| Philosophers typically respond to skepticism by trying to undermine the arguments for it. It is less common, however, for philosophers to try to simply understand skeptical arguments. This dissertation is an attempt to achieve such an understanding by addressing three questions any skeptical argument presents us with: (1) Is the argument sound? (2) What explains the appeal of the argument? (3) What, if anything, turns on the conclusion of the argument? With respect to (1), I argue that traditional skeptical arguments are fictions. I argue for this claim by defending a theory of knowledge and justification according to which knowledge and justification have a structural feature that has gone unnoticed. Skeptical arguments thus have to be reconceived in order to respect the ternary structure of knowledge and justification. With respect to question (2), I argue that the appeal of a skeptical argument is a component of a wider range of phenomena that I call the psychology of an argument. I then argue that there are a variety of non-mutually exclusive factors that can be responsible for the phenomena that constitute the psychology of an argument for each individual. Which factors are operative must be determined on a case by case basis for each person. And with respect to question (3), I argue that knowledge and justification are important because they represent cognitive achievements that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. |
