Using Charles Sanders Peirce to respond to radical Cartesian skepticism

What is it about?

The radical skeptic argues that I have no knowledge of things I ordinarily claim to know because I have no evidence for or against the possibility of being systematically fed illusions. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in pragmatic responses to skepticism inspired by C.S. Peirce. This essay challenges one such influential response and presents a better Peircean way to refute the skeptic. The account I develop holds that although I do not know whether the skeptical hypothesis is true, I still know things I ordinarily claim to know. It will emerge that although this reply appears similar to a classic contextualist response to radical skepticism, it avoids two central problems facing that response.

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Why is it important?

This essay provides a new, interesting, and perhaps convincing challenge to radical Cartesian skepticism inspired by C.S. Peirce.