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RUDD, Anthony. Expressing the World: Skepticism, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open Court, 2003. ix + 262pp. Paper, $29.95-We are used to thinking of the skeptic as an epistemological stalking horse. In refreshing contrast, Expressing the World treats modern skepticism as a serious dialectical position. Experience as such, the familiar thought goes, is compatible with many and varied rival explanatory hypotheses-perpetual dreaming, evil scientists, the work of the creative imagination, the causal power of things in themselves and so on. But since we can get no perspective on our experience from the outside, no "view from nowhere," any attempt to demonstrate a given member of this set is eo ipso objectionable. Like his ancient counterpart, the modern skeptic therefore suspends judgment. Rudd calls this stance "global metaphysical scepticism" (GMS).
According to Rudd, GMS leaves our prephilosophical beliefs in tactfor it bites only against second-order accounts of experience as a whole. It is not, however, to be confused with merely doubting that our ordinary beliefs satisfy certain ideal requirements, while conceding that they meet more relaxed, contextually sensitive standards. On the contrary, Rudd's skeptic doubts that there is any compelling general theory of what counts as knowledge in any sense.