Skepticism is one of the perennial problems of philosophy: from antiquity, to the early modern period of Descartes and Hume, and right through to the present day. It remains a fundamental and widely studied topic and, as Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard show in Skepticism, it presents us with a paradox with important ramifications not only for epistemology but also for many other core areas of philosophy.
This book provides a thorough grounding in contemporary debates about skepticism, exploring the following key topics:
- the core skeptical arguments, with a particular focus on Cartesian and Humean radical skepticism
- the epistemic principles that are held to underlie skeptical arguments, such as the Closure and Underdetermination principles
- the content externalism of Putnam, Davidson, and Chalmers, and how it might help us respond to radical skepticism
- the epistemic externalism/internalism distinction and h
