Of "Skepticism": A Few Words

In a consideration of David Hume I recently ran across one writers, considering Hume's notorious extremism in this respect, he asked "How much skepticism is enough?"

I am not sure that I would think of the issue in terms of "how much"--of an appropriate quantity or proportion of skepticism.

Rather I would say that there is a world of difference between the skepticism of those who think the world is knowable, and are trying to work their way toward such knowledge, and the skepticism of those who deny the possibility altogether--the more in as, as is so often the case with the latter, their purpose is sabotaging someone else's search for fear of where it will lead.

Indeed, the "skeptic" who denies the possibility of knowledge altogether strikes me not so much a skeptic as an epistemological nihilist--and like all nihilists in the sense I am talking about when it comes down to it, a bullshitter in the philosophical sense. After all, one cannot get out of bed in the morning--or decline to get out of bed in the morning--without acting on assumptions about what will come from that (overwhelmingly, correct ones), and anyone who is a "skeptic" for long always does so, while one might add the skeptic never hesitates to inflict their opinions about this, that and the other thing on the world with that very self-assurance their supposed skepticism should make impossible.

Hume, of course, was no exception to that, the philosopher famed for his attack on induction never worrying about his own conclusions about it when engaging in induction himself on matters such as the inferiority of one race to another. His outsized reputation today (and for that matter the extent to which criticism of Hume has been so limited to relatively narrow aspects of his legacy) is no testament to the vitality or rigor of thought in our time.