New outline of pyrrhonism: the skeptical doubt and Strawson’s liberal naturalism

Abstract

The present essay aims at analyzing the remark put forward by Peter F. Strawson regarding the skeptical challenge in his Skepticism and Naturalism, specifically with respect to the doubt about the existence of the external world, which, contrary to other contemporary philosophical analysis, is not about confronting it as a challenge, arguing against it or reducing to a meaninglessness, but overlooking it. Strawson’s reasoning claims that we can give no arguments against the skeptic because there is a natural disposition among human beings to accept those things that the skeptic wants to question and that we cannot even think with the skeptic because the skeptic just denies the same condition of possibility for thinking in general. Thus, Strawson attempts to show the uselessness of the skeptical doubt for it is a doubt purely theoretical and that does not represent a position that may be held in practice. This kind of skepticism, which Strawson calls "traditional skepticism", might be confronted with the notion that Strawson takes from Hume and Wittgenstein as Naturalism.