Call for Applications - Hamburg

There’s a Call for Applications for 2 Doctoral Fellowships, 2 Postdoctoral Fellowships, and 7–9 Senior Fellowships, for the academic year 1 October 2021–30 September 2022, at the The Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (MCAS) at Universität Hamburg. The deadline is 10 December 2020. In the academic year 2021–22, research at MCAS will focus on the relationship between language and skepticism. The investigation of skepticism in the context of language will be conducted from three angles: (1) the status of sacred texts; (2) language and meaning; and (3) the place of translation in the transmission of knowledge. The successful candidate’s project should resonate productively with the annual topic as described, and priority will be given to projects dealing with the (early) modern period. For details about applying, go here. For further information and questions, contact MCAS’s academic coordinator Dr. Lilian Türk at lilian.tuerk@uni-hamburg.de.

Sextus on Ataraxia

My paper “Sextus on Ataraxia Revisited” was published a few days ago in the latest issue of Ancient Philosophy. In this paper, I offer further evidence and arguments in support of the view that the pursuit and the attainment of ataraxia are not defining features of Sextan Pyrrhonism, a view I originally defended in “The Pyrrhonist's ἀταραξία and φιλανθρωπία,” published in the same journal fourteen years ago.

Skepticism and Its Epistemic and Practical Value

Over the past couple of weeks, two intriguing companion pieces dealing with skepticism and today's socio-political climate have been published on the blog of the American Philosophical Association: Rachel Aumiller's “Haptic Skepticism: The Crisis of (not) Touching,” and Bara Kolenc's “Skepticism’s Cure for the Plague of Mind.” The pieces can be found here and here. Both authors make a number of controversial claims regarding Pyrrhonian skepticism and its alleged epistemic and practical value that are worth pondering and discussing. It appears to me that their positive assessment of Pyrrhonism is worth emphasizing inasmuch as this brand of skepticism is usually attacked on the grounds both that it is patently absurd or untenable and that it has appalling practical consequences.

Book Review and Something Else

Yesterday, my review of the volume Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus (OUP, 2020), edited by K. Vogt and J. Vlasits, was published in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The review can be found here. As you may know, reviews in that journal are by invitation only. I assume the previous editor (who resigned at the very beginning of July) invited me because I'm somewhat familiar with Sextus's Pyrrhonism and his legacy. So far, so good. But just a couple of hours ago, a note by the current editor was added above the second paragraph of the review. Below, I paste the note and the paragraph in italics:

Editor’s note: NDPR has reason to doubt the accuracy of some of the empirical claims in the following paragraph. We are not in position to verify the empirical claims, but we flag the issue for readers. 

Of the sixteen contributors, six are women, which is most welcome inasmuch as it ensures some degree of diversity. However, it is regrettable that there is in this volume a complete absence of contributors from, e.g., Latin American countries or such European countries as France and Italy, despite the fact that a considerable number of scholars from these countries, capable of writing in idiomatic English, have a long record of publications in the areas covered in the volume, namely, the history of skepticism and contemporary epistemology. Moreover, ten contributors hold positions or live in the United States, two in both the United States and the United Kingdom, one in Canada, one in Germany, and two in Sweden. The same lack of diversity is observed in the seventeen-page bibliography at the end of the volume, which contains only fifteen publications in a modern language other than English: one in French (from 1887) and the rest in German. Of the publications listed in German, three are actually used in English translation and two thirds of the rest were published more than a century ago -- the most recent publication being a monograph by Katja Maria Vogt published in 1998. To really ensure diversity in academia, one should pay attention not only to gender, but also to race, nationality, and language.

No, I was not contacted by the NDPR editor before the note was added, but only afterwards, letting me know about the addition. So I was not asked to provide evidence for my claims. I confess that I find the note utterly odd and a little bit offensive; and this is the first time I see such note in a book review published in NDPR, Philosophy in Review, or Bryn Mawr Classical Review -- two name the three most important electronic journals entirely devoted to book reviews. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that, if an editor thinks that a factual mistake might have been made, he will do his best first to find out what the alleged mistake is, and then to correct it, instead of inserting a note calling into question a reviewer's credibility in an extremely vague way. I assume that his not being in a position to verify the empirical claims in question does not have to do with, e.g., his not having a copy of the book or his not being able to count, but rather with the philosophical problem of verification discussed by, e.g., the logical positivists. By my lights, one of the editors of the volume sent an angry email to the NDPR editor complaining about my sacrilegious remarks and my negative assessment of the volume as a whole. And by my lights, the note in question would not have been added if the reviewer were an European working at a top American university. I reckon that, next time, I should be a good boy and write a highly positive review of a volume despite its many shortcomings, if its editor happens to be part of the so-called academic elite. Last but not least, as an journal editor myself, it never ceases to amaze me how certain journal editors proceed. Academic bullying at its best.

Update: the NDPR editor refuses to tell me which statements are possibly inaccurate and what reasons he has for calling their accuracy into question. He says it's confidential. I didn't know that academic philosophy was a matter of national security. My complaint concerns the unprofessional way the NDPR editor proceeded and the fact that, if I happened to make an inadvertent factual mistake, I'm happy to recognize and correct it. That said, I prefer the note to be left unchanged because I think it's silly, and also reveals the childish reactions of the editor(s) of the volume, who made a fuss about my remarks. In any case, the book review is open access and anyone can assess the strength and accuracy of my remarks and objections and the pertinence of the editor's note.