Critical Discussion GRECO ON SCEPTICISM – A CRITICAL DISCUSSION Greco, J. Putting Skeptics in Their Place: The Nature of Skeptical Arguments and Their Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Cambridge Uni- versity Press, Cambridge, 2000, 280 pp., ISBN 052177263x, £ 47.50 (cloth). In his recent and influential book John Greco (2000) argues for the following three theses regarding scepticism about our knowledge of the external world: T1 ‘‘[...] skeptical arguments make no obvious mistake and therefore cannot be easily dismissed [...]’’; T2 ‘‘[...] the analysis of skeptical arguments is philosophically useful and important and should therefore have a central place in the methodology of philosophy, particularly in the methodology of epistemology [...]’’; T3 ‘‘[...] taking sceptical arguments seriously requires us to adopt an externalist, reliabilist epistemology.’’ (1) In arguing for these three theses, Greco is guided by the following methodological claim, which he terms ‘‘Strong Particularism’’: SP Strong Particularism. ‘‘An adequate theory of knowledge should do a good job of organizing our pre-theoretical intuitions about what cases count as knowledge.’’ (15) There is a sense, of course, in which SP merely constitutes common sense. It is almost a triviality to say that it is better to have a theory of knowledge which accords with our pre-theoretical intuitions than one that doesn’t. Greco’s construal of SP is not along these lines, how- ever, and this can be seen by how he takes SP to entail two further claims, both of which are contentious. Here is the first: Erkenntnis (2005) 62:277–284 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10670-004-7531-3