Does skepticism presuppose explanationism?

Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, the chapter argues that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. This chapter also shows how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.