Thursday, March 29, 2012

Talk on Sextan Pyrrhonism

The next meeting of the Northern Association for Ancient Philosophy will take place on 31st March-1st April 2012 at the University of Glasgow (Bridie Library, Glasgow University Union, 32 University Avenue). On Sunday, at 3.30-4.30, Mark Wildish (Durham) will present his “Sextus on Nature, Second Nature, and Subsistent Nature.” Here's the abstract:

The primary objection to the phenomenological reading of Sextan Pyrrhonism is that it appears to forgo any claim to a condition of rational constraint on experience imposed by a natural order independent of that experience. Conversely, if nature is to exercise a rational constraint on experience, then nature must be already rationally accessible to experience through impressions with intelligible content and therefore itself subject to a condition of rational constraint connatural to experience. From a Pyrrhonian perspective, then, the first question is whether anything at all can be made intelligible by phenomenal impressions on the one hand or subsistent nature on the other independent of the manner of their apprehension through everyday observance and common concepts. The answers to both questions, I suggest, are that both phenomenal experience and subsistent nature are subject to rational constraint through learned habitual competences which constitute acquired second nature, which qua nature is not itself subject to a further condition of independent justification.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Logos & Episteme

Two recent issues of Logos & Episteme feature papers on skepticism:

Vol. 2, Issue 2: Vincent Hendricks and John Symons, "Limiting Skepticism."

Vol. 2, Issue 3: Hamid Vahid, "Skepticism and Varieties of Transcendental Argument." In this issue, there is also a review of Scott Aikin's Epistemology and the Regress Problem.

These papers can be accessed for free here.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Closure on Skepticism

Sherrilyn Roush (Berkeley) recently published "Closure on Skepticism," The Journal of Philosophy 107 (2010): 243-56. The paper can be found here or on the Philosophy Documentation Center's website.

Monday, March 19, 2012

US in April

At the end of April, I'll spend ten days in Miami and DC. So if anyone would like to meet to discuss their current research on any topic related to skepticism, just drop me a line.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Philosophical Issues

The latest issue of Philosophical Issues (2011) contains two papers dealing with skepticism:

Rogers Albritton, "On a Form of Skeptical Argument from Possibility."

Heather Logue, "The Skeptic and the Naïve Realist."

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Talk on Sextus

Tomorrow at 6 pm, Emidio Spinelli (Roma) will give a talk on Sextus at the Université d'Aix-Marseille: "Rhétorique et langage: l'usage commun de la vie chez Sextus Empiricus."

The venue is: Salle des professeurs (deuxième étage), Université d'Aix-Marseille, Centre des Lettres et Sciences humaines, 29 avenue Robert-Schuman, 13621 Aix-en-Provence cedex 1.

Monday, March 5, 2012

The Man Born Blind

Some of you might be interested in this recent book by Kate Tunstall (Oxford):

Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay. With a new translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind and La Mothe Le Vayer's Of a Man Born Blind (Continuum, 2011).

For more information, go here.



Thursday, March 1, 2012

Dictionnaire des Philosophes Antiques

The two volumes of tome V of the Dictionnaire des philosophes antiques (CNRS Éditions), edited by Richard Goulet, has just come out. The second volume (pp. 1749-71) contains an entry on Pyrrho by Brigitte Pérez-Jean. More information can be found here.