Chapter 2 - Descartes and content skepticism

Summary

The arguments and methods of reasoning seem much alike. This chapter discusses something new in Descartes' skepticism but it is not that its approach is methodological. It is rather that unlike ancient skepticism, Descartes' skepticism extends to the very content of ideas themselves. The chapter presents Descartes' three main skeptical arguments: the argument from illusion, the dreaming argument, and the Demon hypothesis, and each has ancient precedents. Arguments from conflicting impressions generated by different senses or circumstances or depending on different states of the perceiver were common among the Pyrrhonists and Academic skeptics. What Descartes' skeptic accepts does little to support Fine's claim that both ancient and modern skeptics accept appearances in the same way. Content skepticism arises in two places in the Meditations: in the transition between the dreaming and demon arguments, and in the discussion of material falsity.