Philosophy Article 2 (Chisholm)Chisholm begins the article by addressing the importance of skepticism by stating: “'The problem of the criterion' seems to me to be one of the most difficult of all problems of philosophy” (Chisholm, 77). He attempts to divide the views of the criterion into three parts, methodism, particularism and scepticism. Chisholm's arguments against skepticism and the defense of particularism are flawed because of flaws in his reasoning. With sound common sense, Chisholm states that one will find problems with both extremes of skepticism, where we have an incredibly vast amount of knowledge or no intuition at the All-level. He dismisses skeptics who like to say that people have no knowledge of what the world is really like and states that, "People tend to become skeptical, temporarily, after reading popular science books..." (Chisholm, 77) which truly demonstrates his distaste for skepticism and raises the question of how to decide on what we know to be authentic articles of knowledge. Chisholm's criteria for distinguishing knowledge (borrowed from Mercier) state that knowledge should be internal, where we should be able to use it ourselves without relying on the judgment of another. The other two criteria are that it should be objective (not simply a feeling) and immediate (presented as self-evident). Chisholm goes on to contrast particularists, methodists, and skeptics, with each having a different answer to the following pairs of questions:A) “What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge?B) “How can we decide whether we know? What are the criteria of knowledge?" A particularist takes out what we know and derives the criteria (answering part A they might find a... Chisholm's argument relies on particularism without any evidence that it is more logical than methodism or of skepticism. Even his concluding statement: “The [skeptics'] point of view is only one of the three possibilities and in itself has nothing to recommend it over the others (Chisholm, 85) asks the question “why choose one over others?" Chisholm appears to favor particularism without denouncing others with thorough and reasonable explanations. In closing, Chisholm's views on skepticism are plagued by holes that fail to take into account why one side should be chosen over another and the his arguments for particularism beg the question. The conclusion drawn is that Chisholm has failed to convey particularism is logically more superior to methodism and skepticism, which does not bring us any closer to solving the problem. of the criterion.