Grayling on Skepticism

In July 2008, A. C. Grayling (Birkbeck College, University of London) published Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge (Continuum). I haven't found any review of this book yet, so if you happen to know anything about it, please let me know. In any case, some basic information can be found here.

I now remember that Grayling contributed a paper to The Skeptics: Contemporary Essays (Ashgate, 2003), edited by Steven Luper.

Mackie's Skepticism

At last, A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory, edited by Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin, has been published by Springer. For information, go here. Unfortunately, like most of Springer's publications, the book is a 'little' expensive.

Hume and Skepticism

The latest issue of The Journal of Scottish Philosophy features the article "Hume's Changing Views on the 'Durability' of Scepticism", by Brian Ribeiro (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga). To access the paper, follow this link.

A Couple of Papers

The first two issues of Oxford Studies in Epistemology feature two papers on skepticism, namely:

"Scepticism, Rationalism, and Externalism", by Brian Weatherson, OSE 1 (2006).

"Basic Justification and the Moorean Response to the Skeptic", by Nico Silins, OSE 2 (2008).

It should be noted that the first issue also features Thomas Kelly's "The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement", which I highly recommend.

Forthcoming Book on Disagreement

In connection with my previous post, I'd like to let you know that in the coming months OUP will publish the collective volume Disagreement, edited by R. Feldman and T. Warfield. Most of the contributors have been working on this subject for some time now, so I think the volume will be an important contribution to the field. For information, click here.

Epistemology of Disagreement

The latest issue of Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology is devoted to "The Epistemology of Disagreement", a subject that may be of interest to those working on skepticism, especially on Pyrrhonism. I've been reading quite a lot about this subject lately and it's regrettable that the epistemologists working on it have no knowledge of the ancient Pyrrhonists' subtle discussion of disagreement. To access the issue, click here.

New Paper

The latest issue of the journal Ratio features the paper "Scepticism about Philosophy", by Jason Brennan (Brown University). The PDF file of the printed version can be found here. In theory, you don't need a subscription to access the file.

Recent Book on Timon

Last October, Dee Clayman (CUNY) published Timon of Phlius: Pyrrhonism into Poetry (Walter de Gruyter). I haven't gotten a copy of the book yet, so I have no opinion about it. What I do know is that the approach is primarily literary, not philosophical. For information about the book, go here.

Benson Mates

Only a few days ago, I found out that Benson Mates had died on May 14, 2009. As most of you might know, he spent his whole career at Berkeley. Among his works on skepticism, one must mention his Skeptical Essays (University of Chicago Press, 1981); "On Refuting the Skeptic," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 58 (1984); and The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism (OUP, 1996), which includes a lengthy introduction, a translation of Sextus' Outlines, and a commentary. I haven't read his Skeptical Essays, but the book is still available at the UCP's web site. Mates was among the few scholars who adopted a stance sympathetic to skepticism.

Burnyeat's Unpublished Paper

A friend of mine and I are looking for Myles Burnyeat's much-cited but still unpublished paper "Carneades was no Probabilist" - who knows why it has never been published. If anyone happens to have an electronic version of it, please let me know.

A Pyrrhonian-Style Novel?

A regular reader of the blog, Pete White (Cornell University), has called my attention to The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? (Ecco, 2009) by Padgett Powell (Depart. of English, University of Florida). I quote White:

"The book consists entirely of 164 pages of questions ranging from the mundane to the profound. A blurb by the writer Richard Ford says it is 'important-feeling in a way you can't quite describe but don't need to'. That statement has a Pyrrhonian feel to it, as does the sensation of reading the book, which comes to no conclusion, could have gone on indefinitely, and raises the problem of the criterion on every page. In my view, it shows rather than tells, an approach that seems very much in the spirit of Pyrrhonism."

Information about the book can be found here.

Anti-Skepticism

The latest issue of Isis: European Journal of Philosophy and Public Debate features a section entitled "Critical Points", the first part of which is devoted to "Contemporary Anti-Skepticism". The table of contents can be found here. There are papers by Duncan Pritchard, Tim Black, John Greco, and Mario De Caro. It is possible to access the abstracts, but the full versions of the papers are available only to subscribers.

Greetings

I'd just like to wish all the regular and occasional readers of the blog a very happy new year.

Cheers,

Diego