Abstract
We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams’s Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is offered in influential work by Barry Stroud, a conception of the skeptical problem which generates metaepistemological ramifications for anti-skeptical theories. In particular, we argue that, contra Williams, Rorty’s view that Davidson was offering a theoretical diagnosis of radical skepticism can be consistently maintained with his transcendental approach.
Highlights
Our goal in this paper is to revisit an important exchange between Richard Rorty [1] and Michael Williams [2] concerning the problem of radical skepticism about the external world
We need to approach our discussion of Rorty and Williams on radical skepticism by first considering the skeptical challenge as presented by Barry Stroud [4]
The specific challenge posed by metaepistemological skepticism is not to solve the radical skeptical problem, but rather to demonstrate that an intellectually plausible resolution of that problem is not ruled out tout court
Summary
Our goal in this paper is to revisit an important exchange between Richard Rorty [1] and Michael Williams [2] concerning the problem of radical skepticism about the external world ( just ‘radical skepticism’). We need to approach our discussion of Rorty and Williams on radical skepticism (and thereby Davidson and the later Wittgenstein) by first considering the skeptical challenge as presented by Barry Stroud [4]. We argue that it is consistent with Davidson’s transcendental response to the problem of radical skepticism that he was following Rorty [1], aiming to reveal the philosophical presuppositions that ground that problem. He was aiming to give what Williams [5] calls a ‘theoretical diagnosis’ of radical skepticism, contra William’s suggestion that he wasn’t
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