Showing papers on "Pyrrhonism published in 2013"

Pyrrhonism, Inquiry, and Rationality

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, I critically engage with Casey Perin's interpretation of Sextan Pyrrhonism in his recent book, The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. From an approach that is both exegetical and systematic, I explore a number of issues concerning the Pyrrhonist's inquiry into truth, his alleged commitment to the canons of rationality, and his response to the apraxia objection.

A noção de phainómenon em Sexto Empírico

Abstract: Os filosofos estoicos, na antiguidade grega, assim como Hume e sua posterioridade filosofica moderna, opuseram ao ceticismo pirronico a famosa objecao da inacao e da inconsistencia, segundo a qual seria impossivel a um cetico agir e permanecer vivo se permanecesse coerente com sua propria filosofia. E isso precisamente porque essa sua filosofia proibe, de fato, ao cetico ter crencas de qualquer especie que seja. Essa objecao, repetida insistentemente durante quase dois milenios, continua sendo brandida contra os ceticos nos meios filosoficos de nossos dias, inclusive entre importantes estudiosos do pirronismo antigo. Sexto Empirico conheceu obviamente a objecao e nos explica como os adversarios a entendem. O proposito principal deste artigo e mostrar como Sexto responde a objecao, dissolvendo-a inteiramente. Ele afirma que a formulacao da objecao se deve a total ignorância do ceticismo pirronico por parte de seus adversarios e, particularmente, a sua incompreensao da linguagem ( logos ) cetica. E ele nos mostra como e por que os adversarios foram levados a uma tal concepcao distorcida do logos cetico. Se esses pontos sao estabelecidos -- e eu penso que eles podem ser claramente estabelecidos com base nos textos de Sexto Empirico -- eu ouso sustentar que uma nova interpretacao do pirronismo de Sexto deles inexoravelmente resulta, em oposicao frontal a interpretacao tradicional. E a nova interpretacao nao e desumana como a tradicional. Abstract As much as Stoic philosophers, in Greek Ancient philosophy, also Hume and his modern philosophical posteriority, have opposed to Pyrrhonian Skepticism the famous objection of inaction and inconsistency, according to which it would be impossible for a Skeptic to act and to remain alive, if he were to remain coherent with his own philosophy. And so, precisely because this very philosophy as a matter of fact prohibits the Skeptic from having beliefs of any kind whatsoever. This objection has been insistently repeated during almost two millennia and keeps being used against the Skeptics in the philosophical circles of our days, not less by some of the more important scholars on Sextian pyrrhonism. Sextus Empiricus knew obviously the objection and explains to us how the adversaries understand it. The main purpose of this paper is to show how Sextus answers to the objection and dissolves it entirely. He affirms that the formulation of the objection is due to a total ignorance of the adversaries concerning the Pyrrhonian skepticism and, particularly, to their incomprehension of the skeptic language ( logos ). And he indicates to us how and why the adversaries have been led to such a distorted conception of the skeptical logos. If these points are established -- and I do think that they can be clearly established on the basis of Sextus Empiricus' texts -- I dare to claim that a new interpretation of Sextus' Pyrrhonism results inexorably from them, in frontal opposition to the traditional interpretation. And the new interpretation is not inhumane like the traditional one. Recebido em 07/2014 Aprovado em 08/2014

Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History

Abstract: Bayle’s “sceptical method of antinomy” is of enduring historical interest, since so many figures of the period discussed it, including Hume, Kant, and Hegel. In the paper, I examine Bayle’s own definition of scepticism, and exhibit his scepticism at work in the writing of his Dictionary. The first part shows how the sceptical method is built into the very idea of a critique and Bayle’s philosophical reflections. Then, I turn to the application of the sceptical method in the Dictionnary. Finally, I compare Bayle’s use of this method and Sextus’ use, showing the novelties introduced by him.

Skepticism, Belief, and the Criterion of Truth

Abstract: Abstract This paper deals with Pyrrhonian skepticism. It argues that the central argument presented by Jonathan Barnes in favor of the view that skepticism precludes the possession of any belief fails. In brief, Barnes maintains that, because skepticism requires suspending judgment whether criteria of truth exist, no skeptic can, consistently with her skepticism, possess a criterion of truth; this entails, he argues, that no skeptic can make any judgments about anything and, hence, cannot come to possess any beliefs. I evaluate this argument in two ways: first, if we understand criteria of truth along the lines proposed by Sextus’ Hellenistic opponents, the argument fails because such criteria were introduced to guarantee that at least some of our beliefs could count as knowledge, and not to guarantee the very possibility of making judgments in the first place. Second, if we broaden our conception of a criterion of truth, such that a criterion is any standard against which an impression can be evaluated, the argument fails because it equivocates on the notion of ‘possession’. On the one hand, in the sense in which someone must possess such a criterion in order to make judgments, the skeptic’s suspension of judgment concerning their existence does not entail that she does not possess a criterion of truth. On the other hand, in the sense in which the skeptic does not possess such a criterion, possession of a criterion of truth is not a necessary condition for making judgments. Thus, I conclude that the skeptics’ epistemic attitude towards the existence of criteria of truth (i.e. suspension of judgment) does not entail that skeptics cannot possess any beliefs.

Five modes of scepticism : an analysis of the Agrippan modes in Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism

Abstract: This thesis has as its focus five argumentative modes that lie at the heart of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism. They are the modes of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity and relativity. They are analysed, individually, in the first five chapters of the thesis (one mode per chapter) and, collectively, in the sixth. The first four chapters deal, respectively, with the modes of disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression and reciprocity. They distinguish between two versions of these modes: “dogmatic versions”, on the basis of which a dogmatic philosopher, who holds some theoretical beliefs, might reach a sceptical conclusion; and “sceptical versions”, on the basis of which a sceptical philosopher, who lacks all theoretical beliefs, might do so. It is argued that scholars such as Jonathan Barnes have offered reconstructions of these modes which are dogmatic in the sense just described, and alternative sceptical versions of the modes are presented. A stand-alone fifth chapter offers an analysis of a stand-alone mode - the mode of relativity. It argues that there are in fact three different modes of relativity at play in the Outlines, that only one of them is non-trivial, and that the non-trivial version is incompatible with the mode of disagreement. The sixth and final chapter offers an analysis of how the modes (excluding relativity) are meant to work in combination with one another. Four different combinations are presented and it is argued that all of them are underscored by a variety of theoretical assumptions, which a sceptic, who lacks all theoretical beliefs, cannot make. The ultimate conclusion of the thesis is that, though the sceptic can deploy the various modes individually (by means of exercising his particular sceptical ability), he is not able to systematise them into a net by means of which he might trap his dogmatic opponent. Unless specified otherwise, translations are based on Annas, J., and Barnes, J., Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Scepticism in the eighteenth century : Enlightenment, Lumières, Aufklärung

Abstract: Introduction, S. Charles, P. Smith.- What is Enlightenment Scepticism? A Critical Rereading of Richard Popkin, S. Charles.- Bayle and Pyrrhonism: Antinomy, Method, and History, P. Smith.- Fideism, Scepticism, or Free-Thought? The Dispute between Lamy and Saint-Laurens about Metaphysical Knowledge, S. Malinowski-Charles.- Leibniz's Anti-Scepticism, A. Pelletier.- The Protestant Critics of Bayle at the Dawn of the Enlightenment, A. Matytsin.- The 'Wise Pyrrhonism' of the Academie Royale des Sciences of Paris: Natural Light and Obscurity of Nature according to Fontenelle, L. Peterschmitt.- Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Moral Scepticisms, P. Kail.- A New Source for Hume's Treatise: Bayle and the First Half of the Section 'Of the immateriality of the Soul', G. Paganini.- Hume's Reply to Baylean Scepticism, T. Ryan.- How Can we Know if Scepticism is Right or Wrong? Hume and Reid's Epistemological Answers, C. Etchegaray.- Enfield's Brucker and Christian Anti-scepticism in Enlightenment Historiography of Philosophy, J.- C. Laursen.- Reasonable Scepticism in the French Enlightenment: some connections between Jean-Baptiste Boyer d'Argens, Louis de Beausobre and Voltaire, N. Correard.- Forms and Aims in Voltairean Scepticism, S. Pujol.- D'un scepticisme involontaire a un scepticisme existentiel. Un parcours philosophique dans l'oeuvre de Rousseau, M.-A. Nadeau.- An Uneasy Relationship: Atheism and Scepticism in the Late French Enlightenment, A. Kors.- From universal Pyrrhonism to Revolutionary Scepticism: Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, S. Charles.- Kant's Criticism and the Legacy of Modern Scepticism, P. Smith.- Maimon, scepticisme et Lumieres, I. Radrizzani.- Scepticisme et dialectique des Lumieres chez le jeune Hegel, I. Testa.- Hegel on Scepticism and Irony, M. Biscuso.- Fichte et Schopenhauer face au scepticisme de Schulze, E. Brandao.- Building without a Foundation: On the Equating of Enlightenment with Scepticism in Post-Revolutionary French Thought, F. Brahami.- Scepticisme et Lumieres selon Lamennais, P. Knee.

Casey Perin’s The Demands of Reason

Abstract: The Demands of Reason: An Essay on Pyrrhonian Scepticism. By Casey Perin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 130. ISBN 978-0-19-955790-5.

From Universal Pyrrhonism to Revolutionary Scepticism: Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville

Abstract: Jean-Pierre Brissot de Warville’s relationship to early modern scepticism is interesting for two main reasons. Firstly, he does not share the common preference of the Enlightenment philosophers for what they called a “mitigated scepticism,” which they thought was an important methodological warrant against systematic thought. On the contrary, Brissot de Warville insists on the necessity to revisit scepticism and to come back to a “general system of Pyrrhonism” which, like that of the Ancients, would undermine any kind of knowledge. Secondly, this sceptical stand of Brissot’s evolves during his lifetime. In youth texts that are still very little known of, particularly in an unpublished manuscript, he establishes the foundations of what is meant to be an absolute scepticism. However, the French Revolution forced him to change his views and to favour a form of dogmatism – his dogmatic defence of the Girondists, indeed, causing his death. This evolution interestingly revives Myles Burnyeat’s discussion of whether the sceptic can really live his scepticism. This example would prompt me to answer that there are historical periods in which scepticism is not only a fruitless, but actually an impossible view to hold.

The Origins of Hobbes’s State of Nature

Abstract: I argue from The Elements of Law, De Cive and Leviathan that Hobbes constructed his state of nature drawing on an eclectic range of ideas – from Plato, Thucydides, Pyrrhonism and Chillingworth, and even Descartes Sometimes he adapted themes and ideas from his reading and sometimes he reacted against them His early humanist studies and work on Thucydides and Aristotle provided an important foundation His account of primitive history was based on the ancient theory of historical progress, which he thought was validated by native Americans The traditional view of the anarchy of civil war was a ready companion to this theory He developed a theory of moral relativity based on Pyrrhonism, the Protestant exaltation of the individual conscience, and a radical theory of subjective natural right that seems to owe much to Fernando Vazquez His novel theory of natural equality rejects the traditional juridical and theological idea for one that capitalizes on contemporary fear of social equality Finally, his theory of the passions that produce the war of all against all are almost certainly drawn from Thucydides

The “Wise Pyrrhonism” of the Académie Royale Des Sciences of Paris: Natural Light and Obscurity of Nature According to Fontenelle

Abstract: In this paper, my aim is to study the “wise pyrhonism”, which, according to Fontenelle, should ground the system of physics. However, the methodological scepticism (i.e. the close review of the proofs, either rational or experimental) leads to a in principle scepticism, which doubts of the possibility of a certain physics. The example of chemistry, the most obscure part of physics, shows how the difficulty is solved. According to Fontenelle there are several ways to elaborate knowledge. It is a kind of historical pragmatism that allows to think that it is possible to achieve the constitution of the true physics.

Es Sexto Empírico un protagórico

Abstract: In the Outlines of Pyrrhonism , Sextus Empiricus advances an argument similar to Descartes' dream, which seems to commit Sextus to some sort of Protagorean relativism. In this article, I examine this argument in the context of other passages of Sextus and propose an interpretation that shows that the skepticism that one can draw from this argument is as radical as Descartes', but it can never be considered a relativistic argument. I show that Sextus makes a crucial mistake when describing Protagoras' position as well as his own —a mistake which could lead one to falsely conclude that Sextus is a Protagorean relativist.