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Question Why aren't sceptics sceptical about scepticism?

Accepted:
March 9, 2011

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It should be noted that most philosophers who are interested in skepticism aren't themselves skeptics: they see skepticism as raising a challenge that must be met by an adequate account of human knowledge, and insofar as they try to defuse skepticism, they manifest considerable skepticism about its truth. However, attention to ancient skepticism reveals a divide in views about skepticism: Pyrrhonian skeptics were skeptical about skepticism, because one aim of Pyrrhonism was to avoid dogmatism about any and all beliefs; Academic skeptics, by contrast, seem to have maintained that skepticism was true, and consequently were sometimes called 'negative dogmatists'. (I say that Academic skeptics seem to have been negative dogmatists because it is a matter of scholarly debate whether the Academics were indeed negative dogmatists, and also whether there were other negative dogmatists.) One deep question is whether the Pyrrhonian or the Academic has the more coherent attitude to skepticism: after all, how can one know that skepticism is true if skepticism is meant to undercut the very basis of knowledge itself? Consideration of this question, which, I think, admits of various answers, and was engaged with in antiquity, would, I think, go far towards illuminating the nature of skepticism itself.

Question Why aren't sceptics sceptical about scepticism? Accepted:March 9, 2011

Question Why aren't sceptics sceptical about scepticism?

Accepted:
March 9, 2011