Putting Skeptics in their Place
The Nature of Skeptical Arguments and their Role in Philosophical Inquiry

This book, first published in 2000, examines the nature of skeptical arguments and their role in philosophical inquiry.

John Greco (Author)

9780521045537, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 November 2007

284 pages
22.7 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.425 kg

"Greco's book stands out...as one of the best books on skepticism in the last twenty years, earning it a place alongside Stroud's masterful The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism and Williams's already-lauted Unnatural Doubts. Any serious epistemologist, of any stripe or persuasion, would be benefited by reading it..." Review of Metaphysics

This book, first published in 2000, is about the nature of skeptical arguments and their role in philosophical inquiry. John Greco delineates three main theses: that a number of historically prominent skeptical arguments make no obvious mistake, and therefore cannot be easily dismissed; that the analysis of skeptical arguments is philosophically useful and important, and should therefore have a central place in the methodology of philosophy; and that taking skeptical arguments seriously requires us to adopt an externalist, reliabilist epistemology. Greco argues that the importance of skeptical arguments is methodological. It is further argued that taking skeptical arguments seriously requires us to adopt a version of 'virtue epistemology', or a theory of knowledge that makes intellectual virtue central in the analysis of knowledge. The above methodology has consequences for moral and religious epistemology; in particular, a theory of moral perception is defended.

Preface
1. The nature of skeptical arguments and their role in philosophical inquiry
2. Skepticism about the world: part I - reconstructions
3. Skepticism about the world: part II - dismissive responses
4. Skepticism about the world: part III - dualism, realism and representationalism
5. The argument from an infinite regress of reasons
6. Hume's skepticism about unobserved matters of fact
7. Agent reliabilism
8. Agent reliabilism and the relevant sense of 'relevant possibility'
9. Moral and religious epistemology
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Analytical philosophy & Logical Positivism [HPCF5]