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Full Idea
Cartesian scepticism agonises over whether our beliefs are true or false, whereas Kantian scepticism agonises over how it is even possible for beliefs to be true or false.
Gist of Idea
Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable
Source
Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 07.2)
Book Ref
Button,Tim: 'The Limits of Realism' [OUP 2013], p.56
A Reaction
Kant's question is, roughly, 'how can our thoughts succeed in being about the world?' Kantian scepticism is the more drastic, and looks vulnerable to a turning of the tables, but asking how Kantian worries can even be expressed.
Related Idea
Idea 577 Democritus says there is either no truth, or it is concealed from us [Democritus, by Aristotle]
| 22761 | We reveal unreliability in the senses when we cannot discriminate a slow change of colour [Anaxagoras, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| 2243 | Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume] |
| 5548 | Hume became a total sceptic, because he believed that reason was a deception [Hume, by Kant] |
| 15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
| 3575 | Scepticism can involve discrepancy, relativity, infinity, assumption and circularity [Williams,M] |
| 7322 | Constitutive scepticism is about facts, and epistemological scepticism about our ability to know them [Miller,A] |
| 6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
| 18700 | Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button] |