Dialectics of Modern Epistemological Scepticism

A good deal of contemporary discussion about knowledge incorporates arguments attributed to “the sceptic.” But as we have seen, this figure is a very different person from the sceptic outlined by Sextus Empiricus. Typically, scepticism is treated as a position that, if true, would be fatal for any attempted philosophical justification of ordinary notions of everyday or scientific knowledge. In fact, it might not be inaccurate to say that the position has been generated out of the very attempt to provide such a justification; at any rate, the significance of the modern sceptic’s arguments lies precisely in their power to demonstrate that no such attempt can succeed. Sextus Empiricus would label those who hold such a position Academicians, people who hold an absolutist kind of view that he clearly distinguishes from the “way” of the sceptic.