Skepticism Aside

Catherine Z. Elgin

Harvard University

My goal in this paper is not to defeat skepticism, but to articulate a reasonable epistemological basis for disregarding it. I argue that (1) skepticism is not continuous with ordinary epistemic practice. We do not, as it were, slide down a slippery slope to skepticism simply by raising our epistemic standards. (2) Skepticism is not a viable practical stance: in order to act, we must presuppose that skepticism is false. But (3) the practical is inseparable from the theoretical, so a presupposition that is necessary for practice is at least not unreasonable for theory. The conclusion is not that skepticism is false; but that it can be epistemologically responsible to presuppose that skepticism is false. The fate of epistemology does not turn on defeating skepticism; for a variety of epistemological problems we can simply endorse the presupposition and set the skeptical challenge aside.