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The epistemological sceptic is somebody who has doubts about the world around us and claims that we can either have no knowledge, otherwise known as global scepticism, or we can just have no knowledge in certain areas. There have been many responses to the sceptic which deal with the ideas of perceptions. These theories of perception range from less sophisticated arguments such as common sense realism, to the more complex theories which include the following: representative realism, idealism, phenomenalism and causal realism. The focus here will be to determine whether idealism' is the best response to the epistemological sceptic, in comparison to the other theories of perception. The term idealism' means that our experiences of the world around us are purely mental and therefore the world doesn't exist in a physical sense. At first idealism' seems completely inappropriate and some might say ridicules, but when reviewing

the situation further and looking at the other options it does seem more probable then initially thought. This viewpoint was questioned by a eighteenth-century critic who asked whether idealism was utterly absurd, and utterly irrefutable'? (1). However, this is not to say that idealism' has its major flaws and needs a closer examination. To determine whether it is the best response will only be achieved when looking at what else is on offer. The biggest contrast is with realism which argues that things do exist independently of the mind. Realism can be looked at from a number of angels, such as common sense, representative and causal. Another argument is phenomenalism', which takes on board some of the features from idealism, but its main emphasis is on our experiences with the world. Each theory of perception provides the sceptic with some form of logic and reasoning about the existence of the world around us, however, idealism argues something highly unorthodox and yet gives us some sound explanations.

The term idealism' was bourn from an Irish philosopher named George Berkeley, who was probably the most famous idealist. Berkeley had several points to his argument as an idealist. The main one being that all our experiences are mental ones and physical objects do not exist independently from the mind. This was somewhat rationalised by Berkeley who explained the concept of sense-experience or sense-data, as recurring patterns of information in our mind which give us the idea of what is being perceived; hence the word idealism' which philosophically

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