Special Issue of The European Legacy

Next year, Sébastien Charles is going to publish a special issue of The European Legacy devoted to Skepticism in Early Modern Philosophy. Even though the participants of the issue are already chosen, there will be some space for two review essays of around 2,500 words and a large number of book reviews of 600-800 words. Those interested in publishing a review essay or a book review connected with the theme of this issue have to contact Sébastien Charles as soon as possible (Sebastien.Charles@USherbrooke.ca) and to send him the essay or book review before November 1, 2010.

Cavell and Skepticism

I've just realized that, in 2007, Ashgate published Ludger Viefhues-Bailey's Beyond the Philosopher's Fear: A Cavellian Reading of Gender, Origin and Religion in Modern Skepticism. Information about the book can be found here. A review by Berislav Marušić has just appeared in the European Journal of Philosophy, for which go here.

Skepticism Conference

Here's the program (in Portuguese) for the conference on skepticism which has been organized by Waldomiro Silva and which will take place in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) on August 23-25.

III International Meeting on Skepticism & XIII Colóquio Nacional sobre Ceticismo

Dia 23 de agosto de 2010

Manhã:

9:00 – 10:00 Conferência de Abertura

"The Pyrrhonist's Dilemma: How to Write Philosophy without Becoming a Philosopher" - Richard Bett (Johns Hopkins University, EUA)

10:00 – 11:00 Conferência

“Pyrrhonian Relativism” - Diego Machuca (CONICET, Argentina)

11:00 – 12:00 Conferência

"Epokhé e Lógos no Pirronismo Grego" - Vitor Hirschbruch Schvartz (USP)

Tarde:

14:30 – 15:30 Conferência

“Skepticism and Metaphysics” - Lorenzo Corti (Swiss National Foundation/Cambridge University)

15:30 – 16:30 Conferência

“Critique de la morale dogmatique et vie sans croyances: Montaigne lecteur de Sextus” - Luiz Eva (UFPRN

Dia 24 de agosto

Manhã:

10:00 – 11:00 Reunião técnica

Reunião das Coordenações do GT-Ceticismo e do GT-História do Ceticismo

11:00 – 12:00 Reunião técnica

Reunião da Comissão de Organização da Internacional Society for the Study of skepticism

Tarde:

14:00 – 15:00 Conferência

“Early Modern Skepticism and the Variety of Certainties” – Dario Perinetti (Université du Québec à Montréal, Canadá)

15:00 – 16:00 Conferência

“Ceticismo e o Novo Mundo” - Danilo Marcondes (PUC-RJ)

16:30 – 17:30 Conferência

"Como um Filósofo Pode se Tornar Um Cético? O Caso de Hume" - Plínio Smith (UNIFESP)

16:45 – 18:00 Conferência

“Skepticism and Cartesianism in Pierre Bayle” - Todd Ryan (Trinity College, Estados Unidos)

Dia 25 de agosto

Manhã:

9:00 – 10:00 Conferência

“Unsafe Reasoning” - Paulo Faria (UFRGS)

10:00 – 11:00 Conferência

“Skepticism and finitude: notes on Stanley Cavell's philosophy” – Jônadas Techio (UFRGS)

11:00 – 12:00 Conferência

“Skepticism and Meaning: Between Kripkestein and Wittgenstein” – Glenda Satne (CONICET, Argentina)

Tarde:

14:30 – 15:30 Conferência

"How to Win a Battle Against the Skeptic: A Contextualist Guide” - André Abath (UFPB)

15:30 – 16:30 Conferência

“Descartes Contra a Probabilidade” - José Raimundo Maia Neto (UFMG)

16:30 – 17:30 Conferência

"Skepticism, theism and atheism in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" – Gianni Paganini (Università del Piemonte Orientale, Itália).

Wittgenstein

I've been reading Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. The main strength of this biography is that it was written by someone who studied philosophy at York and Oxford and is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton (where, by the way, there are several specialists in Wittgenstein). So the author approaches Wittgenstein's life from a philosophical perspective, which makes the book appealing to those interested in the latter's thought. I'm enjoying it very much as I enjoyed reading a French translation of Norman Malcolm's excellent memoir while I was living in Fribourg eight years ago (I remember borrowing the book from a Swiss philosophy student that lived on the same floor).

Someone recommended me Monk's book last year in the UK and I decided to buy it because I had always been kind of puzzled and fascinated by what I knew about Wittgenstein's life and personality. It seems to me that he's an excellent example of how one's philosophical work may be intimately related to one's life. It reminds me that I decided to study philosophy when I was at high school because I was impressed by Camus' "existentialist" literature (as some of you may know, Camus had a degree in philosophy). But it also reminds me of the gap that exists between my academic work and the questions and problems that interest and puzzle me the most. I know that my interest in skepticism is due to my own Weltaunschauung, so to speak, which is characterized by a state of deep ignorance and puzzlement. Still, my work on skepticism does not reflect this, except for a couple of paragraphs here and there. Unfortunately, I only discuss some of those issues when I come accross certain people at conferences or talks. I remember that last year, in Durham, I had an interesting conversation late at night at a pub with a couple of guys after delivering a paper on the Modes of Agrippa. One of them was an Italian graduate history student and the other had studied philosophy at Oxford in the eighties and was deeply influenced by Wittgenstein and (to a lesser degree) by Michael Frede's "urbane" interpretation of Sextus' Pyrrhonism. I suppose we are taught to separate the two things, and I don't think this is something that happens only to those of us who work primarily on the history of philosophy, but also to e.g. present-day epistemologists: we do our job and usually this has little (or nothing) to do with our own philosophical outlook.

Wittgenstein and Skepticism

The other day someone told me about a collective volume entitled Wittgenstein and Scepticism (Routledge, 2004), edited by Denis McManus. For information, go here. I haven't taken a look at the book yet, but I'm sure it must be most interesing, since it includes contributions by, among others, Akeel Bilgrami, Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Maria McGinn, Crispin Wright, and Michael Williams.

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).