Sceptical Doubts - Raising the Standards or Changing the Angle?

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explore two different accounts of the mechanisms by which epistemic standards change, as a basis for the explanation of how arguments for radical scepticism get their appearance of legitimacy and persuasive power. The discussion begins with a presentation of arguments for the view that our epistemic practice contains a mechanism that raises the epistemic standards, to illustrate how sceptical hypotheses pose challenges to the truth value of our ordinary knowledge claims. Then, the discussion moves to a critique aimed to show that raising the standards approach is not well-suited to the job because it does not truly account for the radical form of philosophical scepticism. We take that these arguments pose serious problems with raising the standards approach and have to be dealt with. We examine an alternative account of changing epistemic standards, changing the angle of scrutiny, in line with which epistemic standards are interpreted as conditioned by disciplinary fields within which we conduct our research. After that, we compare the two highlighted approaches based on their success in providing an adequate description of actual epistemic practice. We conclude by arguing in favour of a latter approach as a superior conception and also as a promissory framework for an explanation of the phenomenology of our involvement with philosophical scepticism. Finally, we will close with some questions for both accounts.