Abstract

In a series of writings Barry Stroud construes the refutation of (Descartes’s) skepticism (developed in the first Meditation of Meditationes de Prima Philosophia) as the main concern and aim of Kant’s transcendental philosophy, namely the refutation of the thesis that we can know nothing about the world around us. Stroud’s assessment of the result of Kant’s transcendental philosophy so understood is that it fails to achieve its goal. However, apart from whether or not it fails, I am very skeptical of Stroud’s conception itself in the first place. In this paper I will try to show how problematic Stroud’s conception is.