The significance of skepticism

Ratio (1):26-37 (2024)
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Abstract

There is a recurrent sort of skeptical character in philosophical debates who believes that some social practice must be abolished because it involves a false presupposition about how things ‘really’ are. I examine this style of skeptical argument, using the moral responsibility skeptic as my main illustration. I excavate two unstated and un-argued for premises that it requires (which I call Undistorted Truth and Privileged Conception). This exposes the full extent of the argumentative burdens that such a skeptic must discharge. I aim to make progress by offering skeptics and anti-skeptics alike a way forward: the skeptic is provided a clear agenda, while the anti-skeptic is provided a diagnostic tool to assess this style of skeptical arguments at key junctures.

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Taylor Madigan
Stanford University

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References found in this work

Freedom and Resentment.Peter Strawson - 1982 - In Gary Watson, Free will. New York: Oxford University Press.
Two concepts of rules.John Rawls - 1955 - Philosophical Review 64 (1):3-32.
Living without Free Will.Derk Pereboom - 2001 - Philosophical Quarterly 53 (211):308-310.
Wrongdoing and the Moral Emotions.Derk Pereboom - 2021 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Independence of Moral Theory.John Rawls - 1974 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 48:5 - 22.

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