COMMENT:Stimulating, well worth reading, but flawed. Counters philosophical skepticism about the reliability of knowledge, in its nihilistic and mitigated forms, with a pragmatism-based concept of skepticism as an aspect of inquiry in which we interact with the world rather than passively observe. It treats science as an extension of common sense, which is questionable, and ignores some more substantial questions raised by classical skepticism, but there is much of value in Kurtz's approach. More dubious is his application of new-skepticism to ethical and political claims; Kurtz never makes the case for why matters of choice and value should be closely analogous to matters of fact which constrain us. Aside from critiquing easy targets like traditional religion and political theologies like libertarianism or Marxism, it is not clear what the advantage of skeptical inquiry is here. Kurtz's claims of ojective ethics, for example with human rights, seem culture-bound, and inattentive to history and human complexity.
