The problem of epistemology, the basis and justification of human knowledge, has commanded the attention of philosophers for centuries, many of whom doubted our perceptions and our ability to understand the workings of nature. Many philosophers have adopted various forms of skepticism or “antirealism” that deny the reliability of the human mind or our ability to form accurate representations of a mind-independent world around us. The Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume initiated much of this skepticism in the eighteenth century.
