kind of like philosophical skepticism. It's a way of thinking where you don't simply accept things as true without strong evidence. Philosophical skeptics look at the world like a mystery to be solved. They don't just believe something because it ...
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It's about being open to constructive criticism and new ideas. People who are sceptical do all of this as well—they challenge ideas and they withhold judgment until sufficient evidence is ...
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2 Critical Thinking, Research, Reading, and Writing. Introduction; 2.1 The Brain Is an Inference Machine; ... Philosophical skepticism is the view that some or all knowledge is impossible. A skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge—particularly justification—in some domain.
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The first school of skeptical philosophy developed in the Academy, the school founded by Plato, in the 3rd century bce and was thus called "Academic" skepticism. Starting from the skeptical doctrines of Socrates, its leaders, Arcesilaus and Carneades, set forth a series of epistemological arguments to show that nothing could be known, challenging primarily what were then the two foremost ...
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Critical Theory refers to a way of doing philosophy that involves a moral critique of culture. A "critical" theory, in this sense, is a theory that attempts to disprove or discredit a widely held or influential idea or way of thinking in society. Thus, critical race theorists and critical gender theorists offer critiques of traditional ...
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The traditional issue of the structure of knowledge and justification, engendering Foundationalism, Coherentism, and Infinitism, can be seen as resulting from one main argument for what we will call Pyrrhonian Skepticism. In what follows we present these two forms of skepticism and assess the main arguments for them. 1.
Skepticism
Skepticism. First published Sat Dec 8, 2001; substantive revision Wed Aug 31, 2005. Much of epistemology has arisen either in defense of or in opposition to various forms of skepticism. Indeed, one could classify various theories of knowledge by their responses to skepticism. For example, rationalists could be viewed as skeptical about the ...
7.4: Skepticism
Philosophical skepticism is the view that some or all knowledge is impossible. A skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge—particularly justification—in some domain. ... . 369-286 BCE) was a Chinese Taoist philosopher who argued that for all we know, we could currently be dreaming while thinking we are awake. Imagine dreaming that ...
Philosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism (UK spelling: scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis, "inquiry") is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even rejects very plausible knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense.Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny ...
Constructive Skepticism, Critical Thinking and The Ethics of Belief
7 young people be introduced to critical thinking at the earliest possible opportunity and be encouraged to adopt a disposition of a healthy, mitigated, methodological skepticism as a defense against outrageous claims. Hence, the Bertrand Russell "Will to Doubt" ought to override the William James "Will to Believe.".
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We employ Hegel's argumentation in order to reveal that while all genuine philosophical thinking includes skeptical tests, genuine philosophical thinking does not necessarily end up at skepticism. We conclude that the application of skeptical tests is an essential feature of philosophical reflection, and therefore, of teaching philosophy.
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Share Skepticism: Why critical thinking makes you smarter on Twitter (X) ... Coherentism, in philosophy, is the idea that we are justified in believing things if they cohere with our other beliefs ...
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Thus, philosophical skepticism is the view that either the attitude represented in 2 or 3 is the appropriate one. I think it is fair to say that it is Academic Skepticism that is usually meant when most contemporary philosophers write about skepticism. Thus, it is that form of skepticism which will be the primary focus of this essay.
1: Knowledge and Skepticism
Philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570 - c. 495 BC). Philosophical methods include questioning, critical ...
The Philosophical Approach to Skepticism
Critical thinking focuses on logically understanding an argument to make the best decision. However, while skepticism has a place and is necessary for the thinking process, it is not the same as critical thinking. Skepticism is an attitude of doubt and questioning knowledge and beliefs. This is different than analyzing and evaluating information.
What is Skepticism?
The modern skeptical movement is a grassroots phenomenon that aims at helping the public navigate the complex borderlands between sense and nonsense, science and pseudoscience. Skepticism does so by way of investigation of alleged extraordinary phenomena, mindful cultivation of critical thinking, and an honest attitude toward intellectual inquiry.
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Critical Thinking: Explanation and Examples
I. Definition Critical thinking is the ability to reflect on (and so improve) your thoughts, beliefs, and expectations. It's a combination of several skills and habits such as: Curiosity: the desire for knowledge and understanding Curious people are never content with their current understanding of the world, but are driven to raise questions and pursue the answers. Curiosity is endless ...
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that while all genuine philosophical thinking includes skeptical tests, genuine philosophical thinking does not necessarily end up at skepticism. We conclude that the application of skeptical tests is an essential feature of philosophical reflection, and therefore, of teaching philosophy. KEYWORDS Critical thinking, skepticism, Philosophical ...
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Healthy skepticism means that you want to think critically as you engage with new content, ideas, or perspectives. This draws from critical literacy philosophies and pedagogies that encourages learners to actively analyze texts to look for underlying messages. When you view "texts" as being a very broad concept, this could apply to websites ...
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Curiosity : the desire for knowledge and understanding

Humility : or the recognition that your own understanding is limited

Skepticism : a suspicious attitude toward what other people say

Rationality or logic: The formal skills of logic are indispensable for critical thinkers

Creativity: or the ability to come up with new combinations of ideas

Empathy : the ability to see things from another person’s perspective

II. Examples

III. Critical Thinking vs. Traditional Thinking

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