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13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 2. Types of Scepticism

[different modes of scepticism that seem to arise]

8 ideas

22761	We reveal unreliability in the senses when we cannot discriminate a slow change of colour [Anaxagoras, by Sext.Empiricus]
	Full Idea: Our lack of sureness in the senses is shown if we take two colours, back and white, and pour one into the other drop by drop, we are unable to distinguish the gradual alterations although they subsist as actual facts.
	From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) I.090
	A reaction: [Sextus calls Anaxagoras 'the greatest of the physicists'] I'm not sure what this proves. People with bad eyesight can distinguish very little, but that doesn't prove scepticism. And there are things too small for anyone to see.

2243	Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume]
	Full Idea: Mitigated scepticism is an advantage to mankind, as it limits our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding.
	From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.130)

5548	Hume became a total sceptic, because he believed that reason was a deception [Hume, by Kant]
	Full Idea: David Hume gave way entirely to scepticism, since he believed himself to have discovered in what is generally held to be reason a deception of our faculty of cognition.
	From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B128
	A reaction: Unfair to Hume, who was very opposed to global scepticism (see Ideas 2240 and 2241), and voted only for 'mitigated scepticism' (see Idea 2242). On the other hand, there is no greater opposition in philosophy than Kant and Hume on 'pure reason'.

15623	Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel]
	Full Idea: Humean scepticism should be very carefully distinguished from Greek scepticism. In Humean scepticism, the truth of the empirical, the truth of feeling and intuition is taken as basic. ..Greek scepticism turned itself against the sensible.
	From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §39 Rem)
	A reaction: This seems right, and Hume himself was quite contemptuous of the sort of scepticism found in the ideas of Sextus Empiricus.

3575	Scepticism can involve discrepancy, relativity, infinity, assumption and circularity [Williams,M]
	Full Idea: The classical Five Modes of Scepticism are Discrepancy (people always disagree), Relativity ('according to you'), Infinity (infinite regress of questions), Assumption (ending in dogma) and Circularity (end up where you started).
	From: Michael Williams (Problems of Knowledge [2001], Ch. 5)
	A reaction: I take Relativity to be different from scepticism (because, roughly, it says there is nothing to know), and the others go with Agrippa's Trilemma of justification, which may have solutions.

7322	Constitutive scepticism is about facts, and epistemological scepticism about our ability to know them [Miller,A]
	Full Idea: We should distinguish 'constitutive scepticism' (about the existence of certain sorts of facts) from the traditional 'epistemological scepticism' (which concedes that the sort of fact in question exists, but questions our right to claim knowledge of it).
	From: Alexander Miller (Philosophy of Language [1998], 4.7)
	A reaction: I would be inclined to call the first type 'ontological scepticism'. Miller is discussing Quine's scepticism about meaning. Atheists fall into the first group, and agnostics into the second. An important, and nicely simple, distinction.

6588	Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin]
	Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief.
	From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4)
	A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction.

18700	Cartesian scepticism doubts what is true; Kantian scepticism doubts that it is sayable [Button]
	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.
	From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 07.2)
	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.