Michael Williams - Fogelin's Neo-Pyrrhonism

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Fogelin's Neo-
Pyrrhonism
Michael Williams
Published online: 08 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Michael Williams (1999) Fogelin's Neo-Pyrrhonism,

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 7:2, 141-158, DOI:
10.1080/096725599341857
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International Journal of Philosophical Studies 1999.7:141-158.
Fogelins
Neo-Pyrrhonism
M ichael William s
A bstract
R obert Fogelin agrees that arguments for Cartesian sceptism carry a heavy
burden of theoretical commitment, for they take for granted, explicitly or
implicitly, the foundationalists idea that experimental knowledge is in some
fully general way epistemologically prior to knowledge of the world. H e
thinks, however, that there is a much more direct and commonsensical route
to scepticism. O rdinary knowledge-claims are accepted on the basis of justi-
catory procedures that fall far short of eliminating all conceivable
error-possibilities. A s a result, it is always possible, by bringing new error-
possibilities into play, to raise the level of scrutiny to which a given
knowledge-claim is subject, so that it no longer seems adequately justied.
Philosophical theories of justication can be seen as attempts to repair this
fragility of ordinary knowledge. But they fail, all succumbing to the
Pyrrhonian modes of assumption, circularity or innite regress. I argue that
Fogelins conception of varying levels of scrutiny leads at most to fallibilism
and not to radical scepticism. More importantly, I show that changing the
range of relevant defeaters to a given knowledge claim can do more that
impose stricter standards for justication: it can change the subject by
altering the direction of inquiry. We see from this that the introduction of
sceptical hypotheses (such as that D escartess E vil D eceiver) are not best
seen as raising standards to some maximal level but as introducing a new
kind of evaluation which, without commitment to what I call epistemolog-
ical realism, does nothing to impugn the justicational status of ordinary
knowledge-claims entered in ordinary contexts.
Keywords: Knowledge; justication; scepticism; contextualism;
epistemological realism
1. R ecent years have seen a growing pessimism about our prospects of

coming up with a satisfactory answer to scepticism. Inuential spokesmen
for the pessimistic view include Thomas Nagel, Peter Strawson and
Barry Stroud.1 These philosophers follow H ume in thinking that, while
International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 7 (2), 141158

R outledge 1999 09672559
I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P H I L O S O P H I C A L ST U D I E S
scepticism does not, and in some sense perhaps cannot, penetrate ordin-
ary life, the sceptics verdict on our pretensions to knowledge is almost
certainly theoretically correct. Thus these neo-H umeans see a permanent
tension between our ordinary epistemic practices and the inevitable results
of philosophical reection upon them. In everyday life, we operate effort-
lessly with contrasts like that between knowledge and guesswork or
justied belief and mere assumption. But because there are powerful argu-
ments, to which no commonly accepted responses have ever emerged, for
the view that knowledge is impossible, when we step back and reect on
how such distinctions might be articulated and defended, we nd ourselves
at a loss. Soi-disant rational believers in the street but sceptics in the
study, we are condemned to live with what Nagel calls a split in the self
that will not go away.

The ranks of the neo-H umean pessimists have now been joined by
R obert Fogelin.2 But Fogelin is a sceptic with a difference. The focus of
concern for the other neo-H umeans is Cartesian scepticism, for which
our knowledge of the external world sets the original and paradigmatic
problem. By contrast, Fogelin looks back to an older tradition: classical
Pyrrhonian scepticism. I think this difference is very important indeed.
But to say why, I need to say something about why scepticism should be
taken seriously in the rst place.
2. Suppose the pessimists are right and scepticism cannot be refuted: is

there a serious problem here? I think that there is, provided that the scep-
ticism alleged to be irrefutable meets (at least) three conditions: it must be
radical; it must be highly general; and it must be natural or intuitive.
R adical scepticism is scepticism about justication. The radical sceptic
argues that we are never so much as justied in accepting one thing rather
than another. Now scepticism is often presented as a denial of the possi-
bility of knowledge. H owever, particularly in the aftermath of G ettiers
challenge to the traditional account of knowledge as justied true belief,
this formulation needs to he handled with care. G ettier shows that the
traditional conditions for knowledge, at least if interpreted naively, cannot
be regarded as sufcient. A ccordingly, if we want to continue to link
knowledge with justication, we need to characterize more narrowly the
kind of justication capable of yielding knowledge. But this introduces an
ambiguity into denials of the possibility of knowledge. The thought might
be that, though we are capable of justifying our beliefs, the extra condi-
tions on justication that turn justied true belief into knowledge are not
conditions we are able to meet. O r it might be that knowledge is radi-
cally impossible, because we are incapable of being justied in what we
believe, even to the slightest degree.
Non-radical scepticism, which targets knowledge-strictly-so-called, is not
obviously a serious challenge to everyday epistemic practices. The reason
142
F O G E L I N S N E O -P Y R R H O N I SM
is that, even if we saw no way of turning it aside, we could always execute

what Crispin Wright has termed a R ussellian retreat, renouncing talk of
knowledge (strictly understood) in favour of talk of justied belief. The
burden would then be on the sceptic to show that such a retreat would
entail signicant loss. By contrast, precisely because it leaves no obviously
acceptable line of retreat, radical scepticism poses a much more serious
threat to our ordinary epistemological outlook.
There is a general point here: the stricter ones concept of knowledge,
the easier it will be to argue for scepticism. A t the same time, the easier
it is to argue for, the less interesting scepticism becomes. For example,
some philosophers have claimed that knowledge, strictly-so-called,
demands absolute certainty, certainty beyond even the logical possibility
of error. But the denial that we are capable of knowledge in this

demanding sense is something we can live with easily enough. Indeed, this
form of scepticism is better seen as a commendable fallibilism, and thus
not really scepticism at all.
This is an extreme example. H owever, I believe that similar remarks
apply to more modest and appealing accounts of knowledge. Consider
attempts very plausible to exp lain knowledge in terms of indefeasible
justication. O n such accounts, the certainty attaching to knowledge
consists in the fact that it is true belief supported by a justication that
is not subject to undermining by the (indenite) acquisition of further true
beliefs. It is not obvious that any justication we currently possess meets
this demanding condition. A ccordingly, there is a prim a facie case for a
modest meta-scepticism, to the effect that for all we know we may lack
knowledge. But again, this form of scepticism poses no serious threat to
our self-image as (potentially) rational animals. Nothing so dramatic as a
split in the self appears to be in the ofng. O nly radical scepticism suggests
that.
Serious forms of philosophical scepticism are not just radical, but are
also highly general. They challenge the possibility of our having justied
beliefs either with respect to any subject matter whatsoever or at least
with respect to certain very broad areas of fact: for example, all facts
pertaining to the external world. This is as it should be. It is no affront
to common sense to point out that there are lots of things we dont
know about and never will. The relevant evidence is fragmentary or non-
existent and its defects will never be repaired. Nor will scepticism be a
serious threat if its generality consists only in claiming that any belief can
be called in question, given suitable stage setting. This too is something
we can easily live with. A serious form of philosophical scepticism must
issue a negative verdict on all our claims to knowledge. It must judge
them collectively, not severally.
This brings us to the third requirement: that philosophical scepticism
be natural or intuitive. By this I mean that the arguments leading to
143
scepticism must exploit only resources derived from our everyday episte-
mological ideas. Clearly, the demand that scepticism be natural or intuitive
is deeply connected with the demand that it be general. The sceptic is
not interested in pointing up contingent ignorance, however extensive. H e
wants to nd some intrinsic difculty in our pretensions to knowledge:
either knowledge as such or knowledge of some very broad kind. That is
why scepticism is generally stated in terms of the possibility of knowledge.
H is point is not that there are lots of things that we dont know and
never will. R ather, his claim is that the quest for knowledge is doomed
from the start; and not in virtue of some gratuitously high standard
that he imposes, but for reasons implicit in our most mundane epistemo-
logical ideas.
This leads us to the most important reason why sceptical arguments

must be natural or intuitive. If they are not intuitive, if they depend on
contentious and possibly dispensable theoretical ideas about knowledge
or justication, the seeming inevitability of scepticism will tell us some-
thing about those ideas but nothing about our everyday claims to
knowledge or justication. We will do well here to adopt R obert Fogelins
terminology and distinguish between philosophical scepticism and scepti-
cism about philosophy. The former is a threat to everyday epistemic
practices. The latter, while it might be in various ways interesting and
important, is not.
O f course, we might be able to get from one to the other: for example,
by arguing that certain philosophical theories of knowledge simply bring
to light ideas that were always implicit in our ordinary epistemological
outlook. If that can be shown, it may be that the failure of such theories
to guarantee the possibility of knowledge is a victory for the philosoph-
ical sceptic after all. But the connection has to be made, and making it is
nowhere near as simple as is often supposed.
3. The conditions just discussed are not easily satised. Indeed, I think
that the key to responding to the scepticism that troubles todays neo-
H umeans is to see that it manages to be radical and (apparently) general
only at the cost of failing to be intuitive.3 A ll Cartesian problems the
external world, induction, other minds, the past and so on are under-
determination problems. A s such, they depend on an antecedent partition
of our beliefs into privileged and problematic classes, these partitions in
turn being taken to correspond to a context-independent order of epis-
temic priority. Thus the problem of our knowledge of the external
world arises as a radical and general form of scepticism only if all beliefs
about the world are taken to depend for their justication on some more
basic kind of knowledge: experiential knowledge, say. The thought that
experiential knowledge is, in some wholly general and intrinsic way,
epistemologically prior to knowledge of the world is an instance of what
144
I call epistemological realism. A ccordingly, the way beyond Cartesian

sceptical problems is to attack them at the root by revealing and attacking
the epistemological realism on which they tacitly depend.
I admit that the dependence of Cartesian scepticism on these ideas is
not always immediately obvious: hence the need for what I call theor-
etical diagnosis, which aims to bring out a problems essential dependence
on unacknowledged theoretical presuppositions. The outcome of tracing
Cartesian scepticism to epistemological realism, which I think we have no
good reason to accept, is a contextual view of justication that under-
mines the theoretical coherence of the epistemic domains over which the
sceptic attempts to generalize. The result is scepticism about a certain
genre of epistemological theory. Philosophical scepticism is turned aside.
This is why I nd Fogelins defence of scepticism so signicant. Fogelin

shares my sense that Cartesian scepticism carries a heavy burden of theory,
seeming to rely on an antecedent philosophical commitment to the way
of ideas a commitment that a Pyrrhonian skeptic would not make
(p. 193). Thus, to the Pyrrhonist, the Cartesian-style skeptic is not skep-
tical enough (p. 193). H e is sceptical about everything except his own
epistemological presuppositions. By contrast, Pyrrhonian scepticism is
wholly intuitive. Pyrrhonian doubts are the natural and intelligible result
(p. 203) of reection on our everyday epistemic practices. They depend
on no contentious theoretical preconceptions. Pyrrhonian scepticism
succeeds where (I claim) Cartesian scepticism fails.
A t the heart of Pyrrhonian scepticism the lies the A grippan Problem.4
The Five Modes of A grippa are discrepancy, relativity, innite regress,
assumption and circularity. The challenging modes of discrepancy and rela-
tivity trigger a demand for justication by revealing that there are
competing claims concerning the nature of the world we perceive. But
once we accept the challenge, the remaining dialectical modes confront us
with an apparently fatal trilemma. Since anything we offer in justication
of a given claim or belief whether a particular piece of evidence or a
general criterion of credibility can itself be subjected to a demand for
justication, we are threatened with a vicious regress. But there is no satis-
factory way to block it. Faced with repeated demands to back up what
we have claimed, we will eventually run out of things to say, thus ending
with a brute assumption; or we will nd ourselves repeating something
we have already said, thereby reasoning in a circle. Whatever happens,
no satisfactory justication will have been produced. U nlike Cartesian
scepticism, the A grippan problem depends on no controversial partition
of our beliefs into privileged and problematic classes. It depends on no
particular theory of mind. It does not even depend on any particular view
of what justication consists in. A ll it exploits is the commonsensical
demand that to lay claim to justied belief is to open oneself to requests
that the justication be produced.
145
What Fogelin calls the A grippan problem is generally thought of as

the problem of the regress of justication. Fogelin does not care for this
way of characterizing the problem because he thinks that it exerts a subtle
pressure in the direction of thinking that the problem must be soluble.
But according to Fogelin, we have no right simply to assume that the
sceptical challenge must be one we can meet som ehow. Perhaps it cannot
be met at all.
It is tempting to suppose that, since at least some of our beliefs
are justied, and since the regress of justication is clearly vicious, it must
be possible to put one of the remaining alternatives in a better light.
Perhaps there are terminating beliefs or judgments that are nevertheless
not just assumptions: here we reach the fundamental idea of foundation-
alist theories of justication, that some of our beliefs are intrinsically

credible. If we go down this road, we may well end up thinking that the
ultimate basis of empirical knowledge is rather narrow and thus nd
ourselves face to face with an array of Cartesian underdetermination prob-
lems. H owever, these problems will arise not immediately and naturally
but rather consequent to a particular theoretical response to A grippan
scepticism. A lternatively, if we nd the foundationalist strategy unwork-
able either because there are no intrinsically credible basic beliefs or
because, even if there were, they would constitute too slender a basis for
a useful system of empirical knowledge we may hope to nd a satis-
factory account of justication in some story about how our beliefs t
together. This will lead to some form of coherence theory, which will claim
that the complex ways in which belief-systems hang together should not
be equated with simple circularity. Following this line may also generate
further sceptical problems: for example, the problem of connecting
coherence, which supervenes on beliefbelief relations, with objective
truth. But again, such problems will arise only because the need to respond
to A grippan scepticism has forced us into exploring a particular theoret-
ical option. H owever, in assuming that, since we do have justied
beliefs, one of these options must be workable, we are treating scepticism
as a mere methodological device. What gives us the right to do this, when
a close examination of attempts to respond to scepticism strongly suggests
that the problem of scepticism has no solution? A ccording to Fogelin,
no account of justication yet devised avoids succumbing to one of the
A grippan modes: if not vicious regress, then assumption or circularity.
Indeed, none has even come close to succeeding in the task set for it,
so that Pyrrhonian doubts, once raised, seem incapable of resolution
(p. 203).
Pyrrhonian scepticism, then, is both intuitive and irrefutable. Since the
A grippan problem can be raised with respect to any putatively justied
belief, it is also general. But is it radical? A ccording to Fogelin, it is.
Pyrrhonian scepticism raises as robust a skeptical challenge as one would
146
like (p. 193). A gain, this seems reasonable. If attempts to justify a belief
lead inevitably to assumption, circularity or vicious regress, the conclu-
sion is not that our justications are less than watertight but that they are
wholly worthless. Thus, if Fogelin is right, my anti-sceptical line which
turns on the possibility of theoretical diagnosis is at best effective only
against a form of scepticism that was never the most fundamental. It may
work against Cartesian scepticism, but it will leave Pyrrhonian scepticism
untouched. But is he right?
4. Signicantly, from my standpoint, Fogelin does not assume that the

A grippa problem automatically poses a serious philosophical challenge.
R ather, he holds that it poses such a problem only given two further
commitments.
The rst is to a strong normative principle of epistemic justication.
The principle is captured by W. K. Cliffords dictum: It is wrong, always,
everywhere and for anyone to believe anything upon insufcient evidence.
A ccordingly, Fogelin calls this doctrine Cliffordism. H e holds, correctly,
I think, that many contemporary epistemologists accept some version
of it.
The second commitment is to the existence of knowledge. For those
who take on the rst commitment, of course, this means knowledge
according to Cliffordian standards. Thus, according Fogelin, The assump-
tion that drives justicationalist programs in both their foundationalist and
nonfoun dationalist modes is that we do (or could) have knowledge
according to Cliffordian standards. The task of a theory of empirical justi-
cation is to show how this is possible (p. 115). Fogelin holds that the
A grippa problem is the rock on which such projects founder. No theory
yet produced even comes close to dealing with it.
Supposing that Fogelin is right about this, what follows? D o we
reach philosophical scepticism or only scepticism about (Cliffordian)
philosophy? The answer is clear: only the latter, unless we assume that
Cliffordian standards are built into everyday epistemic practices. H ow-
ever, according to Fogelin, the Pyrrhonian sceptic makes no such assump-
tion. O n the contrary, the Pyrrhonist simply takes the standards of the
dogmatist at face value and holds the dogmatist to them. The Pyrrhonist
invokes the Five Modes and similar devices for dialectical purposes
(pp. 11516). I agree, but the problem is to see how this use of sceptical
problems, by a philosopher who does not assume the identity of everyday
and Cliffordian standards of epistemic responsibility, takes us even one
step towards philosophical scepticism as opposed to scepticism about
philosophy.
This problem becomes acute when we turn to Fogelins description
of the Pyrrhonians own epistemic outlook. H e sees the Pyrrhonian
sceptic as
147
going through the world claiming to know certain things, and

sometimes claiming to be sure or even absolutely dead certain of
them. The Pyrrhonian skeptic freely participates in common epis-
temic practices, drawing on all the practical distinctions embodied
in them. These practices are often fallible. O ften this fallibility doesnt
matter, since the price of being wrong is not high. When the cost
of error becomes excessive, the skeptic, like others, may seek ways
to improve these practices so that the chances of error are reduced.
Pictured in this way, the skeptic is rather like H umes moderate
skeptic . . . :cautious, agreeable and sane.
(p. 192)
This is fallibilism, not radical scepticism. Fogelin has ended up where I

would have predicted. To the extent that neo-Pyrrhonism steers clear of
contentious philosophical commitments such as Cliffordism it fails
to lead to radical scepticism. To generate a serious problem, it would have
to take such commitments on. But then it would be a target for theoret-
ical diagnosis. E ither way, Fogelin fails to blaze an intuitive trail to radical
scepticism.
None of this is news to Fogelin. H e anticipates the objection that the
scepticism he has defended is pretty thin soup (p. 192). This objection
misses the mark, he argues, because the justicationalist projects that
founder on the A grippa problem are not rooted solely in adventitious
epistemic ambitions. R ather, they arise naturally out of reection on a
certain undeniable feature of our everyday epistemic practices: their
fragility. So to complete the argument, we need to take a look at this
fragility to see exactly what it entails.
5. Fogelins discovery of the fragility of knowledge does not grow directly
out of a confrontation with sceptical problems but out of an attempt to
respond to G ettiers problem. G ettier is generally thought to have shown
that knowledge is not simply justied true belief. If we want to hold on
to a justication-centred analysis of knowledge, we need some fourth
clause to pick out the kind of justication capable of yielding knowledge.
Fogelin disagrees. H e thinks that, with a proper understanding of justi-
cation, we can see that G ettier-style counter-examples to the justied true
belief analysis of knowledge are only apparent.
Fogelin holds and I agree that justication has two aspects. O ne has
to do with performance or epistemic responsibility. We say that a person
is justied in believing P when he has taken appropriate care in forming
his belief. In this sense of justied, he can of course be justied in
believing something that is in fact false. But we also use justied in
assessing the grounds on which a persons belief is based. When we have
this sense of justication in mind, Fogelin suggests, to say that a person
is justied in believing that P is to say that his grounds or reasons estab-
148
lish the truth of P. A n adequate analysis of knowledge must take account

of both senses. To the usual clauses
S knows that P iff (i) P is true,

(ii) S believes that P,
We must add both a performance clause,
(iiip) S justiably came to believe that P,
and an adequate grounds clause,
(iiig) Ss grounds establish the truth of P.
E liminating redundancy, we arrive at the elegant formulation,

S knows that P iff S justiably came to believe that p on
grounds that establish the truth of P.
(p. 94)
Now, in a typical G ettier problem, a person forms a belief by some

apparently justication-conferring inference that, through no fault of his
own, involves a false premise or lemma. Nevertheless, as luck would
have it, his belief turns out to be true anyway. H e seems therefore to have
a justied true belief that we are unwilling to count as knowledge. But
such examples, Fogelin claims, trade on the double aspect of justication.
We take the examples to involve justied true belief because the imag-
ined person is justied in the performance sense: he cant be blamed for
his mistake. E ven so, his grounds are in fact defective. H is justication
is worthless because it ignores vital information; and this is why we are
unwilling to credit him with knowledge. Thus G ettier examples do not
describe cases of justied true belief without knowledge, taking justied
univocally. They are examples of a persons being justied in one way but
not in another. O nce we see that both aspects of justication are essen-
tial to knowledge indeed, to justication itself the counter-examples
disappear and the justied true belief analysis of knowledge stands.
This is a neat solution to the G ettier problem. But how exactly does it
work? Is it really so different from a fourth-clause approach that accepts
the counter-examples as genuine and tries to narrow down the type of
justication that yields knowledge? This question is important, since
fourth-clause analyses lead naturally to a distinction between radical and
non-radical scepticism, opening the way for a R ussellian retreat should
knowledge prove hard to come by.
G ettier himself notes that his examples depend on assuming that a
person can be justied in believing something that is false. Clearly Fogelin
denies this, at least with respect to knowledge-conferring justication, since
he takes knowledge to require grounds that establish the truth of what is
149
known. But what is meant by establishing the truth? The obvious answer
is that a beliefs grounds establish its truth if they are true and logically
entail the proposition believed. Such an answer would make Fogelins
account of knowledge the functional equivalent of a fourth-clause analysis.
It would also make knowledge depend on such a stringent conception of
justication that it would be hard to see how the fragility of claims to
knowledge would take us even a step in the direction of radical scepti-
cism. H owever, this conception cannot be what Fogelin has in mind. Such
a view would be deductive chauvinism, which he emphatically rejects.
H is view is close (or at rst sight appears to be close) to a relevant alter-
natives conception of justication. G rounds establish the truth of a belief
if they exclude all relevant (or perhaps important or signicant or actual)
error-possibilities. In everyday circumstances, these fall short of all

the error-possibilities there are. This is a feature of justication generally,
not merely justication of some special sort of knowledge-conferring sort.
So I think that Fogelin can defend the claim that his analysis of knowl-
edge does not draw a sharp distinction between knowledge and justied
true belief that falls short of knowledge. A t least, I shall not push this
line of criticism any further.
This conception of ordinary justicatory procedures forces us to recog-
nize their fragility. We typically make serious knowledge-claims in the face
of remote and even not-so-remote error-possibilities that we have not
eliminated. This need not be culpable. Indeed, if the costs of error are
low compared with those of further investigation, it is the only reason-
able way to proceed. Nevertheless, in relying on grounds that leave
signicant error-possibilities unexcluded, we expose ourselves to epistemic
risk. We admit the possibility of defeating evidence, but rely on its not
proving to be actual. So when we get away with it, when problems that
might come up dont, in short when we succeed in knowing something,
this is in part a matter of epistemic grace. A s Wittgenstein says, It is
always by grace of nature that one knows something.5
In everyday justication, then, the grounds on which our beliefs rest
are open to defeat by an argument to the effect that some ignored error-
possibility is relevant after all. Such an argument raises what Fogelin calls
the level of scrutiny. Because of the ever-present possibility that the level
of scrutiny will be raised, everyday justicatory procedures, and hence the
knowledge-claims that depend on them, are intrinsically fragile. This sets
the stage for Fogelins elaborated account of the motivation behind philo-
sophical theories of justication. Such theories are designed to repair the
fragility of ordinary justication: A n attempt to transcend our actual
modes of justication is an immediate and natural consequence of noting
their fragility (p. 203). To transcend this fragility would be to show that
at least some justication attaches to our everyday beliefs, no matter how
high the level of scrutiny is set. But the A grippa problem defeats all such
150
attempts. This is why there is no nal answer to scepticism. We must live

with our fragile, everyday justications, trusting to grace that they will not
always disappoint us.
A reasonable question is what any of this has to do with rad ical scep-
ticism. If anything, Fogelins account of how philosophical theories of
justication grow out of attempts to compensate for the fragility of ordi-
nary justicatory procedures intensies the suspicion that such theories
reect a hankering after a much-greater-than-ordinary level of assurance.
A ccordingly, their failure will not lead to radical scepticism but to disap-
pointment in the quest for certainty. This is a form of scepticism about
philosophy, not a form of philosophical scepticism. We do not seem to be
getting anywhere.
This brings us back to the possibility of arguing for radical scepti-

cism without taking on serious philosophical commitments of ones own:
a feat that the Pyrrhonian, in contrast to his Cartesian counterpart,
was supposed to bring off. To say that our everyday justications are less
than watertight is not to say that they are without epistemic value. It is
always a fallacy to go directly from the possibility of error to the impos-
sibility of justication. Some hidden presupposition must be at work. What
is it?
The clue lies in noticing that everyday justication, as (correctly)
described by Fogelin, involves a crucial externalist component. We count
on it that certain possible defeaters to our knowledge-claims are not actual.
If we are right, we know: otherwise we dont. But knowledge depends on
our being right, not on our knowing that we are right. This means, of
course, that knowing that P does not entail knowing that one knows that
P. But it does not exclude it either. The point is rather that knowing that
one knows that P requires separate investigation. Whatever justication
this leads to will involve its own element of epistemic grace. But from an
externalist standpoint, this is not the vicious regress of justication threat-
ened by the A grippa problem but simply the open-endedness of fallible
inquiry. O ne question can always lead to another. But this does not mean
that we cannot answer any question without answering all.
Some philosophers will surely reply that, in the case of justication, it
does. But this is because of an antecedent commitment to a strong form
of internalism. This commitment demands what Larry BonJour calls
cognitive access to all factors on which epistemic justication supervenes.
If Fogelins Wittgensteinian account of everyday justication is correct,
this is a commitment that everyday epistemic practices do not make. But
it is just the commitment we need to take us from the fragility of everyday
justicatory procedures, via the A grippa problem, to the threat of radical
scepticism. By Fogelins own standards, the move from reection on our
everyday practices to attempts to transcend them is neither immediate
nor natural.
151
Notice that, if this is right, Cliffordism is a red herring. The Cliffordian

insists that it is wrong, always and everywhere, to believe something on
insufcient evidence. Cliffordism might therefore seem, as Fogelin is
inclined to suppose, to impose a higher than usual standard of epistemic
responsibility. A s I have already argued, this would defeat the natural-
ness of any form of scepticism deriving from the failure of Cliffordian
programmes. But in fact it does no such thing. O n an everyday under-
standing of sufcient, which recognizes the inevitability of epistemic grace,
Cliffordism leaves everything as it is. In this respect, it is like that other
apparently demanding slogan, the Veriability Principle. To say that a
proposition is meaningless unless it is either analytic or empirically veri-
able seems dramatic. But the Principle is toothless without some suitably
restrictive conception of empirical verication. It could exclude anything

or nothing.
The objection at this point will be that I am overlooking the crucial
role played in generating scepticism by Fogelins notion of levels of
scrutiny. Contrary to what he sometimes suggests, Fogelins considered
view is that it is not Cliffordism itself that makes the A grippa problem
serious, but Cliffordism in the context of scrutiny at the highest level:
unrestricted scrutiny. In the context of unrestricted scrutiny, deductive
chauvinism becomes reasonable, rather than chauvinistic. U nrestricted
scrutiny requires us to eliminate all error-possibilities, which we can never
do. Furthermore, a sceptic can always raise the level of scrutiny by reec-
tion alone: by stepping back from any given everyday justicatory
procedure and noticing how much it takes for granted, how much it
depends on epistemic grace.
O ne way to resist this raising of the level of scrutiny is to adopt a fully
edged contextualist view of knowledge and justication. In Fogelins eyes,
however, such a view would distort ordinary epistemic practices. To be
sure, everyday justication takes place in restricted contexts, but this is
not to say that our knowledge-claims are relativized to those contexts. In
claiming knowledge we commit ourselves to having sufcient grounds for
our belief. We therefore open ourselves to raising of the level of scrutiny,
by way of reective examination of the actual incompleteness of what-
ever grounds we have.
What is unrestricted scrutiny? The answer seems to be: scrutiny that
abstracts from the practical considerations that normally discourage us
from pressing demands for justication beyo nd a certain (usually not too
distant) point. H owever, while the move to such scrutiny allows us to
consider error-possibilities that would ordinarily be regarded as too remote
to take seriously, it doesnt take us a step towards radical scepticism. A t
most, it shows that, if inquiry were cost-free, we could reasonably demand
a higher degree of assurance than we normally do. It doesnt show that
ordinary justication is worthless.
152
H ow could we get to that conclusion? Suppose for the moment

that ordinary justications are worthless in the context of unrestricted
scrutiny, and suppose further that no attempt to transcend ordinary
justicatory procedures succeeds: how might this tell us something about
ordinary justicatory procedures in their own proper context? So far as
I can see, there is only one way. We have to suppose that the philosophical
context of unrestricted scrutiny is privileged. It is not hard to see how the
story has to go. We have to argue that ordinary justicatory demands
are the sum of two vectors: one reecting purely epistemic considerations,
and so imposing stringent demands on justication, and one reecting
practical contingencies that permit us to relax our epistemic demands
for practical purposes. This picture of epistemic justication leads readily
to a neo-H umean conclusion. For practical purposes, we are constrained

to ignore sceptical problems. But in the study, where all such purposes
are set aside and our sifting humour is allowed to operate unchecked,
such problems confront us in full force and our everyday condence in
our beliefs and procedures evaporates. Furthermore, the view from the
study, while in a way strained and unnatural, provides a deep insight
into our epistemic condition. It reveals how our justicatory practices
look from a purely epistemic standpoint: the standpoint from which
the likelihood of our beliefs being true is the only relevant considera-
tion.
There are strong echoes of H ume in Fogelin, who writes:
R eection on unexcluded remote or not so rem ote possibilities can

lead us to think that we almost never know most of the things we
claim to know. A s long as we maintain this intense view of things
we will be disinclined to think we know things or are justied in
believing things that we normally accept without hesitation. When
we return to practical affairs of life, our standards will return to their
normal moderate level and this disinclination will fade. This is all
very H umean.
(p. 94)
H owever, it is also all very wrong. The implied distinction between the
practical and the purely epistemic is bogus. The opposite of the practical
is the theoretical, not the purely epistemological.
To see this, notice rst that, although scrutiny undergoes all kinds of
contextual shifts, it does not simply go up and down through levels, from
lax to moderate to intense and back again: it changes angle as well as
level. Wittgenstein had a keen appreciation of this. Thus:
The questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that
some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges
153
on which those turn. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our

scientic investigations that certain things are not doubted.
But it isnt that the situation is like this: We just cant investigate
everything and for that reason have to rest content with assumption.
If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.
(O C, 3413)
E xempting certain propositions from doubt temporarily or permanently

is necessary to x the direction of inquiry, the angle of scrutiny.
This direction-xing function of selective non-doubting has nothing to do
with practicality, since it applies even to the most theoretical investiga-
tions.
Changes in the angle of scrutiny operate independently of changes of

level. Wittgenstein again:
We check the story of Napoleon, but not whether all the reports
about him are based on sense-deception, forgery and the like. For
whenever we test anything, we are already presupposing something
that is not tested. Now am I to say that the experiment which perhaps
I make in order to test the truth of a proposition presupposes the
truth of the proposition that the apparatus I believe I see is really
there (and the like)?
(O C, 163)
In historical or scientic inquiries, there are many ways of raising the level
of scrutiny. A s a historian, I can spend longer hours in the archives and
scrupulously investigate the provenance of whatever documents I nd. A s
a scientist, I can dismantle and reassemble my apparatus to check for
defects; I can run my experiment several times; and so on indenitely. But
certain kinds of doubts do not raise the level of scrutiny: they change the
subject. Worrying about whether my apparatus is a brain-in-a-vat illusion
is not part of an especially careful approach to experimental physics. It
introduces a different kind of inquiry altogether: sceptical epistemology,
say. So, when H ume or Fogelin overcomes his philosophical despair, he
does not return to more moderate standards but to different pursuits,
conducted at whatever level of epistemological strictness resources and
costs (including opportunity costs) permit.
I said earlier that, to get to a radical and general sceptical conclusion
from the thought that ordinary justication procedures may look inade-
quate in the context of unrestricted scrutiny, that context needs to be
viewed as privileged: in Fogelins terms, an ultimate justicatory frame-
work that grounds all others (p. 98). D oes Fogelin think that there is such
a framework? It is hard to say. O n the one had, he expresses sympathy
for pluralistic contextualism, a view that certainly repudiates the existence
154
of any such framework. O n the other hand, he denies that he is himself

a contextualist.
Fogelins deep uncertainty here is reected in a surface uncertainty as
to whether there is a fact of the matter about knowing. If we take the
context of unrestricted scrutiny to be privileged, and suppose that scep-
tical doubts cannot be turned aside, the conclusion should be that we
never in fact know anything, though it is often permissible for us to say
that we do (i.e. when we have knowledge for all practical purposes, or for
this or that particular practical purpose). If we reject the idea of privi-
lege, in favour of a more thoroughgoing contextualism, the conclusion is
that we know all sorts of things: we know them when contextually appro-
priate standards of justication are met. That Fogelin should be so
uncertain as to whether there is a fact of the matter about knowing strongly

suggests that he is torn between these two options. In the end, this tension
draws him into inconsistency.
Fogelin hopes to resolve the apparent tension in his views about justi-
cation by reminding us that justication has two aspects: responsible
performance and adequate grounds. H e wants to claim that the rst aspect
is contextually sensitive but the second is not. Thus:
A lthough knowledge claims are always made within restricted

frameworks, they are not relativized to these frameworks. . . .
[The] demand for adequate grounds is not relativized to a particular
framework with a xed level of scrutiny, even though the assessment
of a responsible epistemic performance is. It is this disparity between
the objective demands of the adequate-grounds clause and the
relativized demands of the epistemic-responsibility clause that, once
perceived, generates the demand for philosophical theories of justi-
cation.
(p. 98)
This cant be right, even by Fogelins own standards. O bjective here has
to mean not subject to contextual variation. But philosophical theories
of justication try to salvage some shred of justication even in the content
of unrestricted scrutiny. So adequate grounds contrary to what we rst
thought are now grounds that establish the truth of a belief when there
are no limits to the range of potential. This conception of adequate grounds
leads immediately to deductive chauvinism, which we already know that
Fogelin repudiates. If Fogelin wants to avoid deductive chauvinism, he
needs the demands on establishing the truth, his criterion for adequacy
of grounds, also to be variable according to context. But then he has no
case for scepticism.
Why does Fogelin go wrong? In part, because he wants to derive radical
and general scepticism from epistemological views that are at the deepest
155
level hostile to it. A s a result, he is led to overlook the ways in which

justicatory frameworks have as much to do with the direction of
inquiry as with the level of scrutiny, an oversight that causes him to miss
one of a contextualist epistemologys most potent anti-sceptical lines of
thought. But setting that aside, I think that Fogelin has misunderstood
contextualism at least the version I would defend in a fundamental
way. H e parts company with contextualists, he claims, because he does
not hold
I. S is justied in believing that p if p is justied within the frame-

work in which S is operating.
H e offers as reasons for denying this:
(a) I may reject Ss justicatory framework. (S may be using astro-

logical tables.)
(b) I may accept justicatory framework but think S has not used
it correctly.
(c) I may grant that S has been epistemically responsible, but think
his grounds have been defeated.
(p. 96)
I do not see why a contextualist should not accept all these possibilities.
A contextualist view of justication does not commit one to holding that
a reference to context is part of the content of a knowledge-claim. A
knowledge-claim commits one to holding that all signicant potential
defeaters have been eliminated: the contextual element comes in to x
what defeaters are or better, should be counted as signicant. But this
is consistent with the view that presuppositions as to what is signicant
are themselves open to criticism that, if successful, will force the with-
drawal of ones claim. More precisely, a contextualist will hold:
(C1) A ll justication takes place in a context of background presup-

positions (for example, relating to which potential defeaters need to
be excluded).
(C2) These presuppositions can themselves be challenged, but only

by a recontextualization of the original justicatory procedure, a
recontextualization that will involve presuppositions of its own.
(C3) R econtextualization can go on indenitely. But this is the

open-endedness of inquiry, not a vicious regress of justication. (This
is the externalist element in contextualization.)
156
Put this way, contextualism makes no attempt to insulate knowledge-claims

from criticism, as Fogelin seems to suppose. A s to the result of such crit-
icism, contextualism as such should make no advance commitment. When
standards of justication themselves become objects of criticism, we can
say either that we were justied (by the standards previously in force) but
are justied no longer (because the standards have changed); or we can
say that we were never justied, because our standards were always defec-
tive (or misapplied). It would be interesting to track the factors that
inuence our choice of description. But the possibility of losing justica-
tion previously possessed (and perhaps of subsequently regaining it) is
worth noticing, since it points to the potential instability of knowledge. I
think that this instability is what Fogelin notices, but misreads as a doubt
about whether there is a fact of the matter about knowing.

H owever, the question now arises as to whether the possibility of recon-
textualization opens the way to scepticism: Cartesian scepticism in
particular. The thought goes like this. The sceptic, by asking whether we
know anything whatsoever about the external world, creates a context in
which no justicatory procedure that takes for granted the existence of
such knowledge is legitimate. This forces us to ground knowledge of the
world on some more primitive stratum of knowledge: exp eriential knowl-
edge. But no such attempt at grounding can succeed, so no general
explanation of knowledge of the external world is possible.
The contextualist has two replies to this. The rst is that there is nothing
sacrosanct about the domains over which the Cartesian sceptic attempts
to generalize. If we deny that experiential knowledge is in some general
and fully objective way epistemologically prior to knowledge of the world,
we will not see that context created by the sceptics attempted general
investigation as in any way interesting or important, in which case we will
no longer see knowledge of the external world as a theoretically signif-
icant kind of knowledge. The second is that, even if we allow the sceptics
reective step back to project us into a special context, a context in which
knowledge of the world eludes us, this amounts at most to the discovery
that knowledge is impossible under the conditions of philosophical reec-
tion (in the study). It does not amount to the discovery, under the
conditions of philosophical reection, that knowledge is generally impos-
sible. To suppose that it does is to conate the instability of knowledge
with its impossibility.
To get from instability to impossibility, we must privilege the justica-
tory constraints embedded in the context of philosophical reection. We
must suppose that they reveal the ultimate, context-invariant justicatory
constraints: constraints on knowledge of the world as such. But for a
contextualist, there are no such constraints. To suppose that there are is
epistemological realism: as I see it, the groundless metaphysical commit-
ment on which scepticism nally rests. In so far as Fogelin, in his account
157
of the objectivity of the adequate-grounds clause, is drawn towards such

a commitment, he has more in common with the rest of the neo-H umeans
than he thinks.
N orthwestern University
Notes
1 Thomas Nagel, The View from N owhere (O xford: O xford U niversity Press,
1986); P.F. Strawson, Sk epticism and N aturalism : Som e Varieties (London:
Methuen, 1985); Barry Stroud, T he Signicance of Philosophical Scepticism
(O xford: O xford U niversity Press, 1984).
2 R obert Fogelin, Pyrrhonian R eections on K nowledge and Justication (New
York and O xford: O xford U niversity Press, 1994). R eferences given in the
text by page number in parentheses.
3 For a detailed defence of this position see my Unnatural D oubts (O xford:
Blackwell 1992; paperback edition Princeton: Princeton U niversity Press,
1995) .
4 In focusing on the A grippan problem, Fogelin presents a severely stripped-
down version of Pyrrhonian scepticism. The foundation of historical Pyrrhon-
ism is the method of opposition: the sceptic reaches suspension of judgment
by counterposing to every proposition or argument an incompatible proposi-
tion or argument that strikes him as more or less equally plausible.
This method, in which competing views neutralize each other, has no special
connection with epistemological argumentation: a physical theory will be set
against an alternative physical theory, an ethical judgment against another
ethical judgment, and so on. In my view, the role of more directly epistemo-
logical considerations in the Pyrrhonian sceptics dialectical practice has been
widely misunderstood. See my Scepticism without Theory, R eview of
M etaphysics, 41(3) (March 1988), pp. 54788.
5 Ludwig Wittgenstein, O n Certainty (O xford: Blackwell, 1969), section 505.
Subsequent references given by O C and section number.
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1. R ecent years have seen a growing pessimism about our prospects of

International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 7 (2), 141158

that will not go away.

2. Suppose the pessimists are right and scepticism cannot be refuted: is

is that, even if we saw no way of turning it aside, we could always execute

of error. But the denial that we are capable of knowledge in this

This leads us to the most important reason why sceptical arguments

I call epistemological realism. A ccordingly, the way beyond Cartesian

This is why I nd Fogelins defence of scepticism so signicant. Fogelin

What Fogelin calls the A grippan problem is generally thought of as

alist theories of justication, that some of our beliefs are intrinsically

4. Signicantly, from my standpoint, Fogelin does not assume that the

going through the world claiming to know certain things, and

This is fallibilism, not radical scepticism. Fogelin has ended up where I

lish the truth of P. A n adequate analysis of knowledge must take account

S knows that P iff (i) P is true,

E liminating redundancy, we arrive at the elegant formulation,

Now, in a typical G ettier problem, a person forms a belief by some

error-possibilities. In everyday circumstances, these fall short of all

attempts. This is why there is no nal answer to scepticism. We must live

This brings us back to the possibility of arguing for radical scepti-

Notice that, if this is right, Cliffordism is a red herring. The Cliffordian

restrictive conception of empirical verication. It could exclude anything

H ow could we get to that conclusion? Suppose for the moment

to a neo-H umean conclusion. For practical purposes, we are constrained

R eection on unexcluded remote or not so rem ote possibilities can

on which those turn. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our

E xempting certain propositions from doubt temporarily or permanently

Changes in the angle of scrutiny operate independently of changes of

of any such framework. O n the other hand, he denies that he is himself

uncertain as to whether there is a fact of the matter about knowing strongly

A lthough knowledge claims are always made within restricted

level hostile to it. A s a result, he is led to overlook the ways in which

I. S is justied in believing that p if p is justied within the frame-

H e offers as reasons for denying this:

(a) I may reject Ss justicatory framework. (S may be using astro-

(C1) A ll justication takes place in a context of background presup-

(C2) These presuppositions can themselves be challenged, but only

(C3) R econtextualization can go on indenitely. But this is the

Put this way, contextualism makes no attempt to insulate knowledge-claims

about whether there is a fact of the matter about knowing.

of the objectivity of the adequate-grounds clause, is drawn towards such

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