Lecture on Arcesilaus

Tomorrow evening, Casey Perin (UC Irvine) will give the lecture "Making Sense of Arcesilaus" at Berkeley. For more information, go here.

Latin Translation of Sextus

I've just downloaded the sixteenth-century Latin translation of Sextus Empiricus' extant corpus from Gallica. The text was published in 1569 and contains Estienne's translation of the Pyrrhonian Outlines (originally published in 1562) and Hervet's translation of Adversus Mathematicos and Adversus Dogmaticos.

Philosophy Now

The latest issue of Philosophy Now features some papers on ethical skepticism and relativism by Jesse Prinz, David Wong, Richard Joyce, and Richard Garner. Most of the articles are available only to subscribers. However, if you google the titles and click on the relevant results, you'll be able to access all of them.

Moral Relativism

The latest issue of Noûs features James Beebe's "Moral Relativism in Context," a paper which may be of interest to those working on moral skepticism. The article can be found here.

European Epistemology Network Meeting

The European Epistemology Network will hold a conference on March 17-19 at Lund University (Sweden). Several of the talks will deal with skepticism. You can find the (as yet incomplete) program here and the abstracts here.

Contextualism, Defeaters, and Skepticism

In response to my previous post, I got this information about two papers by Mikael Janvid (Stockholm University):

- "Contextualism and the Structure of Skeptical Arguments," Dialectica 60 (2006): 63-77.

- "Defeaters and Rising Standards of Justification," Acta Analytica 23 (2008): 45-54.

PDF files of the papers can be found here.

Skepticism in Scandinavia

I sometimes post news about events taking place in the Scandinavian countries, and I'm now interested in getting more information about what's going on regarding skeptical studies over there. I know that some readers of this blog live in Denmark, Finland, Norway, or Sweden, so if any of you have information about events, publications, or research projects concerning skepticism, please contact me at this address.

SEP Entries on Skepticism

Peter Klein's entry on skepticim in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has now been substantially revised. (Thanks to Stéphane Marchand for calling my attention to this.) The entry is found here. Richard Bett's entries on Pyrrho and Timon have also been revised.

Workshop on Disagreement

I think the following information might be of interest to those working on the skeptical problems posed by the existence of disagreement.

Workshop on Disagreement and Legitimacy: Value Questions and Factual Questions

Division of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

February 10-11, 2011

Reasonable disagreement regarding value questions and religious convictions has been debated in political philosophy for decades, with important contributions by Rawls, Barry and many others. Part of the aims of these discussions has been to identify conditions under which decisions regarding controversial moral and political questions are legitimate. Only very recently, disagreement about factual questions has been the subject to an intense discussion in epistemology. However, despite their obvious similarities and relevance for each other, the two discussions have largely proceeded independently of each other. The aim of the workshop will be to explore connections between the two philosophical problems, seeking to focus on questions such as: do views on reasonable disagreement in political philosophy depend on epistemological assumptions that have recently been uncovered in the epistemological debate on disagreement? Reasonable disagreement in political philosophy usually concerns value questions. But we evidently disagree about politically important factual questions, such as those involved in the global warming debate. Do views about reasonable disagreement carry over to factual questions? Some political or democratic decisions bind everyone in a society, but depends assumptions that are controversial for some of those affected. When are such decisions legitimate?

Speakers: Confirmed speakers include Lars Binderup, Nikolaj Lee Linding Jang Pedersen, Klemens Kappel, and Kristoffer Ahlstrom.

Inquiries: For further questions, please contact Klemens Kappel (kappel@hum.ku.dk).