Festschrift for Carlos Lévy

At the very end of 2016, Brepols published Vérité et apparence: Mélanges en l’honneur de Carlos Lévy offerts par ses amis et ses disciples, edited by P. Galand and E. Malaspina. This big book of 44 chapters includes four papers on skepticism by Emidio Spinelli, Brigitte Pérez-Jean, Thomas Bénatouïl, and Laurence Boulègue. For complete information about the volume, go here.

Disagreement-Based Skepticism

In case this is of interest to you, my contribution to the symposium on Jonathan Matheson's The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement (Palgrave, 2015) has now been published in Syndicate Philosophy, a recently launched journal devoted to book symposia. Together with my critical essay -- in which I focus on the connection between disagreement and skepticism -- you can find Matheson's reply and Scott Aikin's general introduction to the symposium. In the upcoming weeks, the critical essays by Amber Carlson, Chad Boghosian, and Nathan Ballantyne will be published together with the respective responses by Matheson. You can access the symposium here. The aim of Syndicate Philosophy is to start conversations about the book, the critical essays, and the author's responses, so if you're interested, you can participate by posting comments.

Graduate Conference on Skepticism

On February 16th-17th, Saint Louis University's philosophy department will host a graduate conference on skepticism, broadly construed. There is at present a call for papers, which should be no more than 3000 words in length. To submit a paper, send a blind copy to efulmer@slu.edu. The deadline for submissions is January 6th and notifications will be sent out on January 16th. Keynote addresses will be delivered by Ernest Sosa (Rutgers) and Jonathan Kvanvig (Washington University in Saint Louis). ​If you have any questions, contact Everett Fulmer (efulmer@slu.edu) or Luis Pinto de Sa (pintodesals@slu.edu).​

New Issue of Sképsis

Issue 14 of the Brazilian journal Sképsis is now out. It is devoted to Barry Stroud. You can access it for free here.

Issue 6.4 of IJSS

Issue 6.4 of the International Journal for the Study of Skepticism is now out. It includes articles by Daniel Immerman and Moti Mizhari, discussions by Susan Feldman and Peter Murphy, and book reviews by Michael Hickson, Jack Lyons, and Joshua Thurow. You can access it here.

Moore, Wittgenstein, and Skepticism

The latest issue of Nordic Wittgenstein Review (5.2, 2016) includes Nicola Claudio Salvatore's “Moore(anists) and Wittgenstein on Radical Skepticism.” The paper can be found here.

Skepticism Conference in Chicago

The University of Chicago is hosting a conference on “Skepticism as a Form of Philosophical Experience” on February 3-5, 2017. For complete information, go here.

Skepticism in Early Modern England

Just found this book that deals with skepticism in Early Modern England from the viewpoint of literature and intellectual history:

Melissa M. Caldwell, Skepticism and Belief in Early Modern England: The Reformation of Moral Value (Routledge 2016).

For more information, go here.

Vuillemin and Skepticism

The bulk of the latest issue of the French journal Philosophia Scientiæ (20.3/2016) is devoted to Jules Vuillemin's interpretation of skepticism. Here's the ToC, but to read the abstracts and access the papers, go here.

Lorenzo Corti, Joseph Vidal-Rosset: “Préface.”

Lorenzo Corti: “Jules Vuillemin et la morale du pyrrhonisme.”

Ugo Zilioli: “Could the Cyrenaics live an ethical life? Jules Vuillemin’s answer (and a further suggestion).”

Stéphane Marchand: “Jules Vuillemin et le scepticisme utilitaire de Carnéade.”

Carlos Lévy: “Jules Vuillemin, le pyrrhonisme et Carnéade.”

Baptiste Mélès: “Comment le scepticisme est devenu un système. La classification de Jules Vuillemin et ses transformations.”

Joseph Vidal-Rosset: “Rawls, « un sceptique amateur de tranquillité » ? Réponse à Jules Vuillemin.”

Conference on the Evolution of Morality

There is a call for registration for the interdisciplinary conference “The Descent of Moral Sentiment,” which will deal with the ontogeny and evolution of human morality. It will take place on February 13-15, 2017, at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. For complete information about the conference, click here.

Skepticism and Religion

A volume dealing with the connection between skepticism and religion particularly in ancient philosophy has just been published:

A.-I. Bouton-Touboulic, C. Lévy (eds.), Scepticisme et religion: Constantes et évolutions, de la philosophie hellénistique à la philosophie médiévale (Brepols, 2016).

More information can be found here.

New Book on Arcesilaus

A new book in Italian on the Academic skeptic Arcesilaus has just been published: 

Simone Vezzoli, Arcesilao di Pitane: l'origine del Platonismo neoaccademico. Analisi e fonti (Brepols 2016).

For more information, go here.

Against the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality

The latest issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (93, 2016) includes William Talbott's “A New Reliability Defeater from Evolutionary Naturalism.” The paper can be found here.

Conference on Doubt and Skepticism

On May 4-6 2017, there will be an interdisciplinary conference, “From Reasonable Doubt to Undue Scepticism,” at Birkbeck College, London. The conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines (psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, law, statistics) and practicing professionals (lawyers/judges, clinicians, climate scientists, forensic scientists, journalists) to work towards an understanding of reasoning and decision-making under uncertainty through the lens of the notion of ‘reasonable doubt’. The goal is not only to encourage interdisciplinary dialogue, but also to pay particular attention to everyday practice. This should shed new light on epistemological and psychological questions about the nature and dynamics of belief and action, as well as on difficult judicial issues. Fostering such a dialogue among disciplines, and between researchers and practitioners, should also have implications for currently pressing societal issues such as the role and credentials of experts in democracy, conspiracy theories, science denial, and the epistemology and psychology of the social media — in short, societal concerns rooted in the difficulty of navigating an overwhelming mass of information.

Keynote speakers

Professor Branden Fitelson (Northeastern University)

Professor Larry Laudan (University of Texas at Austin)

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol)

Professor Paul Roberts (University of Nottingham)

Professor Dan Simon (University of Southern California Gould School of Law)

Call for papers

In addition to the keynote presentations, a few slots will be open for contributed papers. We invite submissions from scholars or practitioners in any field relevant to the topic of the conference. The deadline for submission is December 20th, 2016. Among the issues to be addressed are the following: What is the meaning of ‘reasonable doubt’ as a legal standard of proof (how should it be understood, and how is it, in practice)? What would a Bayesian decision-theoretical account of ‘reasonable doubt’ as a possible norm of reasoning and decision-making look like? Are there criteria to tell apart reasonable doubts from unreasonable ones? Who is legitimate in setting them, and in virtue of what kind of credentials? How can critical thinking be promoted without encouraging science denial and undermining the credentials of scientists? More generally, any reflection on how experts (climate scientists, forensic scientists, health professionals, etc.) and decision-makers, but also journalists having to pass on information to the public, deal with doubt and uncertainty in their day-to-day work would be welcome.

Further information about the conference’s topic and specific issues to be addressed, as well as the submission page, are available at: http://readoubtproject.wixsite.com/conference. For any question, please write to readoubtproject@gmail.com.