A Couple of Books

Duncan Pritchard (University of Edinburgh) has just co-edited two volumes on topics that might be of interest to those working on contemporary skepticism:

Epistemic Value, edited with A. Haddock & A. Millar (OUP, 2009).

Williamson on Knowledge, edited with P. Greenough (OUP, 2009).

Papers on Ancient Skepticism

Those familiar with the scholarship on ancient skepticism might be interested to know that, between last year and this year, Emidio Spinelli has published a few papers on the subject. Here is the list:

"Una vita disincantata: bios e philosophia nello scetticismo antico", and "A volte ritornano, perfino i pirroniani", both in Il bios dei filosofi: dialogo a più voci sul tipo di vita preferibile, edited by F. De Luise, Università degli Studi di Trento: Trento, 2009.

"Sesto Empirico contro i musici: contesto e senso di una polemica antica", in Filosofia e musica, edited by C. Tatasciore, Bruno Mondadori: Milano, 2008.

"L'attacco di Sesto Empirico alle technai: polemica antipaideutica e genuino pirronismo", in Anthropine sophia. Studi di filologia e storiografia filosofica in memoria di Gabriele Giannantoni, edited by F. Alesse, F. Aronadio, C. Dalfino, L. Simeoni, and Spinelli, Bibliopolis: Napoli, 2008.

“Sextus Empiricus, l’expérience sceptique et l’horizon de l’éthique”, in Cahiers Philosophiques 115 (October).

Sosa's Reflective Knowledge

A review of Ernest Sosa's Reflective Knowledge: Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge, volume II (OUP, 2009) has just appeared in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Bueno's Talk

On August 21, Otávio Bueno (University of Miami) is going to deliver the paper “Science and Skepticism” at the Philosophy Department Colloquium of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Belo Horizonte, Brazil).

Book on Mackie's Skepticism

In a post last year, I said that Richard Joyce and Simon Kirchin were editing A World Without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory. It seems that Springer is going to publish the volume next December. However, a description of the book and its table of contents are already available here.

Book on Moral Skepticism

Last February, Anita Superson (University of Kentucky) published The Moral Skeptic (OUP). For information about this book, click here. A interesting review has recently appeared in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

Ioppolo's New Book

Anna Maria Ioppolo, one of the leading specialists in Academic skepticism, has just published La testimonianza di Sesto Empirico sull'Accademia scettica (Napoli: Bibliopolis). For information about the book, click here.

To see a list of some of her other publications on the skeptical Academy, take a look at this post or click on her name in the list of specialists on the right side of this web page.

Book on Montaigne

Yesterday, I received the book Michel de Montaigne: la culminación del escepticismo en el Renacimiento (Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Córdoba, 2007), written by Manuel Bermúdez Vázquez. He is also the author of La recuperación del escepticismo en el Renacimiento como propedéutica de la filosofía de Francisco Sánchez (Fundación Universitaria Española, 2006). I just started reading the book, but I can tell you that its main thesis is that Montaigne's skepticism was more influenced by Socrates and Saint Augustine than by Sextus Empiricus.

Reheated Cabbage

OFF TOPIC

Several years ago, when I started systematically reading papers in the fields of ancient philosophy and epistemology, I got the impression that some top scholars used a few ideas to write two, three, or four papers. Moreover, I got used to reading in the first or last note of a paper that its author had drawn on parts of previous papers, some of which were reproduced with minor changes. The result was that subsequent papers looked like reheated cabbage, so that the reader could perfectly well do without them. Sometimes, there were one or two new arguments, but nothing which, in my view, justified the writing of a new paper. Last year, while I was a visiting researcher in Fribourg, I briefly brought this up with two North American epistemologists who were attending a conference, and they didn't agree with me. They thought that, if one had a new argument in response to an objection raised against a view defended in a previous paper, one could write another one including the argument. I partially agree with this. I mean, if one wants to reply to an objection by writing a short note, ok, but does this justify to publishing a whole paper in which just a few paragraphs are really new or original while the rest has undergone merely cosmetic changes? To my mind, one should publish a paper dealing with an issue already addressed in a previous publication only when one has several new arguments to put forward or when one has a different approach to the issue in question. (Comments from readers are of course welcome.)

La Bruyère Prize

I've just been told that Gianni Paganini's book Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme (Vrin, 2008) has just been awarded La Bruyère Prize for Humanities and Philosophy (silver medal) by the Académie Française.

Croatian Translation of Sextus

Last year, Filip Grgić (Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb) published a Croatian translation of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism. The volume also contains an introduction, notes, three appendices (on the Ten Modes, on the Five Modes, and on PH II 1-11) and the Greek text. This is the first translation of Sextus in Croatian (and in any South Slavic language). For information, click here.

Paper on Epistemic Justification

The latest issue of Ratio features a paper that might be of interest to those working on epistemology and skepticism: "A Paradox of Justified Believing" by Colin Cheyne (University of Otago). To read the abstract and access the paper click here.

Workshop on Skepticism

On July 27-30, at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico), Anjan Chakravarty (University of Toronto) is going to give the workshop "Scientific Realism and Philosophical Skepticism". For information, click on the image.

DeRose's New Book

In a post last August, I mentioned that Keith DeRose (Yale University) was working on a book project entitled "Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context". The first volume of this project has just been published with the title The Case for Contextualism. For information, click here.