Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Bibliography on Skepticism

I've finally started working on a small project, namely, a bibliography on skepticism. So far, I have just made a long list of works which is up-to-date but still very incomplete. Also, my idea is to divide it into at least four sections: ancient skepticism, medieval skepticism, modern skepticism, and contemporary skepticism. This provisional bibliography can be found here.

Update 02/01/2010: the bibliography is now divided into four parts, and I've added a few more books and papers. It will take me a while to make it relatively complete.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Justification Revisited Conference

Episteme - the Epistemology research group in Geneva will hold the "Justification Revisited Conference" in Geneva on March 25th-27th 2010. This forms part of the Programme FNS connaissance, raison et normes.

Conference Theme

Post Gettier epistemology and the difficulty of analysing knowledge have often led to scepticism about the notion of justification. It has suggested that one should either move beyond justification or simply get rid of this notion within epistemology. But is the notion of justification useless ? The aim of this conference is to try to reformulate these questions and to try to assess the credentials and the chances of a theory of justification for contemporary epistemology. Some of the key questions and issues to be considered in this area include:

- Is there room for the notion of justification if knowledge turns out to be unalysable ?

- What are the relationships between epistemic justification and other kinds of justification (in particular in the ethical case)?

- Is the notion of justification hopelessly subjective?

- What are the relationships between evidence and justification ?

- How can we draw the line between internalist and externalist conceptions of justification?

-To what extent should the traditional debate between foundationalists and coherentists be thought of as standing at an impasse?

Invited speakers: Jessica Brown (University of St Andrews), Richard Fumerton (The University of Iowa), Adam Leite (Indiana University), Jonathan Sutton (Auburn University), Matthias Steup (Purdue University). The conference is organised by Anne Meylan and Episteme within the FNS project Knowledge, Reasons and Norms.

Attendance is free and everybody is welcome.

Submissions

We cordially invite you to submit a 500 word abstract on any topic relevant to the conference theme. Please prepare your abstract for anonymous review. Abstracts may be submitted (as plain text, MS Word, Pages, or pdf files) to the following e-mail address: justificationrevisited@gmail.com. If you prefer to use regular mail please address your submission to: Anne Meylan Department of Philosophy University of Geneva 5. rue de Candolle 1211 Genève 4 Switzerland

Deadlines

Abstracts should be submitted to the conference organizers by January 18th, 2010. Notification of acceptance / rejection: January 31st, 2010.

Financial Help

The three best submissions coming from Ph.D. students will be rewarded by having their travel and accommodation costs (at least partially) covered.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

New Book Review

The latest issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy features Michael Hickson's review of Gianni Paganini's Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme (Vrin, 2008). To access the review, click here.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Galen and Skepticism

I'm rereading a paper by Ioppolo in which she refers to Phillip De Lacy's "Galen's Response to Skepticism", Illinois Classical Studies 16 (1991). I had read about this paper before, but never tried to find a copy. I've just googled it and found a site where you can download it. If you're interested, just click here.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Review of DeRose's Book

Jonathan Ichikawa's review of Keith DeRose's The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context, Vol. 1 (OUP, 2009) has just appeared in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Friday, December 4, 2009

SSS Meeting

This is the program for the session of the Society for Skeptical Studies at the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association:

Tuesday, 28 December, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 p.m.

Chair: Patrick Hawley (Hong Kong University)

Speakers:

Otávio Bueno (University of Miami): “Infinitism and Pyrrhonism”

Brian Ribeiro (University of Tennessee–Chattanooga): “Skepticism and Epistemic Akrasia”

Shawn Graves (Cedarville University): “Disagreements and Bootstrapping”