Abstract

The history of epistemology has always been closely linked with the tradition of skepticism. Indeed, the earliest philosophical efforts to describe the nature and limits of our knowledge were largely motivated by the skeptical suggestion that things may not be as they appear to us. Every attempt to find an adequate response to these early doubts about the reliability of our knowledge met new and powerful skeptical criticisms which in turn engendered new attempts to justify the conviction that we are capable to achieving at least some degree of truth about ourselves and our world. At a time when the latest swing of the pendulum has taken philosophy from excessive confidence in our cognitive powers to an equally excessive tendency to reduce of all truth claims to pleasing or powerful illusions, the essays collected in this volume offer some balanced and attractive alternatives to these extreme positions.