Latest Issue of Sképsis

Volume 4, Issue 7 of the Brazilian journal Sképsis is now out. It features papers by Roberto Bolzani Filho, Gianni Paganini, and Todd Ryan, among others. The issue is available for free here.

Issue on Arne Naess

A recent issue of the journal Inquiry is devoted to Arne Naess. One of the articles is Inga Bostad's "The Life and Learning of Arne Naess: Scepticism as a Survival Strategy." It can be found here. I think there are several problems with this paper, but it's still worth reading.

Reviews of Book on Mackie

In previous posts, I referred to a volume on Mackie's ethical skepticism, namely, A World without Values: Essays on John Mackie's Moral Error Theory (Springer, 2010). Last year, Hallvard Lillehammer (Cambridge) published a review of this book in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. A couple of weeks ago, my own review was published in the Canadian journal Philosophy in Review.

Religious Disagreement

The following information might be of interest to those working on religious disagreement and skepticism.

Killeen Chair Conference on the Epistemology of Religious Disagreement, hosted by St. Norbert College, Green Bay, Wisconsin April 14th through 15th, 2012 (https://sites.google.com/site/killeenchair/)

Keynote Speakers:

Michael Bergmann (Purdue)
Thomas Kelly (Princeton)
Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern)

Additional Speakers:

Nathan King (Whitworth)
Jonathan Matheson (North Florida)
Andrew Moon (Missouri)
Tim Pickavance (Biola)

The organizing committee invites the submission of papers for two or three additional speakers. Papers should relate in some way to the epistemic significance of religious disagreement, and each should be suitable for a thirty-five minute presentation (roughly 3,500 words). Papers should be prepared for blind review and submitted electronically. Please send your file attached to an e-mail message in which you state your name, contact information, and the title of your paper. Preferred file formats include Word 97-2003 (.doc), Word 2007 (.docx), and PDF. Please send submissions to tomas.bogardus@snc.edu. The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 10th, 2012. The organizing committee warmly invites all interested philosophers to attend and participate in the conference. If you plan to attend, please email Tomas Bogardus at the above address so that we can plan to accommodate the group's size. Commentators will be selected for some papers. If you would be willing to comment, please indicate your interest in an email (with a current CV attached) by Friday, February 10th, 2012. One need not present a paper in order to serve as a commentator. For further information on the Killeen Chair in Theology & Philosophy, please visit http://www.snc.edu/killeen/.

Closure and Skepticism

The latest issue of Pacific Philosophical Quarterly features "No Closure on Skepticism," by Y. Avnur, A. Brueckner, and C. Bubord. The paper can be found here.

Medieval Skepticism

On November 9-10, an "atelier" on medieval philosophy entitled "Vérités probables, scepticisme et autorité" will be held at the Université de Fribourg (Switzerland). On the first day, there will be a talk and a workshop on skepticism:

15:15-16:45 (Miséricorde, salle 3115)

Conférence

Christophe Grellard (maître de conférences, Université Paris I-Sorbonne): "Le scepticisme au moyen âge".

17:15-19:00 (Miséricorde, salle 2122 AB)

Workshop

"Le scepticisme de Jean de Salisbury" sous la direction de Christophe Grellard.

For more information, you can contact the organizers at catherine.koenig-pralong@unifr.ch

Neo-Moorean Response to the Skeptic

Adam Carter (Belfast) recently published "Radical Skepticism, Closure, and Robust Knowledge," Journal of Philosophical Reasearch 36 (2011): 115-33. The contents of this journal are available on the Philosophy Documentation Center: click here.

The Moral Error Theory

A couple of years ago, Stephen Finlay published "The Error in the Error Theory," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2008): 347-69. There is now a response by Richard Joyce, "The Error in ‘The Error in the Error Theory'," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2011): 519-34, together with a reply by Finlay, "Errors Upon Errors: A Reply to Joyce," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2011): 535-47.

Serbian Book on Ancient Skepticism

During my short visit to Baltimore, I found out about a book on ancient skepticism published in Belgrade a few years ago:

Skeptički priručnik 1: Antički skepticizam (A Handbook on Skepticism 1: Ancient Skepticism). Beograd: Filozofski fakultet / Institut za filozofiju, 2007. 

The book contains an introduction by Pavle Stojanović (PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins), and a Serbian translation of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism, book I, and of Cicero's Academica.

Review of Scepticism Comes Alive

Jonathan Adler's review essay of Bryan Frances' Scepticism Comes Alive (OUP, 2005) has just appeared in PPR. The paper can be found here.

Augustine, Epicurus, and Skepticism

I've just found a prima facie interesting article published a few years ago:

C. Bolyard, "Augustine, Epicurus, and External World Skepticism," Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2006): 157-68.

The paper can be found here.

A Swamp with Deers

The reason I haven't posted much these days is that, since last Monday, I'm in Washington, DC, with a research fellowship. This is my first time in the US and I'm going to be here only for three weeks, so I'm trying to enjoy the place.

DC is insanely humid and sticky (much more than Bs. As.), but one of the things I like the most about this place is that one can stumble upon deers quite often. These animals are so bloody cool. The other night, I got lost in the woods near the place where I'm staying, and at one point I found myself standing by a really big one -- I think he even had antlers.

As regards academic activities, I'm going to present two papers on skepticism and disagreement, a topic on which I've been working for a while. The talks will be at Northwestern and Johns Hopkins, and I expect to receive artillery fire, which will be a good test. I'm also supposed to present a report on my research project on whether the skeptic can search for truth. I'm still thinking about how to do it, since no one else here works on skepticism and I feel I won't be able to say anything intelligible.

Workshop in Brazil

On October 5-7, a workshop entitled "Crença, Razão e Autoconhecimento" (Belief, Reason, and Self-Knowledge) will be held in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil). The event is organized by the Programa de Pós-graduação de Filosofia, Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da UFBA. Here is the program (in Portuguese):

05 de outubro:

9h: Plínio J. Smith (UNIFESP, CNPq): "Porchat e o conflito das filosofias."

15h: Paulo F. E. Faria (UFRGS, CNPq): "Principio de fechamento epistêmico e o princípio de transmissibilidade da justificação"

06 de outubro

9h: Pablo Quintanilla (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú): "Autoconocimiento: Una perspectiva evolutiva y comparativa."

15h: Waldomiro J. Silva Filho (UFBA, CNPq): "Vivendo sem ideias claras e distintas."

07 de outubro

9h: Plínio J. Smith (UNIFESP, CNPq): "Consciência, vaidade e surpresa."

For more information, contact Waldomiro Silva at waldomiro.silva@pq.cnpq.br.

Evolution and Skepticism

A recent issue of the South African journal Philosophical Papers features Greg Littmann's "Darwin's Doubt Defended: Why Evolution Supports Skepticism". The paper can be downloaded for free here.