ABSTRACT
'Scepticism' is an umbrella-term; and a wide variety of methods and attitudes can be found sheltering under it. Most contemporary ethical 'sceptics' not only hold that there are no good reasons for positing objective moral values: they also contend that there are no such things, and that anyone who posits them is simply making a mistake. One's 'scepticism' may be epistemological, in this general sense, and yet still be a form of negative dogmatism. Descartes' 1st and 2nd Meditations are the locus classicus for modern formulations of the Argument. Descartes resolves to reject as false any proposition that might conceivably be the product of illusion. The procedure is cumulative: he comes to doubt more and more basic propositions as a result of adopting ever more radical dubititative hypotheses. Descartes aimed at inducing the most extreme state of doubt possible in order to see what survived the epidemic; if anything did, it must be immune from doubt, and hence certain.
