Abstract

In Meanings, Manners, and Scepticism, I argue that the ordinary language philosopher, the relevant alternativist, and the contextualist fail to refute the sceptic. I argue that they fail to refute the sceptic because their arguments critically rest on a number of both dogmatic and erroneous assumptions. In particular they rest on the dogmatic and erroneous assumptions that common sense is threatened by skepticism, that ordinary linguistic behaviour is of epistemic significance, and that the sceptic's departure from the linguistic norm suffices to prove his sceptical alternatives irrelevant to the truth of ordinary claims to know. I argue that the first assumption is mistaken because it wrongly assumes that common sense consists not only of first-order beliefs about the world, but also second-order knowledge beliefs about those beliefs. I argue that the second assumption is mistaken because it conflates two logically distinct sets of standards: the standards of appropriate and the standards of true assertion. Finally, I argue that the third assumption is mistaken because it rests on a confusion of the kind of standard operative in ordinary knowledge-discourse with the kind of standard the sceptic appeals to when he reasons that we can never know. I conclude that appealing to ordinary linguistic behaviour and habits cannot suffice to prove the sceptic's hypothesis irrelevant to the truth of our knowledge claims, though insofar as common sense does not include second-order knowledge beliefs the truth of even the most radical skepticism cannot threaten our ordinary claims to know