[Revised entry by Juan Comesaña and Peter Klein on January 11, 2026.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html]
Philosophical skepticism is interesting because there are intriguing arguments for it despite its initial implausibility. Many contemporary epistemological positions can be fruitfully presented as responding to some aspect of those arguments. For example, many discussions in the philosophy of science can be traced back to Humean skepticism about induction. Questions regarding principles of epistemic closure and transmission are closely related to the discussion of what we will call Cartesian Skepticism, as are views according to which we are…

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