Abstract:We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams's Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is offered in influential work by Barry Stroud, a conception of the skeptical problem which generates metaepistemological ramifications for anti-skeptical theories. In particular, we argue that, contra Williams, Rorty's view that Davidson was offering a theoretical diagnosis of radical skepticism can be consistently maintained with his transcendental approach.Keywords: transcendental arguments; radical skepticism; metaepistemological skepticism; theoretical diagnosis; Barry Stroud Introductory RemarksOur goal in this paper is to revisit an important exchange between Richard Rorty [1] and Michael Williams [2] concerning the problem of radical skepticism about the external world (henceforth just 'radical skepticism'). Contra Williams, Rorty was defending the broadly transcendental anti-skepticism put forward by Donald Davidson [3]. Williams, in turn, was urging his own distinctive, Wittgenstein-inspired, response to the problem. OPEN ACCESSHumanities 2013, 2 352In order to understand what is going on this debate, and to offer an adjudication, we need to understand the conception of the radical skeptical problem that Williams takes himself to be responding to. To that end, we need to approach our discussion of Rorty and Williams on radical skepticism (and thereby Davidson and the later Wittgenstein) by first considering the skeptical challenge as presented by Barry Stroud [4]. Accordingly, in §1 we set out Stroud's conception of radical skepticism and the metaepistemological skeptical challenge that results. In §2, we outline Williams's response to these skeptical challenges. In §3, we consider Davidson's broadly transcendental response to the problem of radical skepticism. Finally, in §4, we delve into the details of the debate between Rorty and Williams. Specifically, we argue that it is consistent with Davidson's transcendental response to the problem of radical skepticism that he was also, following Rorty [1], aiming to reveal the philosophical presuppositions that ground that problem. In short, he was also aiming to give what Williams [5] calls a 'theoretical diagnosis' of radical skepticism, contra William's suggestion that he wasn't. Stroud's Metaepistemological SkepticismRadical skepticism consists of a distinctive type of epistemic evaluation regarding a wide class of beliefs of certain kind. In particular, the radical skeptic is engaged in a form of doubt which is wholesale rather specific, and entirely acontextual. Call these skeptical epistemic practices. How should we understand the relationship between skeptical epistemic practices and the everyday epis...
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