Grazer Philosophische Studien 69 (2005), xx–yy. NEO-MOOREANISM VERSUS CONTEXTUALISM

Attributer contextualism has undoubtedly been the dominant anti-sceptical theory in the recent literature. Nevertheless, this view does face some fairly serious problems, and it is argued that when the contextualist position is compared to a refi ned version of the much derided ‘Moorean ’ response to scepticism, then it becomes clear that there are distinct advantages to being a neo-Moorean rather than a contextualist. 1. Introductory remarks — scepticism and mooreanism When we teach epistemology to philosophy students for the fi rst time, we tend to begin by introducing them to some form of the sceptical problem in order to grab their attention. The reason why we do this is obvious, since sceptical arguments, when well constructed at any rate, are paradoxes — that is, they proceed from apparently unconten-tious premises and seemingly fl awless reasoning to derive an utterly unacceptable and counterintuitive conclusion. Consider, for example, the following formulation of the sceptical problem, which has becom