Abstract

This dissertation explores the nature, defensibility, and value-theoretic origins, threats, and implications of a form of skepticism which is predominately Cartesian epistemologically speaking, and yet predominately Pyrrhonian in certain other respects. ;In Chapters 1 and 2 I aim to offer a convincing argument for external world skepticism. This argument is broken down into several distinct stages, and I offer a defense of each stage. I propose that, given the apparent unanswerability of this argument, we ought to accept external world skepticism as the correct view regarding the possibility of empirical knowledge. In addition, I aim to show, both during the course of my skeptical argument and in a separate chapter following that argument , that the elements of the skeptic's argument are claims to which we are all committed, despite our tendency to think otherwise and despite our apparent inability to believe the conclusion of the skeptic's argument . Indeed, I think that this very inability to accept the conclusion of a convincing skeptical argument demonstrates our lacking a particular form of self-control, which I call rational self-control . In my final chapter I attempt to trace the skeptical challenge to knowledge and rational self-control back to its origin in certain fundamental human values. It is these values, I argue, which drive the skeptical challenge, are problematized by that challenge, and yet strangely are found to sustain the challenge. I conclude by considering our alternatives, and I argue that we must find some way of maintaining a good faith relationship with these fundamental human values. I conclude by offering a sketch of a skeptical position rooted in these fundamental values by drawing on the role of aspiration in our value theory