UC Irvine

Although there are some obvious exceptions, for a good part of the first half of the twentieth century the general philosophical attitude toward the problem of radical skepticism was largely dismissive. Whether for broadly antirealist/logical positivist reasons, or for broadly Wittgensteinian reasons, this puzzle was widely thought to be a pseudo-problem, trading on dubious metaphysical claims.1 The second half of the twentieth century, and up to the present day, however, has seen this problem taken seriously once more. Indeed, we have witnessed this philosophical difficulty again not only seriously generating academic discussion, but also being a driver for new proposals within epistemology.