 In 1985 Strawson published Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. The book grew out of Strawson’s Woodbridge Lectures at Columbia University in 1983. It is, in a sense, a book of philosophy about philosophy. In each chapter Strawson focuses on a philosophical dispute in which there is a strong tendency to deny the reality or existence of an aspect which common sense affirms. The term ‘skepticism’ in the title stands for this general sceptical tendency. The first chapter concerns knowledge itself, denied by the philosophical sceptic. The later chapters consider the denial of certain aspects of ordinary human thought and experience, such as the reality of colour by scientifically inspired philosophers, and the reality of thought and experience by a certain sort of materialist. The thread linking these chapters is the sceptical thought that these aspects of our ordinary human experience are to be found wanting on account of their not being reducible to a more scientifically acceptable, physicalist base. In each case, Strawson’s aim is to deny the denial, and to explain, as one might say, how philosophers can have their cake and eat it. Against the sceptic about knowledge, Strawson stresses that the claims that they deny are presuppositions of all human thought and enquiry; against the reductive naturalist he goes further, not only stressing the inescapability of the ordinary human standpoint but also allowing it its own validity from its own particular standpoint.