Book on the Skeptical Criterion

I've just discovered this French collective volume on ancient and modern skepticism:

Enzo Godinot et Lucas Pétuaud-Létang (eds.), Le Critère sceptique: Approches anciennes et modernes. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024.

More information can be found here.

Conference "The Significance of Skepticism"

This week, from the 21st to the 24th of July, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies is hosting the conference (related to the summer school) “The Significance of Scepticism in Philosophy, Judaism, and Culture.” The full program can be found here.

Summer School “The Significance of Scepticism”

This week, from the 16th to the 19th of July, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg University) will host the summer school “The Significance of Scepticism in Philosophy, Judaism, and Culture.” Complete information, including the full program, can be found here.

Call for Papers - Society for Skeptical Studies

The Society for Skeptical Studies will host a 2-hour session on the group program of the 2025 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, which will be held Jan. 8-11 at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel (811 7th Avenue 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019, USA), in midtown Manhattan.

The session will consist of two 55-minute slots (no commentators) in which researchers can present their latest work on any topic pertaining to skepticism (very broadly construed). All presenters must register for the APA conference. Remote presentation or participation will not be possible.

Please submit your paper (preferred) or extended abstract (allowable) to James Beebe at jbeebe2@buffalo.edu by July 5, 2024.

Please do not submit a paper or abstract if you will not commit to participating, should your submission be accepted. In the past, the society has encountered difficulties when people see if their submission gets accepted, use the acceptance to apply for travel funding, and then decide whether they will attend only long after the deadline for making changes to the APA program.

Luzzatto's Skepticism

The following book has just been published:

Giuseppe Veltri & Michela Torbidoni (eds.), Simone Luzzatto’s Scepticism in the Context of Early Modern Thought. Leiden: Brill, 2024.

More information can be found here.

Moral and Religious Fictionalism

New book about the “Now what?” problem facing those who endorse certain kinds of moral and religious skepticism.

Richard Joyce and Stuart Brock (eds.), Moral Fictionalism and Religious Fictionalism. OUP, 2024.

Atheism is a familiar kind of skepticism about religion. Moral error theory is an analogous kind of skepticism about morality, though less well known outside academic circles. Both kinds of skeptic face a “what next?” question: If we have decided that the subject matter (religion/morality) is mistaken, then what should we do with this way of talking and thinking? The natural assumption is that we should abolish the mistaken topic, just as we previously eliminated talk of, say, bodily humors and unicorns. The fictionalist, however, offers a less obvious recommendation. According to the fictionalist, engaging in the topic in question provides pragmatic benefits that do not depend on its truth-in a way roughly analogous to engaging with a novel or a movie. The religious fictionalist maintains that even if we were atheists, we should carry on talking, thinking, and acting as if religion were true. The moral fictionalist maintains a similar view regarding moral talk, thought, and action.

Both forms of fictionalism face serious challenges. Some challenges can be levelled at either form of fictionalism (or at any form of fictionalism), whereas others are problems unique to moral fictionalism or to religious fictionalism. There are important questions to be asked about the relationship between these two kinds of fictionalism. Could moral fictionalism be plausible even if religious fictionalism is not (or vice versa)? This is a volume of thirteen previously unpublished papers on the topics of religious fictionalism, moral fictionalism, and the relation between these views.

Issue 14.2 of IJSS

Issue 14.2 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has now been published. The contents can be found here.

Issue 14.1 of IJSS

Issue 14.1 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. The contents can be found here.

Taking Skepticism Seriously

The following book has just been published:

Adam Leite, How to Take Skepticism Seriously. Oxford University Press, 2024.

Ever since Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, epistemology has been haunted by external world skepticism, the view that no one knows or even has reason to believe anything about the world around us. Generations of epistemologists have responded by attempting to develop theories about the nature of knowledge and our epistemological relation to the world. How to Take Skepticism Seriously resolutely takes a different tack. A tradition of twentieth century philosophy, initiated by G. E. Moore and including J. L. Austin, maintained that at least some central philosophical problems can be satisfactorily resolved without the development of philosophical theory: the materials already present in ordinary life are enough. Following their lead, Adam Leite argues that skepticism is false, and that it is false for straightforward reasons that we can all appreciate when we reflectively work from within our everyday practices, procedures, and commitments. He thus offers a resolution to a problem that has plagued philosophy for centuries, implements and defends a neglected methodological approach, and elucidates the tradition of Moore and Austin. To make the case, prominent contemporary work and central epistemological issues are addressed, including epistemic circularity, epistemic asymmetry, epistemic priority relations, regress problems, closure and transmission principles, and the epistemological significance of perception. What emerges is a shift in our understanding of what philosophical illumination might look like in relation to core epistemological issues.

More information here.

Augustine on Academic Skepticism

Scott Aikin (Vanderbilt University) has just published:

“The Academic at the Crossroads: A Dialectical Assessment of Augustinian Pragmatic Anti-Skepticism,” Synthese 202 (2023): 170.

The article can be found here.

Against the Arithmeticians

Lorenzo Corti (Université de Lorraine) has just published a new translation of, and commentary on, the fourth book of Sextus's Adversus Mathematicos:

L. Corti, Sextus Empiricus: Against the Arithmeticians. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary. Philosophia Antiqua 167. Leiden: Brill, 2024. More information here. 

CFA for Summer School on Skepticism

There's a call for applications for the Summer School “The Significance of Scepticism in Philosophy, Judaism, and Culture,” which will take place at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Hamburg University, on July 16th-19th, 2024. Complete information can be found here.

Yuval Avnur's New Book

Another book devoted to skepticism was published this month, this time as part of Cambridge’s Elements in Epistemology:

Yuval Avnur, The Skeptic and the Veridicalist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Complete information can be found here. It can still be downloaded for free.

Mark Walker's New Book

A new book devoted to skepticism was published this month:

Mark Walker, Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2023.

The ancient Pyrrhonians skeptics suspended judgment about all philosophical views. Their main opponents were the Dogmatists—those who believed their preferred philosophical views. In Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism: On Disbelieving Our Philosophical Views, Mark Walker argues, contra Pyrrhonians and Dogmatists, for a "darker" skepticism: we should disbelieve our philosophical views. On the question of political morality, for example, we should disbelieve libertarianism, conservativism, socialism, liberalism, and any alternative ideologies. Since most humans have beliefs about philosophical subject matter, such as beliefs about religious and political matters, humanity writ large should disbelieve their preferred philosophical views. Walker argues that Skeptical-Dogmatism permits a more realistic estimation of our epistemic powers. Dogmatists who believe their view is correct, while believing that two or more competitor views of their opponents are false, must—at least implicitly—take themselves to be “über epistemic superiors” to their disagreeing colleagues. Such a self-assessment is as implausible as it is hubristic. Skeptical-Dogmatism, in contrast, permits a more realistic and humbler epistemic self-conception. The author also shows that there are no insuperable practical difficulties in living as a Skeptical-Dogmatist.