Misrepresenting Sextan Pyrrhonism

I've tried to dispel certain serious misunderstandings of Sextus Empiricus's Pyrrhonism in this paper that has just been published:

“Experimental Evidence against Pyrrhonism: Attacking a Straw Man,” Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 61 (2022): 123–138.

Those interested can find it here.

Pyrrhonism Past & Present

For what it's worth, my monograph has now been published:

Pyrrhonism Past and Present: Inquiry, Disagreement, Self-Knowledge, and Rationality (Cham: Springer, 2022).

More information can be found here.

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.

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.

Blomqvist on Beckwith on Pyrrhonism and Buddhism

A few weeks ago, BMCR published a review, by Jerker Blomqvist, of Christopher Beckwith's Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia (Princeton University Press, 2015). It can be found here.

Neo-Pyrrhonism and the Epistemology of Disagreement

Since I don't know when the paper will be included in an issue of Synthese, I prefer to let you know now that my paper “A Neo-Pyrrhonian Response to the Disagreeing about Disagreement Argument” has just been published online. It can be found here. This is another recent paper in which I try to discuss skepticism from a point of view that is systematic rather than historico-exegetical.

Dossier on Pyrrhonism

The latest volume of the French journal Philosophie Antique (15, 2015) includes a dossier devoted to Pyrrhonian skepticism (in addition to several papers on other topics).

Carlos Lévy

"Philon d’Alexandrie est-il inutilisable pour connaître Énésidème ? Étude méthodologique."

Richard Bett

"Why Care Whether Scepticism is Different from Other Philosophies?"

Baptiste Bondu

"Le problème du critère sceptique."

Stéphane Marchand

"Sextus Empiricus, scepticisme et philosophie de la vie quotidienne."

Lorenzo Corti

"Scepticism, Number and Appearances : The ἀριθμητικὴ τέχνη and Sextus Empiricus’ targets in M I-VI."

Pyrrhonism and Eudaimonia

It probably went unnoticed that Richard Bett recently published "Can an Ancient Greek Sceptic Be Eudaimôn (or Happy)? And What Difference Does the Answer Make to Us?" in the online Brazilian journal Journal of Ancient Philosophy. The paper can be accessed for free here.

Philosophical Therapy

The latest issue of Metaphilosophy features Eugen Fischer's "How to Practise Philosophy as Therapy: Philosophical Therary and Therapeutic Philosophy". The paper discusses Sextus Empiricus and Wittgenstein. To access it, 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.