At present, Western philosophy is divided among various schools. For reasons that are partly philosophical and partly historical, philosophy as it is practiced in the Anglo-American or “analytic” tradition often looks very different from what goes on in traditional continental philosophy, the tradition of American pragmatism, or the so-called post-modern school. But across these various factions one discovers a point on which there is odd agreement. A great many philosophers, including representatives from each of the schools mentioned, have defended essentially the same diagnosis of skepticism about the world. Namely, they claim that skepticism is not an epistemological problem at all, but is rather the necessary consequence of a misguided modern ontology. Once that ontology is given up, these philosophers agree, the problem of skepticism cannot even get off the ground.

Richard Rorty calls this characterization of the relationship between skepticism and the modern ontology “the usual story,” citing Etienne Gilson and J. H. Randall as two of the story's prominent proponents. Here are some characteristic statements of the position, beginning with two from a founding father of Anglo-American philosophy, George Berkeley: