Two Papers on Skepticism

I've just noticed that two articles on skepticism have been published recently:

- Roberto Polito, 'Was Skepticism a Philosophy? Reception, Self-Definition, Internal Conflicts', Classical Philology 102 (2007).

- Damian Caluori, 'The Scepticism of Francisco Sanchez', Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 89 (2007).

I must still look for them in the libraries here in Fribourg. I've tried to download them, but unfortunately the university does not have access to those journals.

Seminar on Sextus in Paris

Stéphane Marchand has let me know about a very interesting seminar on Sextus given by Jonathan Barnes at the Department of Philosophy of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. As you probably know, Barnes is a leading specialist in Pyrrhonism. The following session is next Thursday and the last one will be on the 29th of May - I'll try to attend the last session. Information about this seminar can be found here.

Pyrrhonism at the University of Paris X

I've just found out that, at the Université de Paris X-Nanterre, there is a group working on Sextus Empiricus' Pyrrhonism. The group includes Baptiste Bondu-Maugein, Stéphane Marchand, and Paula El-Jaick. Their purpose is to compose a complete lexicon of the most important skeptical notions found in Sextus' writings. For information, go here.

Fribourg

Next Sunday I'm leaving for Fribourg (Switzerland), where I'll be a visiting researcher for about two months. I don't know if I'll be able to post on the blog regularly, but I'll try.

During this stay in Europe, I hope I'll be able to deliver a couple of papers on Sextan Pyrrhonism. This would be important because here in Argentina there are few people working on skepticism in general - I don't know anyone who's working on Pyrrhonism in particular. Hence, it is not possible to discuss with others. I hope this situation will start to change with the conference that will take place in Buenos Aires in August.

If you know of any interesting event taking place in May or June in Europe, please let me know.

Pothius on Aenesidemus

Tomorrow, at the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge, Roberto Polito will deliver a paper entitled 'Photius on Aenesidemus (Bibl. 170a 28-38): philosophical and textual aporiai'. This will take place at 1-2 pm in room 1.04.

New Issue of Sképsis

Good news: the second issue of the Brazilian journal Sképsis has just appeared. You can find the table of contents here. Note that you can download the papers.

XI Symposium Hellenisticum

As you may probably know, the Eleventh Symposium Hellenisticum took place last year in Delphi. Its topic was 'Sextus Empiricus and Ancient Physics'. A complete and very interesting report can be found here. It seems that they're preparing a collective volume which will be published (in 2009?) by Cambridge University Press.

Skepticism and Relativism

An interesting paper by Otávio Bueno entitled "Relativism and Scepticism" has just appeared in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies. It forms part of a book symposium on Steven Hales' Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. I think that Otávio's interpretation of the dialectical character of Pyrrhonism is entirely correct. You can find his paper here.

Oxford Handbook of Skepticism

I've just found out that another chapter of the Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (edited by Greco) is 'The Pyrrhonian Problematic' by Markus Lammenranta (University of Helsinki). A pdf file of this paper can be found on Markus' webpage.

Update April 24: Kent Gustavsson has just let me know that, besides Markus' paper and the ten essays I mention here, there will also be a piece by Alan Millar, "Disjunctivism and Skepticism".

APA Central Division Meeting

I've found a couple of things you might find interesting:

Thursday 17

GII-9. Hume Society 7:30-10:35 p.m. Place: TBA

Topic: Hume on Skepticism and Moral Distinctions

Chair: Karánn Durland (Austin College)

Speakers:

John Corvino (Wayne State): “Hume on the ‘Reality’ of Moral Distinctions”

Brian Ribeiro (University of Tennessee–Chattanooga): “Hume’s Changing Views on the ‘Durability’ of Skepticism”

Friday 18

II-C. Author Meets Critics: Duncan Pritchard, Epistemic Luck 9:00 a.m.-Noon

Chair: Mylan Engel, Jr. (Northern Illinois University)

Critics: Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University)

Linda Zagzebski (University of Oklahoma)

Jonathan L. Kvanvig (Baylor University)

Author: Duncan Pritchard (University of Stirling)

As you probably know, Brian Ribeiro has written several fine articles on skepticism and Duncan's excellent book discusses, among other things, external world skepticism and Pyrrhonism.

Edit: Brian has just let me know that there has been a time change. So I've modified the information and also added that John Corvino is the other speaker. The info on the APA website is a little inaccurate.

Florence Skepticism Conference

As you might remember, back in November I wrote a post saying that the NYU philosophy department was going to hold a conference on skepticism in Florence next June. Quite a few people then wrote me asking for information about the program. I sent a message to that department and it seemed that they were going to keep me posted, which has not been the case. I made a last try last week. This time they answered my e-mail saying that the conference is open only to the invited participants, but didn't say a word about the program. I do not understand at all why the program for the conference is such a secret and why they just don't tell me that they don't want to give me that information. Honestly, I find their reluctance a little ridiculous.

Sosa's A Virtue Epistemology

As you might know, last year Ernest Sosa (Rutgers) published the first wolume of his A Virtue Epistemology: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge (Oxford University Press). Needless to say, in this book Sosa deals with skepticism. For information, go here.

The second volume will appear next year. Sosa is going to present a couple of its chapters at the Wisconsin Epistemology Conference in May. If you're interested, click here.