Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader

by Keith DeRose (editor), Ted A. Warfield (Editor)

Recently, new life has been breathed into the ancient philosophical topic of skepticism. The subject of some of the best and most provocative work in contemporary philosophy, skepticism has been addressed not only by top epistemologists but also by several of the world's finest philosophers who are most known for their work in other areas of the discipline.
Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader brings together the most important recent contributions to the discussion of skepticism. Covering major approaches to the skeptical problem, it features essays by Anthony Brueckner, Keith DeRose, Fred Dretske, Graeme Forbes, Christopher Hill, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Hilary Putnam, Ernest Sosa, Gail Stine, Barry Stroud, Peter Unger, and Ted Warfield. The book opens with a thorough introduction that outlines the skeptical problem, explains the dominant responses to skepticism, and discusses the strengths, weaknesses, and unresolved issues of each response, providing undergraduate students and nonphilosophers with the background and context necessary to understand the essays. Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader serves as an ideal text for courses in epistemology and skepticism and will also appeal to professional philosophers and interested general readers.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 1999

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great resource for the more familiar students or professionals. In fact it will be a great resource to those persons that are not familiar with philosophical scepticism at all. However, the reader suffers in at least one important manner. The sceptical argument with which it is primarily focused (as one can gather from DeRose's Introduction) is the argument from ignorance. This argument consists in the sceptical-hypothesis premise and the Closure-premise to the conclusion that scepticism about the external world is true. However, two important articles in this reader are not clearly related to that argument at all. Sosa's article 'Philosophical Scepticism and Epistemic Circularity' is in response to an earlier paper from Stroud titled 'Understanding Human Knowledge in General'. Stroud responds to Sosa's article in this reader with 'Scepticism, 'Externalism', and the Goal of Epistemology'; however, one finds that Stroud's article seems misplaced without the supplement of his earlier paper 'Understanding Human Knowledge in General'. The sceptical-argument of those pieces are not the sceptical arguments DeRose mentions in his Introduction. And for this reason it seems a person new to the debate surrounding philosophical scepticism will be misinformed in this regard. However the more experienced reader will most likely not be troubled by this and will find this reader to be an essential resource.