Medieval and Modern Skepticism

A couple of months ago, Han Thomas Adriaenssen (Groningen) published Representation and Scepticism from Aquinas to Descartes (CUP, 2017). There's a recent fine review by Dominik Perler (Berlin) in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Skepticism

The following volume, with some excellent contributors, is now out: G. Anthony Bruno & A.C. Rutherford (eds.), Skepticism: Historical and Contemporary Inquiries (Routledge, 2018).

Penelope Maddy on External-World Skepticism

At the beginning of the year, Penelope Maddy (UC, Irvine) published What Do Philosophers Do? Skepticism and the Practice of Philosophy (OUP, 2017). There's a recent critical review in NDPR by Alexander Jackson.

Summer School in Hamburg

The Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies will organize a summer school from July 29 to August 3, 2018 in Hamburg. The topic will be “Sceptical Strategies, Methods, and Approaches in the Middle Ages: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions.” The Summer School is intended for MA students and PhD candidates from the Humanities. Depending on capacity, BA students in their last year of studies may be accepted. Up to 15 fully-funded scholarships (travel and accommodation) are available. For complete information, go here.

Formal Epistemology and Skepticism

I've just found about this monograph by Tomoji Shogenji that makes use of model selection theory to (allegedly) defeat Cartesian skepticism: Formal Epistemology and Cartesian Skepticism: In Defense of Belief in the Natural World (Routledge). Click here for more information.

Talk in Buenos Aires

On November 23rd, from 5 pm to 7 pm, Rico Gutschmidt will give the talk “Illusion or Insight? Skepticism and the External Standpoint” at the Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico (SADAF), in Buenos Aires. For more information, click here.

New Volume on Moral Skepticism

I'm glad to announce that the volume Moral Skepticism: New Essays (Routledge) is now out. Contributors include David Copp, Terry Horgan, Richard Joyce, Hallvard Lillehammer, Bart Streumer, Folke Tersman, Christine Tiefensee, Mark Timmons, Mark van Roojen, Aaron Zimmerman, and myself. More information can be found here.

Buddhism and Skepticism

On November 14-16, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg) will host the workshop “Buddhism and Scepticism: Historical, Philosophical, and Comparative Perspectives.” For more information, go here.

Issue 7.4 of IJSS

Issue 7.4 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. It is devoted to a symposium on Annalisa Coliva's Extended Rationality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). It can been accessed here.

Second Yearbook of the MCAS

The second Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies has just been published. All the papers can be accessed for free here.

Skepticism and Religion Workshop

On November 7-8, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg) will host the workshop “Scepticism and Religion in al-Ghazālī, Maimonides, and Hume.” Detailed information can be found here.

Oswaldo Porchat (1933-2017)

On October 15th, Oswaldo Porchat Pereira passed away. This is very sad news particularly for the Brazilian philosophical community. Porchat pursued his undergraduate and graduate studies in philosophy at the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), obtaining a Ph.D. with a dissertation on Aristotle’s conception of science. He spent research periods in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. He was the founder of both the philosophy department and the Centro de Lógica, Epistemologia e História da Ciência at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). He considered himself a skeptic and devoted his work almost exclusively to discussing Sextus Empiricus's Pyrrhonism. His teaching and writings exerted a strong influence on his students (e.g., Plínio Junqueira Smith, Luiz Eva, Otávio Bueno, Roberto Bolzani), to the extent that several of them devoted their own work to the study of skepticism, creating in Brazil a relatively large community of academics interested in that philosophical movement. At the time of his death, he was emeritus professor at USP. I met him once in 2014, in São Paulo, when I gave a talk about his neo-Pyrrhonism, which is expounded in a series of papers collected in Rumo ao Ceticismo (Editora UNESP, 2007). It is quite hard to determine exactly what his skeptical stance consists in, but as he told me then, he always took his latest paper to be the true expression of his thought and was largely unconcerned with whether it was consistent with the ideas expounded in his previous writings. He seemed to be a gentle person.

Lecture on Jewish Skepticism

Giuseppe Veltri (Hamburg) will give the lecture “Negotiating the Principle of (Non)-Contradiction: Johann Frischmuth (1619-1687) on the Rabbinic Sceptic Dialectic” both at Johns Hopkins University (October 24th) and at Princeton University (October 25th). For more information, click here and here, respectively.

Lecture on Ancient Skepticism

On October 16th, Giuseppe Veltri (Hamburg) will give the lecture, “Ancient Skepticism: Strategies of a Philosophical Movement,” at the American University in Bulgaria. You can find more information here.

Conference on Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy

On October 13-15, the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Canada) will host the conference “Scepticisme, rhétorique et politique à l'âge classique.” You can read the program by going here or by clicking on the images below.

                   

Skepticism and Moral Thought

The following collective volume has just been published: J.-C. Darmon, P. Desan, and G. Paganini (eds.), Scepticisme et pensée morale: De Michel de Montaigne à Stanley Cavell (Paris: Hermann, 2017). Contributors include Matteo Vincenzo D'Alfonso, Jean-Charles Darmon, Philippe Desan, Emiliano Ferrari, Sylvia Giocanti, Michel Jarrety, Denis Kambouchner, Sandra Laugier, John Christian Laursen, Christophe Litwin, Guillaume Métayer, Nicola Panichi, Francine Pessel Markovits, Anne Staquet. For more information, go here.

New Issue of Sképsis

Volume 15 of the Brazilian journal Sképsis is now out. You can read it for free here.

Issue 7.3 of IJSS

Issue 7.3 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has just been published online. It contains articles by Ethan Ellis and Kok Yong Lee, a discussion by Tommaso Piazza, and book reviews by Scott Aikin & Alyssa Lowery and Robin McKenna. You can find it here.

Ten Years

Aporia turns ten years old today. Skepticism in its various forms continues to be a hot topic in philosophy, so the blog will probably be around for a few more years.

Moral Significane of Disgust

Some authors have recently defended a skeptical view on the moral significance of disgust: feelings of disgust are irrelevant to the epistemic justification of moral judgments and norms. An article has just been published in Philosophers' Imprint challenging that view: “Foul Behavior,” by Victor Kumar. It can be accessed for free here.

Sextus's Outlines in the Middle Ages

Quite a few years ago, I read that Roland Wittwer (Berlin) was working on a book about the first Latin translation of Sextus's Pyrrhonian Outlines. The title was supposed to be something like Sextus Latinus: Die erste lateinische Übersetzung von Sextus Empiricus' Pyrrôneioi Hypotypôseis. A couple of days ago, I discovered by chance that in the end he published an article on the issue: “Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism in the Middle Ages,” Vivarium 54 (2016). He calls into question the widely accepted view that Niccolò da Reggio was the author of that Latin translation of the Outlines. To read the article, click here. 

Evolution & Moral Epistemology

For those interested in moral skepticism, there's a call for abstracts for the conference “Evolution & Moral Epistemology,” to be held at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) on April 18–20, 2018. For complete information, go here.

Research Associate Position

There's a call for applications for a research associate position for a project on skepticism at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, Universität Hamburg. For complete information, go here.

Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre

Volume 1 of the Yearbook of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies was published in November 2016. All the papers deal with skepticism and can be accessed for free here.

Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present

​I am finally able to announce that the volume Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present (Bloomsbury) is in production at the publisher. The volume was scheduled to be published a couple of years ago, but sometimes co-editors disagree even​ about whether deadlines should be met. So I take this opportunity both to apologize to the contributors and the Bloomsbury editorial staff for the unacceptably​ long wait, and to ​express my gratitude to them all for their ​unflagging commitment to the project over the past five years. The painting used for the book cover is Caravaggios's famous The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, which I couldn't use in previous volumes.

Sextus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence

After two years, the paper “Again on Sextus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence” has finally been included in an issue of the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. For those interested, it can be found here.

Debunking of Morality

Those working on moral skepticism might be interested in this new volume: Uri D. Leibowitz and Neil Sinclair (eds.), Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics: Debunking and Dispensability (Oxford University Press, 2016). For more information, go here.

Neo-Pyrrhonism and Disagreement

My article “A Neo-Pyrrhonian Response to the Disagreeing about Disagreement Argument” has now been included in the latest issue of Synthese. For those interested, it can be found here.

Issue 7.2 of IJSS

Issue 7.2 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. It features articles by René van Woudenberg & Jeroen de Ridder, Matthew Braddock, and Genia Schönbaumsfeld, and book reviews by Kristen Irwin and Adam Podlaskowski. You can find it here.

Hamburg Skepticism Conference

The Hamburg conference “Scepticism from Antiquity to Modern Times” (May 8th-11th) went very well and I must say that the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies is an outstanding center for research on skepticism: serious scholars, interesting projects, good research facilities, and nice people.

Talks in Fribourg and Berlin

In the upcoming weeks, I'm giving a couple of “skeptical” talks at colloquia in Europe: on May 3 (17:15-19:00), “Agrippan Pyrrhonism, Questionable Assumptions, and the Epistemic Challenge of Disagreement” at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland); and on May 15 (10:00-12:00), “The Practical and Epistemic Value of Pyrrhonism” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. While the former is focused on contemporary analytic epistemology, the latter deals with ancient Pyrrhonism -- but the approach of both is primarily “systematic.”

Cologne-Leuven Epistemology Meeting

The 4th Cologne-Leuven Epistemology Meeting will take place in Leuven on May 18-19, 2017. Some of the papers will deal with skepticism and disagreement. Below is the program, and the official webpage can be found here.

Thursday, May 18

13:15-14:30 Paul Dimmock (Leuven): “Strange-but-True: A (Quick) New Argument for Contextualism About 'Know'.”

14:45-16:00 Dominik Balg (Cologne): “Epistemic Peers: What They Are and How to Find Them.”

16:15-17:30 Jie Gao (Leuven): “Group Credal Disagreement.”

17:45-19:00 Diego Machuca (Buenos Aires): “Agrippan Pyrrhonism, Questionable Assumptions, and the Epistemic Challenge of Disagreement.”

Friday, May 19
10:00-11:15 Francesco Praolini (Leuven): “Which Is Our Epistemic Goal?”

11:30-12:45 Felippo Ferrari (Bonn): “Disagreeing With the Agnostic.”

14:00-15:15 Christopher Ranalli (Cologne): “The Naïve Phenomenal Conservative.”

15:30-16:45 Martin Smith (Edinburgh): “TBA.”

Issue 7.1 of IJSS

Issue 7.1 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. It features articles by Luca Moretti & Tomoji Shogenji and Joe Campbell, a discussion piece by Philip Atkins, and book reviews by Hallvard Lillehammer and John Schellenberg. You can find it here.

Program Salvador Skepticism Conference

The program for the skepticism conference that is taking place in Salvador de Bahia on April 26-28 is now available here.

Skepticism Conference in Hamburg

The conference “Scepticism from Antiquity to Modern Times” will take place at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Hamburg, on May 8-10, 2017. For complete information, including the program, go here.

Skepticism Conference in Salvador de Bahia

On April 26-28, there will be a conference on skepticism at the Universidade Federal da Bahia, in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil). For more information, click on the image below. I'll post the program once it becomes available.

Pyrrhonian Modes

The latest issue of Méthexis (29, 2017) includes Massimo Catapano's “The Two Modes of Scepticism and the Aporetic Structure of Foundationalism.” It can be found here.

The Pyrrhonian Response to the Apraxia Objection

The latest issue of the Croatian Journal of Philosophy (16/3, 2016) contains Filip Grgić’s “Apraxia, Appearances, and Beliefs: The Pyrrhonists’ Way Out.” You can find it here.

Academic Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy

A few weeks ago, Springer published the collection Academic Scepticism in the Development of Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Plínio Junqueira Smith and Sébastien Charles. For complete information, click here.

Skepticism in the Middle Ages

I've just found out about this collective volume on skepticism and relativism in the Middle Ages: Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages, edited by D. G. Denery II, K. Ghosh, and N. Zeeman (Brepols, 2014). For more information, go here.

Worshop on Infinite Regress

The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) will host a workshop on infinite regress on March 21-22, 2017. Attendance is free, but registration is required, which can be done by sending an email to: jeanne.peijnenburg@rug.nl. Here's the program:

Tuesday, March 21: “Infinite Regress in History, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science.”

Venue: Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Oude Boteringestraat 38, Court Room (‘Zittingzaal’).

9:10–9:15: Welcome.

9:15–10:30: Matthew Duncombe (University of Nottingham).

10:30–10:45: Coffee break.

10:45–12:00: Tamer Nawar (University of Groningen).

12:00–13:00 Lunch.

13:00–14:15: Jeanne Peijnenburg (University of Groningen).

14:15–14:30: Tea break.

14:30–15:45: Coos Engelsma (University of Groningen).

15:45–17:00: Matteo Morganti (University of Rome 'Roma TRE').

17:30: Dinner.

Wednesday March 22: “Infinite Regress in Ethics and Metaphysics.”

Venue: Faculty of Philosophy, Oude Boteringestraat 52, Room Omega.

9:15–10:30: Daniel Cohnitz (University of Utrecht).

10:30–10:45: Coffee break.

10:45–12:00: Bart Streumer (University of Groningen).

12:00–13:00: Lunch.

13:00–14:15: Tuomas Tahko (University of Helsinki).

14:15–14:30: Tea break.

14:30–15:45: Donnchadh O’Conaill (University of Helsinki) and Olley Pearson (University of Durham).

15:45–17:00: Benjamin Schnieder (University of Hamburg).

Workshop in Epistemology at UFBA

On March 15-16, there will be a workshop in epistemology, “Knowledge from Falsehood: When does Reasoning from a Falsehood yield Knowledge?”, at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Salvador de Bahia, Brazil). Here's the information:

Speaker: Sven Bernecker (University of Cologne, University of California/Irvine):

Organizer: Waldomiro Silva Filho (UFBA)

Participants: César Schirmmer dos Santos (UFSM), Tiegüe Vieira Rodrigues (UFMT), Danilo Fraga (UFBA)

Room: Programa de Pós-graduação em Filosofia - FFCH, UFBA

For more information, go here or write to waldomiro.silva@pq.cnpq.br.

Living in Accordance with Skepticism

The latest issue of the Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana (219, September/December 2016) contains John Christian Laursen's “The Moral Life of the Ancient Skeptics: Living in Accordance with Nature and Freedom from Disturbance.”

Resistance to Trump?

I’d like to say something about the recent explosion of discussion about Trump because I see quite a bit of intolerance, conceit, and hypocrisy. I’ve always thought that Trump is a clown and that his having been elected will have a number of negative effects not only in the US but worldwide. I have a strong aversion to populist leaders in general: e.g., the Castro brothers in Cuba, Chávez and Maduro in Venezuela, the Kirchner couple in Argentina, Putin in Russia, and now Trump in the US. This said, I have serious reservations about certain reactions I’ve seen since he was elected. In particular, I’m surprised by the fact that so many people (including quite a few serious scholars) are calling for “resistance” to Trump. The first thing that came to mind when I first read that word in this context was that one resists a de facto government or an invading army, whereas Trump was elected according to the US election laws. It is true that the US election system strike many of us as absurd, given that Clinton got almost three million more votes than Trump, but that’s the American election system and Obama won twice with that very same system. Millions of people voted for Trump and, if one respects the rules, it seems that one should accept or tolerate their choice—unless one thinks they’re all brainless monkeys incapable of making reasoned decisions. Now, if those calling for resistance think that Russia interfered in the presidential election, then I suppose they should have recourse to, e.g., the Supreme Court. (I set aside here the fact that the US did the same a few times, e.g., in several Latin American countries.) Also, there are laws, there are judges, and there’s the Congress: if they function as they should, then Trump won’t be able to do whatever he wants. I also remember him saying that he wasn’t sure whether he’d accept the election results, which struck me as inadmissible and dangerous. I think that many of those who didn’t vote for him don’t want to accept the election results, which strikes me as equally inadmissible and dangerous. Someone might reply by saying that resistance is a normal part of a well-functioning democracy. It is true that democracy consists not only in voting, but also in active engagement and protest, and anyone is free to “oppose” Trump or to be part of “the opposition.” One is of course entitled to oppose certain policies if one doesn’t agree with them or find them threatening. But I also think that the very use of the term “resistance” in this context isn’t innocent at all because it has a very clear connotation. Am I the one changing the meaning of that word in this political context? I don’t think so. That the word is used with the sense it has when talking about the justified reaction to a de facto government or an invading army seems to be confirmed by the fact that many of those who are calling for resistance think or imply that Trump isn’t a legitimate president, for various reasons: they believe that the election wasn’t fair, or that he won thanks to Russia, or that the Russians have him in their pocket because of the kinky things that happened at a hotel, etc. etc. If he is an illegitimate president, then people must resist him. This may also explain why the official Twitter accounts of a few governmental agencies were used to express opposition to Trump, which seems inadmissible: voice your disagreement using your own personal account, not that of the governmental agency at which your work. I also reckon that many of those who are calling for resistance now would have been offended if people had called for resistance to Obama when he was first elected: many thought (and still think) that he was a terrible president. I mention this because I take the epistemic and practical challenges posed by (political) disagreement seriously, and because it appears to me that certain kinds of disputes are basic or fundamental disagreements that cannot be resolved in a non-circular way. There are millions of people who voted for Trump and support him, and some of the reasons they adduce make perfect sense. Of course, someone might complain that they voted for him despite, e.g., his misogynist and racist discourse. I agree, but this reminds me of all those left-wing American artists and scholars who sympathized with Chávez or Castro despite the corruption, the political persecution, the anti-democratic policies, the executions, or the people fleeing Cuba and drowning in the ocean.

Colloquium on Debunking Arguments and Moral Disagreement

There is a call for registration for the colloquium “Evolution, Ethics, Debunking, and Moral Disagreement: to what extent are facts about moral disagreement relevant to evolutionary debunking arguments in metaethics?”. This event will take place at Utrecht University (The Netherlands) on April 7th, 2017. There are limited places available, the deadline for registration being March 6th. Complete information about the colloquium can be found on this website, which is also where you have to fill in the registration form. For inquiries, contact Michael Klenk at m.b.o.t.klenk@uu.nl.

Sanches, Descartes, and Skepticism

To the best of my knowledge, there's not much written about Francisco Sanches's skepticism. So the following paper by Gianni Paganini is a welcome addition to the literature: “Sanches et Descartes. Subjectivité et connaissance réflexive au temps des sceptiques,” Bulletin de la Société internationale des amis de Montaigne 64 (2016): 173-185.

On Sextus on Ethics, Politics, and Music

Two very recent papers on Sextus Empiricus by Emidio Spinelli (Roma):

- “Stoic Utopia Reconsidered: Pyrrhonism, Ethics, and Politics.” In C. Arruzza & D. Nikulin (eds.), Philosophy and Political Power in Antiquity. Brill: Leiden, 2016.

- “Are Flute-Players Better than Philosophers? Sextus Empiricus on Music, against Pythagoras.” In A.-B. Renger & A. Stavru (eds.), Pythagorean Knowledge From the Ancient to the Modern World: Askesis, Religion, Science. Harrassowitz Verlag: Wiesbaden, 2016.

Festschrift for Carlos Lévy

At the very end of 2016, Brepols published Vérité et apparence: Mélanges en l’honneur de Carlos Lévy offerts par ses amis et ses disciples, edited by P. Galand and E. Malaspina. This big book of 44 chapters includes four papers on skepticism by Emidio Spinelli, Brigitte Pérez-Jean, Thomas Bénatouïl, and Laurence Boulègue. For complete information about the volume, go here.

Disagreement-Based Skepticism

In case this is of interest to you, my contribution to the symposium on Jonathan Matheson's The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement (Palgrave, 2015) has now been published in Syndicate Philosophy, a recently launched journal devoted to book symposia. Together with my critical essay -- in which I focus on the connection between disagreement and skepticism -- you can find Matheson's reply and Scott Aikin's general introduction to the symposium. In the upcoming weeks, the critical essays by Amber Carlson, Chad Boghosian, and Nathan Ballantyne will be published together with the respective responses by Matheson. You can access the symposium here. The aim of Syndicate Philosophy is to start conversations about the book, the critical essays, and the author's responses, so if you're interested, you can participate by posting comments.