Peirce, Descartes and the possibility of a Skeptical Philosophy

Abstract

Peirce’s discussion of Descartes’s method of doubt has attracted great attention among Peirce scholars. I shall try to assess Peirce’s criticism of this method from the point of view of the possibility of a skeptical philosophy, trying to argue that it does not depend on the “cartesian doubt” as it is interpreted by Peirce, and that in fact in many respects Descartes’s view is closer to Peirce’s than it may initially appear to be.