القراءات الإضافية والمراجع

الفصل الأول: ما الشكوكية؟

For an introduction to the theory of knowledge that doesn’t presuppose any prior knowledge of the subject, see my introductory textbook, What is This Thing Called Knowledge? (4th edn.) (London: Routledge, 2018). Chapters 1 and 18–20 are particularly relevant to issues covered in this chapter. See also Jennifer Nagel’s Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For an overview of the theory of knowledge that is a bit more in-depth, see my book Epistemology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). For a very readable introduction to the problem of scepticism, including its history, see Neil Gascoigne’s book Scepticism (London: Acumen, 2002). See also Allan Hazlett’s A Critical Introduction to Scepticism (London: Bloomsbury, 2014).

For a helpful introduction to some of the issues regarding truth, including the perils of adopting a relativist account of truth, see Simon Blackburn’s Truth: A Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). See also Michael Lynch’s True to Life: Why Truth Matters (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), and Paul Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). The reader might also find Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work on “bullshit”, and what is so problematic about it, very useful in this regard.

See On Bullshit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). For a comprehensive overview of the philosophical literature on relativism—which, the reader should note, extends well beyond the specific kind of relativism about truth that we have looked at here—see Maria Baghramian and Adam Carter’s 2015 entry on “Relativism” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.

E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/).

For an excellent and highly engaging account of the use and abuses of science, and thereby why the scientific method is so important, see Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science (London: Fourth Estate, 2008).

For a useful discussion of our fallibility, and its epistemological ramifications, see Stephen Hetherington’s entry on “Fallibilism” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. J. Fieser and B. Dowden (https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallibil/). See also Baron Reed’s related discussion of certainty and its relevance to epistemology in his 2008 entry on “Certainty” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/certainty/).

For more on the notion of an epistemic reason, and more generally how reasons are important in epistemology, see Kurt Sylvan’s entry on “Reasons in Epistemology” in Oxford Bibliographies: Philosophy, ed. D. H. Pritchard (DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396577-0183). For an accessible treatment of how one might apply epistemology to practical questions, such as how to spot a conspiracy theory, or how to determine which “experts” one should believe, see David Coady’s What to Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). See also the entries collected in David Coady and James Chase’s new edited volume, The Routledge Handbook to Applied Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2018). Part four of my introductory epistemology textbook, What is This Thing Called Knowledge? (4th edn.) (London: Routledge, 2018), offers an accessible discussion of a range of topics in “applied” epistemology, including chapters on the epistemology of education, politics, law, and technology. For an interesting, and accessible, contemporary work that blends sceptical, epistemological, and political ideas, see Michael Lynch’s In Praise of Reason (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012).

For a classic discussion of the absurd, see Thomas Nagel’s “The Absurd”, Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971), 716–27. For an existentialist take on the absurd, see Albert Camus’s famous 1942 essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus”. For a contemporary volume that contains a good English translation of this essay (by Justin O’Brien), see The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (London: Vintage, 1991). For an epistemological twist on this issue, one that brings in the problem of radical scepticism, see my “Absurdity, Angst and The Meaning of Life”, Monist 93 (2010), 3–16.

الفصل الثاني: هل المعرفة مستحيلة؟

For an accessible introduction to the problem of radical scepticism, see chapter 6 of my epistemology textbook, Epistemology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). For a much more detailed overview of the literature on radical scepticism, see Peter Klein’s 2015 entry on “Skepticism”, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skepticism/). John Cottingham has a good contemporary translation of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, published by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1996). For an influential commentary on Descartes’s scepticism, see Bernard Williams’s Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (London: Penguin, 1978). See also Steven Luper’s article on “Cartesian Skepticism” in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 414–24 (London: Routledge, 2010). For a nuanced discussion of Descartes’s epistemology more generally, see Stephen Gaukroger’s article on “René Descartes”, also in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 678–86 (London: Routledge, 2010). The metaphor regarding the lack of “doctors” in New York City comes from chapter 2 of Barry Stroud’s seminal The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). This is a book that is well worth reading for a sympathetic, historically-informed, and highly influential, account of Cartesian scepticism. For a comprehensive historical anthology of writings on scepticism, see Richard Popkin and J. R. Maia Neto’s edited volume, Skepticism: An Anthology (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 2007). For a contemporary anthology of sceptical writings, including useful commentaries, see Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield’s Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). For an excellent recent collection of articles on scepticism, including its history, see Diego Machuca and Baron Reed’s edited volume, Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).

For an in-depth account of the structure of sceptical arguments, see part one of my recent monograph devoted to radical scepticism, Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015).

To learn more about the closure principle, see Steven Luper’s 2016 entry on “Epistemic Closure” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/closure-epistemic/). See also John Collins’s entry on “Epistemic Closure Principles” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. J. Fieser and B. Dowden (https://www.iep.utm.edu/epis-clo/).

The idea that there is something incoherent in denying an instance of closure—what he refers to as uttering an “abominable conjunction”—can be found in Keith DeRose’s article, “Solving the Skeptical Problem”, Philosophical Review 104 (1995), 1–52.

If you want to read more about philosophical paradoxes, then a great place to start would be Mark Sainsbury’s book, Paradoxes (3rd edn.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). For an entertaining collection of philosophical discussions of the film The Matrix, which is probably the closest Hollywood has got to presenting a BlV-style radical sceptical scenario, see Christopher Grau’s Philosophers Explore the Matrix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For more about sceptical themes in mainstream cinema, see Philipp Schmerheim’s book, Skepticism Films: Knowing and Doubting the World in Contemporary Cinema (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). For a more demanding, though nonetheless brilliant, book in the same vein, see Stanley Cavell’s Disowning Knowledge: In Seven Plays of Shakespeare (2nd edn.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), which is a fascinating discussion of sceptical motifs in Shakespeare’s plays.

الفصل الثالث: الدفاع عن المعرفة

The two main papers where G. E. Moore advances his response to radical scepticism are “A Defence of Common Sense”, Contemporary British Philosophy (2nd series), ed. J. H. Muirhead (London: Allen & Unwin, 1925), and “Proof of an External World”, Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (1939), 273–300. Note that the sceptical problem that Moore is dealing with is rather different to how we are formulating it here (e.g. he never discusses BIVs or the closure principle). Indeed, Moore’s concerns aren’t always specifically about radical scepticism at all, as he was also interested in arguing against a closely related view known as idealism. This is the idea that the external world, as we have characterized it anyway, doesn’t exist. The arguments for idealism and external world scepticism are often very similar, but it is important to appreciate that they are distinct theses. The external world sceptic isn’t saying that the external world doesn’t exist, after all, but only that you can’t know anything about it. For more about idealism, see the excellent 2015 survey article on “Idealism” by Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.

E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/). For a general discussion of Moore’s commonsense approach to scepticism, see Noah Lemos’s article “Moore and Skepticism”, in the Oxford Handbook of Skepticism, ed. J. Greco, 330–47 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For a defence of the commonsense approach more generally in philosophy, including as it appears in the work of Thomas Reid, see Lemos’s book, Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 . For more on Reid’s epistemology in particular, see Ryan Nichols’ article, “Thomas Reid”, in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 717–29 (London: Routledge, 2010). If you’re interested in a way of thinking about our everyday knowledge such that we might well know the denials of radical sceptical hypotheses (in a broadly Moorean spirit), see my recent monograph, Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). This book in turn develops a proposal made by John McDowell—see, for example, his paper, “Knowledge and the Internal”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (1995), 877–93. For a very different (but still broadly Moorean) defence of our knowledge of the denials of radical sceptical hypotheses, see John Greco’s book, Putting Skeptics in Their Place: The Nature of Skeptical Arguments and Their Role in Philosophical Inquiry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

For some of the key defences of a contextualist response to radical scepticism, see Keith DeRose’s “Solving the Skeptical Problem”, Philosophical Review 104 (1995), 1–52, David Lewis’s “Elusive Knowledge”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996), 549–67, and Stewart Cohen’s “Contextualism and Skepticism”, Philosophical Issues 10 (2000), 94–107. There is also a very interesting version of contextualism presented by Ram Neta that shifts the focus from knowledge to evidence. See his articles, “S Knows that P”, Noûs 36 (2002), 663–89, and “Contextualism and the Problem of the External World”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2003), 1–31. For an overview of recent work on contextualism and scepticism, see Patrick Rysiew’s article on “Contextualism” in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 523–35 (London: Routledge, 2010). If you want to know more about the philosophical issues raised by indexicals (which extend far beyond their possible import for contextualism), see David Braun’s 2015 entry on “Indexicals” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/indexicals/).

The notebooks that make up Wittgenstein’s On Certainty were published in 1969, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell). The quotations offered in this chapter are both from this translation (§§341–3 and §125, respectively). As with Moore, note that Wittgenstein’s characterization of the sceptical problem is somewhat different to how we have characterized it, especially in terms of how there is no mention of BIVs or the closure principle. Note too that since these are notebooks which Wittgenstein never edited himself or intended for publication, it follows that they are open to a wide range of interpretations. The interpretation of Wittgenstein that I offer here is my own—for more details, see especially part two of my Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). Note that I further claim in this work that my interpretation of Wittgenstein has the resources to preserve the closure principle while still evading the radical sceptical puzzle. There is a wealth of literature on Wittgenstein’s line on scepticism in On Certainty. For some key discussions in this regard, see Marie McGinn’s Sense and Certainty: A Dissolution of Scepticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), Michael Williams’s Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Scepticism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), Daniele Moyal-Sharrock’s Understanding Wittgensteins On Certainty (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Annalisa Coliva’s Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Genia Schönbaumsfeld’s The Illusion of Doubt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

See also Coliva’s Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), which specifically contrasts Moorean and Wittgensteinian responses to radical scepticism. For a survey of recent work on Wittgensteinian epistemology, and his associated response to radical scepticism, see my article, “Wittgenstein on Hinge Commitments and Radical Scepticism in On Certainty”, in the Blackwell Companion to Wittgenstein, ed. H.-J. Glock and J. Hyman, 563–75 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2017).

For two influential rationales for denying the closure principle—albeit very different to the Wittgensteinian rationale described here—see Fred Dretske’s article, “Epistemic Operators”, Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970), 1007–23, and part 3 of Robert Nozick’s book, Philosophical Explanations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981). For critical discussion of this way of denying the closure principle, there is an informative exchange between Dretske and John Hawthorne in part 2 of Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, ed. E. Sosa and M. Steup, 13–46 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). This features Dretske making the case against closure, Hawthorne making the case for, and Dretske responding to Hawthorne.

الفصل الرابع: الشكوكية بصفتها أسلوب حياة

The main work where Aristotle develops his ethical views, and thereby discusses the virtues (including the intellectual virtues), is the Nicomachean Ethics. There is an excellent contemporary edition of this work by Terence Irwin (2nd edn., Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1999). For an overview of Aristotle’s ethics, see Richard Kraut’s 2018 entry on this topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/). For an important contemporary ethical work that incorporates the ancient idea of ethical concerns as being much broader than morality, see Bernard Williams’s book, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985). For an overview of Aristotle’s epistemology, see Richard Patterson’s article on “Aristotle”, in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 666–77 (London: Routledge, 2010). For a key contemporary defence of an Aristotelian account of the intellectual virtues, see Linda Zagzebski’s important book, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For some other recent influential defences of the role of the virtues in knowledge, see Ernest Sosa’s books, A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), and Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and John Greco’s Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). For a helpful overview of virtue epistemology, see Jonathan Kvanvig’s article on “Virtue Epistemology” in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, 199–207 (London : Routledge, 2010). For a useful survey of work on the intellectual virtues in particular, see Heather Battaly’s article, “Intellectual Virtues”, in the Handbook of Virtue Ethics, ed. S. van Hooft, 177–87 (London: Acumen, 2014). For a systematic recent account of the intellectual virtues, see Jason Baehr’s The Inquiring Mind: On Intellectual Virtues and Virtue Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For a contemporary discussion of the role of intellectual vice in political settings, see Quassim Cassam’s book, Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

For a contemporary edition of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism, see the version edited by R. G. Bury (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1990). For more information about Sextus Empiricus, see Benjamin Morison’s 2014 entry on “Sextus Empiricus” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sextus-empiricus/). For a helpful overview of Pyrrhonian scepticism, see Richard Bett’s article on this topic in the Routledge Companion to Epistemology, ed. S. Bernecker and D. H. Pritchard, chapter 37 (London: Routledge, 2010). For a recent defence of the idea that Pyrrhonism should be construed as a certain kind of open-ended inquiry, see Casey Perin’s book, The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For further discussion of the (exegetically contentious) question of how to understand the focus of Pyrrhonian scepticism, and in particular to what extent it excludes everyday beliefs, see Myles Burnyeat, “Can the Skeptic Live his Skepticism?”, in Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology, ed. J. Barnes, M. Burnyeat, and M. Schofield, chapter 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), Jonathan Barnes, “The Beliefs of a Pyrrhonist”, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 208 (1982), 1–29, and Michael Frede, “The Sceptic’s Two Kinds of Assent and the Question of the Possibility of Knowledge”, in Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy, ed. R. Rorty, J. B. Schneewind, and Q. Skinner, chapter 11 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). To find out more about Pyrrho of Elis, see Richard Bett’s 2018 entry on “Pyrrho” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pyrrho/). To learn more about the connections between Pyrrhonian sceptical practices and Madhyamaka Buddhism, see Christopher Beckwith’s book, Greek Buddha: Pyrrho’s Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), and Robin Brons’s article, “Life Without Belief: A Madhyamaka Defence of the Liveability of Pyrrhonism”, Philosophy East and West 68 (2018), 329–51. If you want to find out more about Madhyamaka Buddhism itself, see Dan Arnold’s entry on “Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed.

J. Fieser and B. Dowden (https://www.iep.utm.edu/b-madhya/).

For the classic historical account of the role of scepticism in the scientific revolution, see Richard Popkin’s magisterial, and highly influential, The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). To understand the distinctive motivations of the ancient Greek philosophers, one can do no better than consult the highly readable account offered by Pierre Hadot in his book, What is Ancient Philosophy?, trans. M. Chase (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2002). For a useful recent discussion of Agrippa’s Trilemma, see Michael Williams’s article, “The Agrippan Problem, Then and Now”, International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 5 (2005), 80–106.

For a recent overview of work on the epistemology of disagreement, see Bryan Frances and Jonathan Matheson’s 2018 entry on “Disagreement” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Zalta (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disagreement/). The idea that disagreement with our epistemic peers requires us to lower our confidence in our beliefs is very common in the literature. For some influential versions of this proposal, see David Christensen’s “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News”, Philosophical Review 116 (2007), 187–217, Adam Elga’s “Reflection and Disagreement”, Noûs 41 (2007), 478–502, and Richard Feldman’s “Reasonable Religious Disagreements”, in Philosophers Without Gods, ed. L. Antony, 194–214 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

For a helpful recent overview of the literature on intellectual humility, see Nancy Snow’s article on this topic in the Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology, ed. H. Battaly, chapter 15 (London: Routledge, 2018). For an influential account of modesty, which is a cognitive trait closely related to humility, as involving a downgraded assessment of one’s abilities and achievements, see Julia Driver’s paper, “The Virtues of Ignorance”, Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989), 373–84. For the key defence of the “owning your limitations” view of intellectual humility, see Daniel Whitcomb, Heather Battaly, Jason Baehr, and Daniel Howard-Synder’s article, “Intellectual Humility: Owning our Limitations”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2017), 509–39. For a defence of a version of the kind of “outward-facing” account of intellectual humility offered here, see Robert Roberts and W. Jay Wood’s book, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). For related proposals, see also Alessandra Tanesini’s “Intellectual Humility as Attitude”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2016, Online First, DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12326), and Maura Priest, “Intellectual Humility: An Interpersonal Theory”, Ergo 4.16 (2017, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.016). For further discussion of how this account of intellectual humility can be compatible with reasonable conviction, such that we don’t have to automatically lower our confidence in our beliefs in the face of a disagreement with an epistemic peer, see my “Intellectual Humility and the Epistemology of Disagreement”, Synthese (2018, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-02024-5).