Philosophical skepticism (UK spelling: scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis, "inquiry") is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even rejects very plausible knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence. This distinction is modeled after the differences between the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonian skeptics in ancient Greek philosophy. In the latter sense, skepticism is understood as a way of life that helps the practitioner achieve inner peace. Some types of philosophical skepticism reject all forms of knowledge while others limit this rejection to certain fields, for example, to knowledge about moral doctrines or about the external world. Some theorists criticize philosophical skepticism based on the claim that it is a self-refuting idea since its proponents seem to claim to know that there is no knowledge. Other objections focus on its implausibility and distance from regular life.
Philosophical skepticism is a doubtful attitude toward commonly accepted knowledge claims. It is an important form of skepticism. Skepticism in general is a questioning attitude toward all kinds of knowledge claims. In this wide sense, it is quite common in everyday life: many people are ordinary skeptics about parapsychology or about astrology because they doubt the claims made by proponents of these fields. But the same people are not skeptical about other knowledge claims like the ones found in regular school books. Philosophical skepticism differs from ordinary skepticism in that it even rejects knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense and seem to be very certain. For this reason, it is sometimes referred to as radical doubt. In some cases, it is even proclaimed that one does not know that "I have two hands" or that "the sun will come out tomorrow".
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Most of us aspire to live meaningful lives. Yet, many of us would struggle to explain what a meaningful life is. This course provides philosophical tools and frameworks useful to understand our aspira
The course considers central themes in the philosophy of science. Starting from the debate between Leibniz and Newton about space and time, we move on to the transition from classical to quantum physi
Ce cours propose d'identifier et comprendre les débats et problèmes centraux en philosophie des sciences, p.ex. le débat concernant les différents modèles de l'explication scientifique. Evaluer et com
Philosophy (love of wisdom in ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, like physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. But they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term.
Western philosophy encompasses the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the pre-Socratics. The word philosophy itself originated from the Ancient Greek (φιλοσοφία), literally, "the love of wisdom" φιλεῖν , "to love" and σοφία sophía, "wisdom").
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integration of explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.
The standard physiological model has serious problems accounting for many aspects of vision, particularly when stimulus configurations become slightly more complex than the ones classically used, e.g., configurations of Gabors rather than only one or a few ...
The rise of neurotechnologies, especially in combination with artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods for brain data analytics, has given rise to concerns around the protection of mental privacy, mental integrity and cognitive liberty - often framed as ...
CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS2023
,
Responsibility—as an analytic or topic of political debate—is out of vogue in critical housing studies. Rather than offering progressive potential, the call for responsibility has been seen to foster neoliberal governance, racial structural violence, and f ...