CFP Popkin Conference

On June 21-23, the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies (Hamburg University) will host the conference “Judaism, Zionism, and Scepticism in the Scholarship of Richard H. Popkin.” There is a call for papers for PhD candidates and postdocs whose deadline is February 28th. Go here for detailed information.

CFP: Varieties of Anti-Skepticism

There is a Call for Papers for the conference “The Varieties of Anti-skepticism, from Past to Present,” which will be take place at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain) on September 16-18, 2020. For complete information, go here. (Something I'll never understand is why on earth organizers of this sort of conference give only 20 minutes for exposition. Just reduce the number of speaking slots and give about 30-35 minutes.)

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.

CFP for Special Issue of Theoria

There's a call for papers for a special issue of the Swedish journal Theoria devoted to medieval skepticism. Complete information below:

Guest Editor: Henrik Lagerlund (Stockholm University), henrik.lagerlund@philosophy.su.se.

Deadline for submissions: September 1, 2019

Description: The high point of scholarly debate on the history of skepticism was the 1970’s and the 1980’s. It was Ancient and Early Modern skepticism that was debated then, and some groundbreaking books and articles were produced as a result. After that intense debate the interest waned somewhat and the history of skepticism does not attract as much interest anymore. Scholarly debate on Medieval skepticism has never reached such a highpoint, in fact, there has been relatively little interest in skeptical debates and skepticism in the Middle Ages. By devoting a special issue of Theoria to Medieval skepticism, we hope to change this and interest a new generation of scholars in questions about the role skepticism and skeptical arguments played in the Middle Ages. In this context, we define Medieval philosophy broadly to include philosophy and philosophical theology between the time of Augustine and Francisco Suárez, that is, roughly between 400 and 1600 CE. We also welcome articles dealing with skepticism in any of the four language traditions, that is, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek. Our hope is to present skepticism in the Middle Ages in a new light, and with such breadth and depth that Medieval skepticism can finally take its place in a comprehensive history of skepticism alongside Ancient and Modern.

All submitted articles should be written in English and will be subject to double blind review. To find out more about the journal and how to submit your article please go to: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17552567

2017 SSS Meeting

James Beebe (Buffalo) is organizing a group session (or two) for the Society for Skeptical Studies at next year's Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Jan 4-7, 2017, in Baltimore, MD). If you have a paper that deals with philosophical skepticism that you would like to have considered for inclusion in the SSS session(s), please send your submission to Beebe at jbeebe2@buffalo.edu by May 1, 2016.

CFP Special Issue on Vuillemin on Ancient Skepticism

Following a one-day workshop devoted to the approach of the French philosopher Jules Vuillemin to ancient scepticism, which took place at the Archives Henri Poincaré at Nancy (France) on December the 6th 2014, the journal Philosophia Scientiae organises a special issue devoted to this theme, edited by Lorenzo Corti and Joseph Vidal-Rosset. On this occasion, we encourage submissions on Jules Vuillemin’s discussion of ancient scepticism.

Vuillemin deals with ancient scepticism in several loci of his work. In his Nécessité ou contingence?, having reconstructed the Dominator argument and three ancient reactions to it attested by Epictetus, he analyzes some ancient positions that defended contingency by dropping one of the implicit premises of the argument. One of these positions is that of Carneades, as attested in Cicero’s De Fato (Nécessité et Contingence?, 231-51). At the end of the same book, Vuillemin characterizes a few philosophical systems by the way in which they react to the Dominator argument. These include scepticism – i.e. the scepticism of Carneades, somehow understood as an ʻancient Humeʼ (Nécessité et Contingence?, 400-6). In his article ʻUne morale est-elle compatible avec le scepticisme ?ʼ (Philosophie 7 (1985), 21-51), Vuillemin asks the question mentioned in the title as far as four varieties of scepticism are concerned. In his « La justice par convention; signification philosophique de la doctrine de Rawls » (Dialectica 41, n°1-2 (1987), pp. 155-166), Vuillemin assimilates Rawls’ approach to justice to that of an Academic sceptic. This thematic issue of Philosophia Scientiae aims at inquiring into the multiple facets of the attitude of an atypical contemporary philosopher to ancient scepticism.

The submitted manuscripts will be published subject to peer-review. All papers have to be prepared for peer-review blind refereeing. Manuscripts should be submitted in French, English, or German, and prepared for anonymous peer review. Abstracts in French and English of 200-300 words in length should be included. Articles should not exceed 50,000 characters (spaces and footnotes included).

Please send submissions to:

Lorenzo Corti <lorenzo.corti@univ-lorraine.fr>

Joseph Vidal-Rosset <joseph.vidal-rosset@univ-lorraine.fr>

Conference on Religious Diversity

I think that the following information will be of interest to those working on religious disagreement and skepticism:

2012 Conference of the
Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association (APRA)

Conference theme: Religious Diversity and Its Philosophical Significance

Keynote speakers:

Richard Kearney (Boston College)

Marilyn McCord Adams (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Kevin Hart (University of Virginia & Australian Catholic University)

Constant Mews (Monash University)

Dates: Friday June 22 – Sunday June 24, 2012

Venue: Australian Catholic University, Melbourne campus (Victoria Parade, Fitzroy)

Please submit a title, a short abstract (of up to 200 words), and a brief bio to Nick.Trakakis@acu.edu.au. Proposals relating to the above conference theme are particularly welcome, though the organising committee also welcomes papers on any topic in the philosophy of religion or philosophical theology. Abstracts are due 10 February 2012.

Religious Disagreement

The following information might be of interest to those working on religious disagreement and skepticism.

Killeen Chair Conference on the Epistemology of Religious Disagreement, hosted by St. Norbert College, Green Bay, Wisconsin April 14th through 15th, 2012 (https://sites.google.com/site/killeenchair/)

Keynote Speakers:

Michael Bergmann (Purdue)
Thomas Kelly (Princeton)
Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern)

Additional Speakers:

Nathan King (Whitworth)
Jonathan Matheson (North Florida)
Andrew Moon (Missouri)
Tim Pickavance (Biola)

The organizing committee invites the submission of papers for two or three additional speakers. Papers should relate in some way to the epistemic significance of religious disagreement, and each should be suitable for a thirty-five minute presentation (roughly 3,500 words). Papers should be prepared for blind review and submitted electronically. Please send your file attached to an e-mail message in which you state your name, contact information, and the title of your paper. Preferred file formats include Word 97-2003 (.doc), Word 2007 (.docx), and PDF. Please send submissions to tomas.bogardus@snc.edu. The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 10th, 2012. The organizing committee warmly invites all interested philosophers to attend and participate in the conference. If you plan to attend, please email Tomas Bogardus at the above address so that we can plan to accommodate the group's size. Commentators will be selected for some papers. If you would be willing to comment, please indicate your interest in an email (with a current CV attached) by Friday, February 10th, 2012. One need not present a paper in order to serve as a commentator. For further information on the Killeen Chair in Theology & Philosophy, please visit http://www.snc.edu/killeen/.

Call for Papers

Stéphane Marchand has let me know about the following call for papers.

Papers are invited for presentation on the topic “Academic Skepticism: Philosophical Reflections on Knowledge and Rhetoric,” for a two-day workshop in the frame of the 13th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI). This will take place at University of Cyprus, Nicosia, on July 2-6, 2012. The workshop will be devoted on one day to Ancient Academic Skepticism and on the other day to Modern Academic Skepticism.

Please submit an abstract (one page) by January 1st, 2012 to Luiz Eva, in charge of the workshop on Ancient Academic Skepticism, at luizeva@ufpr.br, or to Sébastien Charles, in charge of the workshop on Modern Academic Skepticism, at sebastien.charles@usherbrooke.ca.

Speakers will have 20 to 30 minutes to present their papers in English or French (exact length to be confirmed, depending on the number of papers accepted).

Call for Papers

University of Edinburgh, Graduate Epistemology Conference: We invite submissions of papers from graduate students to the Edinburgh Graduate Epistemology Conference, which will take place on the 18-19 March 2011. Essays within any area of epistemology are welcome. Essays should be approximately 4000 words. The submission deadline for the conference is 10 January 2011. Although conference attendance is free, you must register for the conference if you plan on attending. Space is limited, so please register as early as possible.

Keynote Speakers:

- Ernest Sosa (Rutgers)

- Richard Swinburne (Oxford)

This graduate conference will be unique in that graduate presentations will have respondents from the faculty at Edinburgh and other neighbouring universities.

Please send the following to uofe.epistemology@gmail.com in .doc, .rtf, or .pdf format:

1) A cover letter containing

a) the author’s name and institutional affiliation

b) the author’s contact information

c) word count

d) the area(s) of epistemology the paper deals with.

2) The paper itself, including the title and a short abstract (no more than 200 words).

For further information, please visit email Tony Bolos at A.Bolos@sms.ed.ac.uk.

Call for Papers

I think some of you will be interested in the following information.

Call for Papers: ‘The Problem of the Criterion’

Special Issue of Philosophical Papers (South Africa)

Guest Editor: Mark Nelson (Westmont College)

The problem of the criterion is one of the most ancient and enduring questions of philosophical methodology. Attributed to Agrippa, the dialellus or ‘wheel’ became a staple of skeptical arguments from Sextus to Montaigne, but it was perhaps given its best-known formulation by R.M. Chisholm:

"To know whether things really are as they seem to be, we must have a procedure for distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. But to know whether our procedure is a good procedure, we have to know whether it really succeeds in distinguishing appearances that are true from appearances that are false. And we cannot know whether it does really succeed unless we already know which appearances are true and which ones are false. And so we are caught in a circle." [‘The Problem of the Criterion’, 1982]

This problem admits of several interpretations, resists easy solution, and lurks at the bottom of philosophical reflection on knowledge and method in any topic, yet it has received only one book-length treatment in Anglophone philosophy in the last fifty years, Robert Amico’s The Problem of the Criterion (1993). Possible topics for discussion include:

- The problem of the criterion in ancient, modern (Montaigne, Hume, Reid, Hegel), or 20th C epistemology (Moore, Wittgenstein)

- The problem of the criterion as an interpretation or form of skepticism

- The relevance of the problem of the criterion to various kinds of knowledge, e.g., moral, religious, aesthetic, of other minds

- Substantive and methodological commitments in philosophy

- Basic knowledge and the problem of the criterion

- Intuitionism and the problem of the criterion

- Philosophical disagreement and the problem of the criterion

- The problem of the criterion and the method of reflective equilibrium

- The problem of the criterion and the foundationalism/coherentism dichotomy

The deadline for receipt of submission is 30 June 2011. This special edition of Philosophical Papers, which will contain both invited and submitted papers, will appear in November of 2011.

Authors are encouraged to submit manuscripts electronically, prepared as a PDF or Word document attachment, and emailed to <philosophical.papers@ru.ac.za>. Authors should include their full name, affiliation, and address for email correspondence with their submission.

Further enquiries can be addressed to Mark Nelson (mailto:Lucy.Allais@Wits.ac.za) or Ward Jones, Editor, Philosophical Papers (w.jones@ru.ac.za).