appendix: THE STANDARD MISINTERPRETATION OF SKEPTICISM

Justificationists systematically misread skepticism as follows. Consider the following three propositions:

(1) Justificationism: Rationality is justification (of one’s views by some sort of proof).

(2) Skepticism: Justification is impossible.

(3) Rational Ethics: We should be rational (act on views we hold rationally).

The combination of all three leads, of course, to an impossible ethics. The conjunction of Justificationism and Skepticism, thus, leads to the denial of Rational Ethics; the conjunction of Skepticism with Rational Ethics leads to non-Justificationism - and the conjunction of Justification­ism with Rational Ethics lead to non-Skepticism.

Cynicism=Justificationism and Skepticism Non-Justificationism=Skepticism and Rational Ethics Positivism=Rational Ethics and Justificationism.

Now almost all opponents to Skepticism, and quite a few adherents of it, understand the doctrine to be cynicism, i.e. the conjunction of Skep­ticism with Justificationism; the skeptical tradition, however, is to com­bine Skepticism with Rational Ethics. This tradition looks inconsistent, because Justificationism is tacitly attributed to it. The positivists’ inability to imagine a non-Justificationist rationality is the cause of a certain narrow-minded rejection of skepticism. But not all rejection of skepticism is narrow-minded, and even where narrow-mindedness is present it is often less dogmatic (pace Sextus and pace Sir Karl Popper) than plainly naive.