Abstract

I discuss the sceptical challenge in the light of the distinction between veritic and reflective epistemic luck and argue that the inadequacy of the main anti-sceptical proposals in the contemporary literature is a result of how they only eliminate veritic luck, and thus do not engage with the problem of reflective luck at all. Crucially, however, I claim that it is the specific challenge posed by reflective luck that is central to the sceptical problem, and yet there is a fundamental sense in which this type of epistemic luck is ineliminable. I argue that it is this sceptical problem that informs the Pyrrhonian sceptical challenge of antiquity. Moreover, I further maintain that the so-called ‘metaepistemological’ sceptical challenge that features prominently in contemporary epistemological debate—as advanced, for example, by Barry Stroud and Richard Fumerton—is best understood in terms of the specific sceptical problem regarding the ineliminability of reflective luck.