Other Minds Skepticism

The latest issue of Ratio features Lilian Alweiss' "Against Cartesian Mistrust: Cavell, Husserl and the Other Mind Sceptic". To access the paper, click here.

New Journal Devoted to Skepticism

For several reasons, I'll be posting less frequently on Aporia for a while. But I now want to post something about a new journal entirely devoted to skepticism that will be launched next year.

The International Journal for the Study of Skepticism will be edited by Duncan Pritchard (Edinburgh) and myself and will be published twice a year by Brill. The Book Review Editor will be Baron Reed (Northwestern). As some of you already know, the original idea of this project was related to the foundation of the International Society for the Study of Skepticism at the end of 2008. The journal will cover both the history of skepticism and the systematic discussion of skeptical arguments and problems in the fields of epistemology, metaethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. I'll post more information in due course, but you can contact me at this address if you have any questions.

Oxford Studies in Epistemology

Volume 3 of Oxford Studies in Epistemology features the paper "Skeptical Success" by Troy Cross. It also includes Jennifer Lackey's "What Should We Do When We Disagree?", which will be of interest to those working on skepticism and disagreement. For more information, go here.

Skeptical Theism

The latest issue of Philosophy Compass includes Justin McBrayer's "Skeptical Theism". The paper can be found here.

Hume's Skepticism

A recent issue of the Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie features Donald Ainslie's article "Adequate Ideas and Modest Scepticism in Hume's Metaphysics of Space". To access the paper, go here.

The Dreaming Argument

The latest issue of Pacific Philosophical Quarterly features the article "Descartes' Resolution of the Dreaming Doubt", by Brad Chynoweth. To access the paper, go here.

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