Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition

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Abstract Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition rejects argument-based attempts to resist radical skepticism and advocates, instead, for noninferential intuition-based commonsense resistance inspired by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. The book begins by setting aside closure-based arguments for radical skepticism and focusing on the more fundamental underdetermination arguments, which highlight the problematic gap between our evidence and our beliefs that are based on that evidence despite their truth being underdetermined by it. The rejected argument-based response to skepticism aims to provide good noncircular arguments from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs (e.g. our perceptual and memory beliefs) to the conclusion that those beliefs are true or at least probable. Part I of the book finds all such anti-skeptical arguments wanting. Part II lays out and defends a unique version of the commonsense Reid-inspired response to radical skepticism, with two distinctive features. The first is its self-conscious, explicit, and extensive reliance on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about the nature and exemplification of epistemic goods (such as justification or knowledge). The second is that it is ecumenical in the sense that it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Part III of the book responds to objections to the commonsense reliance on epistemic intuitions proposed in Part II, with special attention given to challenges from underdetermination, epistemic circularity, disagreement, and experimental philosophy.