San Antonio College Library

This book is concerned with the question of whether there is a philosopically satisfactory rebuttal of scepticism. The hope of providing such a rebuttal is seen as depending upon our achieving a clear conception of the sceptical argument and of the philosophical context in which it is constructed. Marie McGinn argues that the argument is unanswerable, and that the sceptical conclusion is both beyond belief and in outright conflict with ordinary practice....

An outstanding introduction to the problems of philosophy by two eminent philosophers in a lucid, informal, & very accessible discussion of Western thought. Annotation. Casting skepticism in a central role, this history of Western philosophy looks at the efforts of major thinkers seeking to overcome skeptical challenges. The role of skepticism in producing new theoretical positions is explicated, and the influence of contemporary skeptics examined....

How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism:...

"Walking in the footsteps of Plato and Descartes, Timothy Chappell recognizes that 'the fortress of my certainty about my own existence becomes the prison of my uncertainty about the existence of a world beyond me'. Using this insight as a springboard, Chappell launches into an exploration of a series of intellectual dilemmas that are the very stuff of philosophy: how can we know things outside ourselves? What basis is there for altruistic behaviour?...

If there is such a thing as reason, it has to be universal. Reason must reflect objective principles whose validity is independent of our point of view - principles that anyone with enough intelligence ought to be able to recognize as correct. But this universality of reason is what relativists and subjectivists deny in ever-increasing numbers. And such subjectivism is not just an inconsequential intellectual flourish or badge of theoretical chic....

How should we react to philosophical skepticism? Jeffrey P. Whitman answers this question in The Power and Value of Philosophical Skepticism by examining analytic and post-analytic responses to the problem of skepticism concerning our knowledge of the external world. Whitman analyzes skeptical arguments that call into question our ability to obtain empirical knowledge. He tests analytical theories of knowledge (foundationalism, coherentalism, and...