Although the harm-reduction approach to policy is most familiar from debates over public health and drug abuse, it provides a perfectly general framework for thinking about normative aspects of policy in non-ideal contexts. This paper seeks to apply a generalized harm reduction approach to the problem of attitudinal racism. Psychological research suggests that racism is unlikely to be completely eradicated, as a result of which a zero-tolerance approach risks becoming both counterproductive and overly punitive. Harm reduction recommends minimization of prevalence with respect to the primary phenomenon combined with attenuation of impact for the ineliminable portion.

I introduce the book symposium’s five contributors.

In this précis of Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition (Oxford 2021), I highlight the book’s main lines of argument and provide an overview of each of the book’s three parts. I explain how: part I identifies the best kind of argument for radical skepticism and objects to one of the two main ways of responding to it; part II presents my version of the other main way of responding to that skeptical argument (a version that relies heavily on epistemic intuition); and part III defends epistemic intuition (and, thereby, my response to radical skepticism) from several important objections.

This article raises some questions about the intuitionist response to skepticism developed by Michael Bergmann in Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, with a focus on Bergmann’s contention that epistemic intuitions serve as justifying evidence in support of anti-skepticism. It raises three main concerns: that an intuitionist conception of evidence is overly narrow, that it has undesirable implications for cases of disagreement, and that the evidential role that epistemic intuitions play in Bergmann’s version of anti-skepticism undercuts his claim that an intuitionist particularist response to skepticism is superior to disjunctivist responses.

I raise two concerns about Bergmann’s philosophical methodology: the first is a parity problem for his intuition-based “autodidactic” approach; the second is a tension between that approach and the commonsense tradition in which he situates it. I then use his approach to reflect on the limits of rational argument and set it alongside an alternative that likewise emphasizes the personal nature of philosophical inquiry while remaining more neutral about the rational standing of competing intuitions.

This paper expresses extensive agreement with Michael Bergmann’s position in Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, but (i) offers a simpler response to the skeptic, (ii) takes issue with Bergmann’s strong claim that an “evil demon” hypothesis is as good an explanation of our sensory experiences as is the natural realist explanation, and (iii) corrects a misunderstanding about explanationists’ canons of theory preference.

How should epistemologists respond to skepticism about knowledge of the external world? Michael Bergmann advocates noninferential antiskepticism. The thought is that, to reply to a skeptical argument, we should start with premises that do not require inference. I argue that Bergmann’s reasoning runs into the problem of easy knowledge and propose an alternative inferential antiskepticism. This view faces the problem of vicious circularity. I agree that, if we go down the inferential path, a certain type of circularity is unavoidable. I deny, however, that this type of circularity is vicious.

In these replies, I respond to critical comments on my book (Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition, Oxford 2021) from Julia Smith, Louis Doulas, Bill Lycan, and Matthias Steup, who (along with me) contributed to a symposium on that book for this journal. I discuss the following topics (among others), all in the context of my commonsense response to radical skepticism: epistemic intuitions, evidence, disagreement, philosophical pessimism, epistemic modesty, inference to the best explanation, theoretical virtues, particularism, methodism, epistemic circularity, and higher-level requirements on epistemic justification.