Debunking Arguments

The latest issue of Philosophy Compass (vol. 24, issue 12, Dec. 2019) contains Dan Korman's “Debunking Arguments.” Click here to find it. I read before it was published and I think it provides a good overview of the subject.

Call for Applications at MCAS

There are two calls for applications at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg University)., which is an ideal place to do research on skepticism.

(1) 4 Junior and 2-3 Senior Fellowships for 2020/21. Deadline: January 15, 2020. For information, click here.

(2) Research Associate Position, commencing on April 1, 2020 (for 3.5 years). Deadline: 3, 2020. For information, click here.

The Ten Oxherding Pictures

A regular reader of this blog, Pete White (Cornell), sent me a message I'd like to share because it addresses an issue I was unaware of:

“In a recent paper “Does Pyrrhonism Have Practical or Epistemic Value?,” you describe a scholar for whom the reading of Sextus's writings prompts a blissful experience similar to that from reading certain Buddhist texts. I have had that experience but it is not with a written text. Perhaps you are familiar with The Ten Oxherding Pictures from the Buddhist tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Bulls. I first saw them over 50 years ago and was moved in a way I could not put into words. Pyrrhonism later provided those words. The first 2 pictures “In Search of the Ox” and “Discovery of the Footprints” correspond to noticing the anomalies. Pictures 3 and 4 “Perceiving the Ox” and “Catching the Ox” correspond to the search. “Taming the Ox” and “Riding the Ox Home” are isosthenia. “The Ox Transcended” and “Both the Ox and Self Transcended” are epoche. “Reaching the Source” and “Return to Society” map to ataraxia. The connections between Buddhism and Pyrrhonism have been extensively discussed, but The Ten Oxherding Pictures have been left out of the discussion. Apart from the 'bliss' this overlap provides, this correlation is of practical import. As you and others have discussed many times, critics from ancient times through David Hume to the present day have said Pyrrhonism is not really liveable. Buddhism is followed by millions and I am not aware that critics say Buddhism is unlivable. Since Pyrrhonism maps to Buddhism as presented in those Oxherding Pictures and Buddhism is livable, Pyrrhonism is just as liveable.”

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments

The latest issue of Ratio is a special issue devoted to “Evolution and Moral Epistemology.” You can find it here. Some of the articles are open access.

Companions in Guilt

The following volume will be of interest to those working on moral skepticism -- specifically, on moral error theory and moral disagreement:

Christopher Cowie and Richard Roland (eds.), Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics. Routledge, 2019.

Issue 9.4 of IJSS

Issue 9.4 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has just been published. It contains articles by Kirk Lougheed and Michael Veber, and book reviews by Harald Thorsrud, Peter Fosl, and Rachel Wiseman. It can be accessed here.

OSAP 56

The latest issue of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (vol. LVI, Summer 2019) contains two papers on skepticism:

“Sources of Doxastic Disturbance in Sextus Empiricus,” by D. Machuca.

“Augustine's Defence of Knowledge against the Sceptics,” by T. Nawar.

Website on Skepticism

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on a website on philosophical skepticism created by a group of researchers at the Universidad de Córdoba (Spain). It has been substantially updated. If you can read Spanish, you might want to check it here.

Disagreement-Motivated Religious Skepticism

This book will be of interest to those working on the epistemology of disagreement or the epistemology of religion in connection with skepticism:

John Pittard, Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment. OUP, 2019.

French Translation of Sextus

Stéphane Marchand has called my attention to a new French translation of Sextus Empiricus, in this case of the two books of Against the Logicians. I think it's the first translation of these books in French, or at least the first complete translation.

Sextus Empiricus, Contre les logiciens. Introduction, notes, and translation by René Lefebvre. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2019.

I haven't had the chance to take a look at the book and I don't know the translator, who as far as I know hasn't published anything on Sextus or ancient Pyrrhonism more generally. For more info, click here.

Workshop on Philo of Alexandria

On October 27–28, 2019, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies will host a workshop on Philo of Alexandria, focusing on the skeptical elements that can be found in his work. For more information, go here.

Conference on Simone Luzzatto

On September 23–25, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies will host a conference on the skeptical thought of Rabbi Simone Luzzatto (ca. 1583–1663) and its value within seventeenth-century philosophy and political thought. For more information, click here.

Skeptical Paths

A new volume has been published in De Gruyter's series Studies and Texts in Scepticism:

G. Veltri, R. Haliva, S. Schmid & E. Spinelli (eds.), Sceptical Paths: Enquiry and Doubt from Antiquity to the Present. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.

The volume is open access and can be found here.

Simone Luzzatto

New bi-lingual editions of two works by the seventeenth-century Venetian rabbi, Simone Luzzatto, have just been published by De Gruyter as part of the series Studies and Texts in Scepticism. These works offer a blend of Judaism, skepticism, and political thought. Both books are open access.

Discourse on the State of the Jews. Ed. and trans. by Giuseppe Veltri and Anna Lissa. Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.

Socrates, or on Human Knowledge. Ed. and trans. by Giuseppe Veltri and Michela Torbidoni. Berlin, & Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.

Issue 9.3 of IJSS

Issue 9.3 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has just been published. It is a special issue, “Epistemic Vice and Forms of Scepticism,” with contributions by Yuval Avnur, Genia Schönbaumsfeld, Adam Carter, Pierre Le Morvan, and Aidan McGlynn. It can be accessed here.

Ancient Skepticism and Modern Fiction

The latest issue of the Italian journal Elenchos includes a paper on ancient skepticism: 

John Christian Laursen, “Ancient Skepticism and Modern Fiction: Some Political Implications,” Elenchos 40 (2019): 199-215. 

It can be found here.

Sextus and the Modes

Thanks to a review by Stéphane Marchand that is forthcoming at BMCR, I've discovered this new contribution to the scholarship on Sextus in Italian:

Massimo Catapano, Sesto Empirico e i tropi della sospensione del giudizio. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 2018.

For more information, go here.

New Volume on Ancient Skepticism

I'm glad to announce the publication of a book I've co-edited with Stéphane Marchand (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne):

Les raisons du doute: études sur le scepticisme antique (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019).

It contains original papers by Thomas Bénatouïl, Richard Bett, Christophe Grellard, Diego Machuca, Stéphane Marchand, Lorenzo Perilli, Casey Perin, Svavar Svavarsson, and Voula Tsouna. More information can be found here.

Lecture at MCAS

On July 9, 2019, at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg), Nadja El Kassar (ETH Zürich) will give the lecture “How to Deal with Ignorance? Some Historical Suggestions.” For more information, click here.

Issue 9.2 of IJSS

Issue 9.2 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has just been published. It contains articles by Jan Forsman, Drew Johnson, and Mark Walker, as well as a book review by Neil Sinclair. It can be accessed here.

Postdoc Position in Hamburg

There's a call for applications for a postdoctoral position at the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies - Jewish Scepticism (Hamburg University). For complete information, go here.

Rationality of Religious Belief

The latest issue of Faith and Philosophy (36, 2019) includes two papers that deal with the rationality of religious belief: Jeroen de Ridder, “Against Quasi-Fideism”; and Jonathan Curtis Rutledge, “Perspectival Skeptical Theism”. Both are open access.

Austin and Skepticism

Last year, I missed the publication of Mark Kaplan's Austin's Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method (OUP, 2018). Complete information can be found here. A much shorter version of Kaplan's interpretation of Austin’s way with skepticism can be found in his chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (OUP, 2008). 

Lecture Series on Skepticism and Tolerance

The Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion at the University of Hamburg, in cooperation with the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies, organizes a lecture series on “Skepsis and Toleranz: Moses Mendelssohn, Salomon Maimon und die jüdische Aufklärungsphilosophie”. For the complete program, go here.

Argumentation in Sextus Empiricus

For what it's worth, this paper of mine is now out in print: “Pyrrhonian Argumentation: Therapy, Dialectic, and Inquiry,” Apeiron 52 (2019): 199-221. Here's the abstract: 

The Pyrrhonist’s argumentative practice is characterized by at least four features. First, he makes a therapeutic use of arguments: he employs arguments that differ in their persuasiveness in order to cure his dogmatic patients of the distinct degrees of conceit and rashness that afflict them. Secondly, his arguments are for the most part dialectical: when offering an argument to oppose it to another argument advanced by a given dogmatist, he accepts in propria persona neither the truth of its premises and conclusion nor the validity of its logical form. Thirdly, he avails himself of arguments in his own open-minded inquiry into the truth about a wide range of topics. Fourthly, Pyrrhonian argumentation is oppositional inasmuch as it typically works by producing oppositions among arguments that appear to the Pyrrhonist to be equipollent. In this article, I focus on the first three features with the aim of both shedding some light on them and determining whether they are in tension or coherently relate to each other.

Skepticism and Anxiety

You might be interested in Sylvia Giocanti’s (Université de Toulouse) new book: Scepticisme et Inquiétude (Hermann, 2019). Below is the description in French, but more information can be found here. I think that, in the present context, ‘anxiety’ is probably a good translation of the French ‘inquiétude’.

Le philosophe sceptique serait-il voué à l’inquiétude? Il est admis que le sceptique antique jouit de la tranquillité de l’âme non pas en dépit du doute mais grâce à lui. Est-on fondé à soutenir que l’âme du sceptique moderne, exilée de Dieu, est tourmentée par le doute? Les Essais de Montaigne, modèle anthropologique, éthique et esthétique du scepticisme moderne, se présentent au contraire comme des pérégrinations enjouées, ou au moins consolatrices qui, se défiant de toute croyance, sont animées par un « souci de soi » non angoissé. Relayée par des scepticismes partiels (Fontenelle, Nietzsche, Cl. Rosset, M. Conche, J.-F. Billeter, H. Blumenberg), la présente étude analyse les modalités sceptiques d’une quête sereine de la jouissance du monde, ainsi que leurs points de rupture avec les conceptions métaphysique (Augustin, Heidegger), pessimiste (Pascal, Leopardi) et foucaldienne de la subjectivité.

Skepticism and Social Epistemology

A workshop entitled “Skepticism and Social Epistemology” will take place at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Haifa on Monday, April ‎‎8, 2019.

Although skepticism is a central theme in epistemology, skepticism is rarely dealt with in ‎social epistemology. A rarely challenged assumption in the epistemology of testimony is ‎that subjects normally acquire knowledge and justified belief from the testimony of ‎others. However, even if we can gain knowledge from non-testimonial sources, such as ‎perception and inference, there might be special reasons why we cannot get knowledge or ‎justified belief from testimony. Our increasing reliance on technologically and ‎algorithmically mediated testimonies and phenomena such as fake news may also cast ‎doubts on our possibility of getting testimonial knowledge in general or specific cases. ‎The workshop talks address these issues. 

The speakers will be Arnon Keren, Aviv Barnoy, Boaz Miller, Bryan Frances, Maya Roman, Ori Freiman, and Sandy Goldberg. 

Attendance is is free of charge, but prior registration is required. You may see the program and register at http://philevents.org/event/show/71482 or you can register by sending an email to boaz.m@zefat.ac.il.

Issue 9.1 of IJSS

Issue 9.1 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism has just been published. It contains articles by Ruth Weintraub, Ali Hossein Khani, Kevin McCain, and Nenad Popovic, as well as book reviews by Scott Aikin, Annalisa Coliva, Cameron Boult, and Gerhard Schurz. It can be accessed here.

Ancient Skepticism Workshop in Paris

Stéphane Marchand has organized a one-day workshop on ancient skepticism (“Actualités du scepticisme ancien”) to be held on March 18, from 14h to 18h, at the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de la Sorbonne (Salle de formation), 17, rue de la Sorbonne, Paris. If you want to attend, you should register by sending an email to philo-recherche@univ-paris1.fr. Here's the program:

Richard Bett (Johns Hopkins University): “The Modes in Sextus: Theory and Practice”.

Lorenzo Corti (Université de Lorraine): “Scepticisme, croyance et doute chez les Pyrrhoniens”.

Conference “Skeptical Anthropology”

The conference “Anthropologie sceptique et modernité” will take place at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon on March 13-15. For complete information, click here.

Pyrrhonism Bibliography

My annotated bibliography on Pyrrhonism in Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy, originally published in 2013, has just been updated.

Call for Papers

There's a call for papers on contemporary discussions of external world skepticism for Belgrade Philosophical Annual. For complete information, go here.

Call for Fellowship Applications

The Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (MCAS) at Universität Hamburg invites early career researchers to apply for its junior fellowship programme for the academic year 2019–2020. For complete information about the topic, eligibility, and application procedure, click here.

Brill Studies in Skepticim, Vol. 2

The second volume of Brill Studies in Skepticism is now out:

Kevin McCain & Ted Poston (eds.), The Mystery of Skepticism: New Explorations (Brill, 2019).

Brill Studies in Skepticim, Vol. 1

The first volume of Brill Studies in Skepticism has just been published:

Orazio Cappello, The School of Doubt: Skepticism, History and Politics in Cicero's Academica (Brill, 2019).

For more information, go here.

Moral Abolitionism

Due to personal issues, I haven't been able to post for a while. I resume posting with information about a new volume on moral abolitionism edited by Richard Garner and Richard Joyce: The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously (Routledge, 2019). For more on this volume, click here.