Skeptical Hypotheses

The latest issue of The Philosophical Quarterly features James Beebe's "Constraints on Sceptical Hypotheses". To access the paper, click here.

Quine and Skepticism

The latest issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies features "Quine's Pragmatic Solution to Sceptical Doubts" by Benjamin Bayer. To access the paper, go here.

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).

Knowledge in an Uncertain World

Last December, Jeremy Fantl and Matt McGrath published Knowledge in an Uncertain World (OUP). I've just read a review at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (click here) and I'm sure the book will appeal to those familiar with contemporary epistemological discussions of skepticism.

Pyrrhonism in the 16th Century

Sometime this year, Classiques Garnier will publish Le Phénomène pyrrhonien. Lire le scepticisme au XVIe siècle by Emmanuel Naya (Université de Lumière Lyon 2). I'll post more information as soon as I get it.

Burnyeat's Paper

Last January, I asked if anyone happened to have a copy of Burnyeat's unpublished paper "Carneades was no Probabilist". Luiz Eva has now done us the great favor of scanning his copy. You can download the PDF file here. A warning: the file is quite heavy.

New Book on Pyrrhonism

It seems that Casey Perin's The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism is about to come out. Some information about it can now be found here. This short book is at least in part based on Perin's paper "Pyrrhonian Scepticism and the Search for Truth" (OSAP 30, 2006). Judging from what I've been able to read on Google Books, one of Perin's main theses is that the Pyrrhonist's search for truth is incompatible with the therapeutic function of his arguments.

Special Issue of Dialectica

I think some of you will be interested in this information. The journal Dialectica is preparing a special issue on "Justification Today". The guest editor is Anne Meylan (Geneva). Here's the presentation of the topic:

Post-Gettier epistemology and the difficulty of analysing knowledge have often led to scepticism about the notion of justification. It has been suggested that one should either move beyond justification or simply get rid of this notion within epistemology. But is the notion of justification really useless if knowledge turns out to be unanalysable ? Is the debate between internalist and externalist conceptions of justification still relevant ? How should we view the relationships between epistemic justification and other kinds of justification (in particular in the ethical case)? Is justification subjective? The aim of this special issue is to help to clarify the seemingly new role that the notion of justification plays in contemporary epistemology by answering these questions. To do so, dialectica invites submissions for publication in a special issue on the topic of Justification Today.

You should send a PDF file prepared for blind reviewing to anne.meylan@unige.ch

Deadline for submission: July, 1. 2010

Notification of acceptance, resubmission, rejection: September, 1. 2010

Final version due: December, 1. 2010

Toronto Epistemology Meeting

On May 11-13, the University of Toronto will host the Third Formal Epistemology Festival. There will be a couple of papers on skepticism. For complete information, go here .

Scepticisme et Lumières

Last year, I posted information about the conference "Scepticisme et Lumières", which would take place in April 2010 at the Université de Sherbrooke (Montréal). As Chris Laursen made me realize, last month I forgot to post a reminder of this conference. However, some of you might still want to know about the speakers and their papers. So here is the program.

Brazil Epistemology Conference

Epistemology: The Third Brazil Conference will take place at PUCRS in Porto Alegre on June 9-11. The conference is organized by Claudio de Almeida and Stephen Hetherington. The speakers will be:

Fred Adams (Delaware)

Jonathan Adler (Brooklyn College, CUNY)

Heather Battaly (CSU, Fullerton)

Anthony Brueckner (UCSB)

David Christensen (Brown)

Stewart Cohen (Arizona)

Claudio de Almeida (PUCRS)

Paulo Faria (UFRGS)

Richard Fumerton (Iowa)

Alvin Goldman (Rutgers)

Vincent Hendricks (Copenhagen)

Stephen Hetherington (UNSW)

Tom Kelly (Princeton)

Peter Klein (Rutgers)

Saul Kripke (CUNY)

Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern)

William Lycan (UNC, Chapel Hill)

Baron Reed (Northwestern)

Ernest Sosa (Rutgers)

For more information, you can send an email to one of these addresses: s.hetherington@unsw.edu.au; cdeal@terra.com.br; epistemology2010@yahoo.com.br .

Upcoming Conference

Waldomiro da Silva Filho has organized a conference on skepticism which will take place at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil) next August. For information, click on the image below. I'll post the provisional program in due course.

Conference on Ethical Skepticism

Zed Adams has organized a conference entitled "Varieties of Ethical Skepticism", which will be held on April 16th and 17th at the New School of Social Research in New York City. The speakers will be Michael Gill, Peter Kail, Jessica Berry, Mark Richard, and Michael Lynch. For information about the program, go here.

Workshop on Plutarch

On April 8-9, at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, there will be a workshop on Plutarch's Adversus Colotem. For complete information about the program and the venue, click on the image below. From what I've heard, among the assistants there will be other important scholars.