Descartes, Huet, and Skepticism

Last year, Thomas Lennon (University of Western Ontario) published The Plain Truth: Descartes, Huet, and Skepticism (Brill Academic Publishers). For information about the book, go here.

A review by Gianni Paganini has just appeared in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews; click here to read it.

New Essays on Epistemology

I've just received a copy of a volume containing a few interesting papers that deal with skepticism: Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: New Essays (OUP, 2008). Among the contributions bearing on skepticism the following two are to be mentioned:

"Skepticism and Perceptual Knowledge" by Ernest Sosa.

"Knowledge-Closure and Skepticism" by Marian David and Ted A. Warfield.

For complete information about this book, go here.

New Paper

The latest issue of Phronesis features the article "Le Contre les geomètres de Sextus Empiricus: sources, cible, structure", by Guillaume Dye and Bernard Vitrac. To access the paper, click here.

Looking for Papers

I'm looking for the following two papers because I'm working on a couple of pieces on ancient skepticism. Any help will be much appreciated.

- P. Aubenque, "Vérité et scepticisme. Sur les limites d'une réfutation philosophique du scepticisme", Diogène 132, pp. 100-110.

- C. Schmitt, "An Unstudied Fifteenth-Century Latin Translation of Sextus Empiricus by Giovanni Lorenzi", 244–261 in C. H. Clough (ed.), Cultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976.

Sosa and Skepticism

The latest issue of Metaphilosophy features Otávio Bueno's paper "Sosa on Skepticism", which forms part of a symposium on Ernest Sosa. Here is the abstract:

"Ernest Sosa has recently articulated an insightful response to skepticism and, in particular, to the dream argument. The response relies on two independent moves. First, Sosa offers the imagination model of dreaming according to which no assertions are ever made in dreams and no beliefs are involved there. As a result, it is possible to distinguish dreaming from being awake, and the dream argument is blocked. Second, Sosa develops a virtue epistemology according to which in appropriately normal conditions our perceptual beliefs will be apt. Hence, in these conditions, we will have at least animal knowledge, and the conclusion of the dream argument is undermined. In this article, I examine various moves that the skeptic can make to resist Sosa's challenge, and I contrast the proposal to a neo-Pyrrhonian stance. In the end, there is surprisingly little disagreement about the status of ordinary perceptual beliefs in the two stances."

To access the paper, go here.

Call for Papers: Skepticism and Enlightenment

A bilingual conference (English/French) on “Skepticism and Enlightenment” will be held in 2009-2010 at the University of São Judas Tadeu in São Paulo (December 2-4, 2009) and at the Montréal's campus of the University of Sherbrooke (April 14-16, 2010). The first part at São Paulo is devoted to "Skepticism in the Enlightenment from Bayle to the Encyclopédie" and the second part in Montréal to "Skepticism in the Enlightenment from the Encyclopédie to the German Idealism". If there is already a list of invited papers, some space is available for uninvited papers, in particular for Ph. D. students and post-doctoral students. All propositions (title and abstract) have to be send before August 1st, 2009 and will be submitted to a panel of three readers who will select the best ones. For more information, do not hesitate to contact Plinio Junqueira Smith (plinio.smith@pq.cnpq.br) and/or Sébastien Charles (Sebastien.Charles@USherbrooke.ca).

Upcoming Event

Armando Cíntora (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México) is organizing a conference entitled "Escepticismo Filosófico", which will take place in Mexico City on November 23-25. For more information, click on the image below.

Skeptical Society

As some of you already know, last year we created the International Society for the Study of Skepticism. Remember that, if you would like to become a member, you can contact me by e-mail.

Porchat

Someone has just asked me here why I didn't include Oswaldo Porchat Pereira in the list of specialists. The reason is simply that I thought he didn't have a webpage. I’ve just found out that he does have one, so he is now on the list.

New Book

Vrin has just published Quel savoir après le scepticisme? Plotin et ses prédécesseurs sur la connaissance de soi by Wilfried Kühn, a researcher at the CNRS in France. For detailed information, go here.