The overarching aim of this paper is to persuade the reader that radical scepticism is driven less by independently plausible arguments and more by a fear of epistemic limitation which can be overcome. By developing the Kierkegaardian insight that knowledge requires courage, I show that we are not, as potential knowers, just passive recipients of a passing show of putatively veridical information, we also actively need to put ourselves in the way of it by learning to resist certain forms of epistemic temptation: the Cartesian thought that we could be ‘imprisoned’ within our own representations, and, hence permanently ‘out of touch’ with an ‘external’ world, and the Reasons Identity Thesis, which has us believe that whether we are in the good case or in the bad case, our epistemic grounds are the same.

本文的总体目标是说服读者，激进怀疑论的产生较少是由独立的，合理的论据驱动，而更多是由于担心可以克服的认识论限制。通过发展克尔凯郭尔式的见识，即知识需要勇气，我表明，作为潜在的知识者，我们不是被动地接受过往推定的证明性信息展示的被动接受者，我们还积极地需要通过学习抵制某些事物来将自己置于这种方式中认知诱惑的形式：笛卡尔认为我们可能会被“囚禁”在我们自己的表征中，因此与“外部”世界永久“脱节”，以及原因认同论点使我们相信我们是否不管是好是坏，我们的认识基础都是相同的。