This book contains important technical innovations, including comparative measures for the testable content, depth, and unity of scientific theories. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich (...) scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

While there are good reasons to think that Hegel would not engage with modern scepticism in the Science of Logic, this article argues that he nevertheless does so in a way that informs the text's conception of logic as the latter pertains to metaphysics. Hegel engages with modern scepticism's general concerns that philosophy should begin without unexamined presuppositions and should come to attain not only knowledge of truth, but corresponding second-order knowledge: knowledge of knowing truth. These concerns (...) inform two needs that Hegel formulates for first philosophy, which logic—by unifying with metaphysics, which is traditionally synonymous with first philosophy—is to satisfy. However, logic, for the Logic, is unified with metaphysics as a science of absolute knowing, the form of thinking involved in traditional metaphysics. As such, logic, for the Logic, is neither anti-metaphysical nor reducible to metaphysics, but is rather a science of metaphysical thinking, which, for Hegel, includes metaphysics. The article emphasizes how Hegel's construal of logic as a science of absolute knowing avoids running into the ‘swimming problem’ that Hegel raises against, broadly, epistemological forms of first philosophy. (shrink)

Humanists expound the virtues of science and reason. Emphasis is placed on formulating theories and predictions with clarity and precision, focusing wherever possible on phenomena that are mathematically quantifiable and can be objectively and precisely measured. Science and reason offer us truth‐sensitive ways of arriving at beliefs. As a result of scientific investigation, many religious claims, or claims endorsed by religion, have been shown to be false, or at least rather less well founded than previously thought. So (...) class='Hi'>science has threatened and indeed established beyond reasonable doubt the falsity of some religious beliefs. Science and reason are able to threaten, and indeed demolish, many religious beliefs. When religious and other woo‐claims are challenged by science and reason, various strategies may be employed in their defence. Some of the strategies are selective scepticism, re‐interpretation and accusation of scientism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article recovers the discussion of the relationship between religion, human nature and happiness in the Scottish Enlightenment physician John Gregory’s (1724–1773) A Comparative View of Human Nature (1765). Through examining Gregory’s best-selling but understudied text, this article explores how the Aberdeen Enlightenment’s own branch of the wider Scottish ‘science of human nature’, centred at the famous Aberdeen Philosophical Society, was as deeply concerned with the study of religion as it was the philosophy of mind. Gregory examined how (...) the purported cultural spread of dogmatic scepticism, associated by the Aberdonians with David Hume, threatened individual happiness and social tranquillity by removing the crutch of religious belief upon which the multitude (though not the philosopher) depended. In doing so, it suggests that the contribution made by physicians to the Scottish Enlightenment’s engagement with religion has been unjustly ignored. (shrink)

In this essay I raise a dilemma for science journalists based on recent skepticism raised by scientists about the credibility of published results in many fields. Due to systematic biases in the publication record, most published findings in these fields (including psychology and biological subfields) are almost certainly false. So should science reporters stop reporting these findings, given their mission to report verified truths? Or should they report the findings while saying they are almost certainly false?

Recent Descartes scholarship has revised the traditional view of the Cartesian project as one of strictly deductive rationalism. This revision has particularly stressed the role of science in Descartes’ thought. The revisionist conception of Descartes also downplays the significance of the sceptical arguments offered in the First Meditation, seeing them as tools for ‘turning the mind away from the senses’ in the interest of Cartesian science, rather than as reflecting genuinely epistemological concerns. This paper takes issue with this (...) aspect of the revisionist reading of Descartes. It argues that seeing scepticism as critically important for Descartes is independent of interpreting him as a canonical rationalist. In fact, it is precisely Descartes’ scientific thought and practice which make scepticism such a problem for him. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scepticism in the Enlightenment ed. by Richard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso, Giorgio Tonelli, and: The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society ed. by Johan van der Zande, Richard H. PopkinHeiner F. KlemmeRichard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso and Giorgio Tonelli, editors. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiii + 192. Cloth, $99.00.Johan van der Zande and (...) Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xix + 462. Cloth, $150.00.Who could reasonably question the importance of skepticism for the philosophical achievements of the period known as the Enlightenment? Skepticism seems to be the most appropriate means for illuminating a philosophical landscape shrouded in fog. The relatively restrained metaphor of “Aufklären” was used first by German philosophers to describe their project of removing prejudice and obscurity. British philosophers instead used the concept of “improvement,” and in France, the endeavours of the philosophes were largely associated with a determined fight against the dogmatic teachings of an all-powerful church and for religious and political freedom. But not every philosopher who employed skeptical arguments or the method of skepticism was therefore a skeptic, or someone who intended to establish a form of skepticism. And [End Page 171] some who sought to provide philosophy with a firm anti-skeptical foundation found themselves being accused of being skeptics themselves. Berkeley’s dogmatic Immaterialism was accused immediately of leading right away to the most abstruse kind of skepticism ever heard of, and Kant’s critical philosophy was forbidden in Hessia because of its alleged skepticism. Furthermore, many philosophers were indebted to some form of skepticism while not being skeptics themselves. Thus Reid’s common-sense-philosophy owed as much to Hume’s skeptical philosophy as did J. G. Hamann and F. H. Jacobi.Modern skepticism goes back to ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism, which many philosophers of the Enlightenment for one reason or another still considered as a live option. But exactly what kind of skepticism their own writings entail and to what extent they were influenced by more modern types of skepticism—like that to be found in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and others—is not always easy to decide. In addition, skepticism was sometimes viewed as a kind of systematic philosophy and the skeptic was considered to be a specific kind of philosopher, different from a Platonist, Stoic, or Epicurean, as in Hume for instance. But the vast majority of philosophers used skeptical arguments as instruments, or as the first step in laying the foundation for a new philosophical system. Finally, there are many much more subtle traces of skepticism in Enlightenment thought, which cannot always be put together easily in a comprehensive picture. The many-sided history of skepticism in the eighteenth century is accordingly difficult to tell.Richard H. Popkin’s work has been decisive for a further investigation of eighteenth century skepticism. His early “Scepticism in the Enlightenment” (1963) was seminal. Popkin pointed out in this article Hume’s central position. Hume marked the beginning of an increasing debate about different and variable types and contents of Enlightenment skepticism. Scepticism in the Enlightenment contains articles by Popkin himself, as well as articles by the late Giorgio Tonelli, known to many as an expert in Kant’s precritical philosophy, and by the late Ezequiel de Olaso, which were directly or indirectly occasioned by Popkin’s work. Only two of the ten articles are new (de Olaso on “Scepticism Old and New,” and Popkin’s very useful contribution on “Berkeley in the History of Scepticism”). But Tonelli’s “Kant and the Ancient Skeptics,” which appeared in 1967 in German, appears here for the first time in English translation. Although Tonelli’s scholarly article is still of interest today, Hume’s influence on Kant’s thought in the middle of the 1760’s should not be underestimated. Tonelli also seems to be too sceptical about Kant’s first-hand knowledge of ancient skepticism. For instance, Johann Matthias Gesner’s Chrestomathia Graeca (Leipzig, 1731), the school book used in the Greek class Kant attended as a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scepticism in the Enlightenment ed. by Richard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso, Giorgio Tonelli, and: The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society ed. by Johan van der Zande, Richard H. PopkinHeiner F. KlemmeRichard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso and Giorgio Tonelli, editors. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiii + 192. Cloth, $99.00.Johan van der Zande and (...) Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xix + 462. Cloth, $150.00.Who could reasonably question the importance of skepticism for the philosophical achievements of the period known as the Enlightenment? Skepticism seems to be the most appropriate means for illuminating a philosophical landscape shrouded in fog. The relatively restrained metaphor of “Aufklären” was used first by German philosophers to describe their project of removing prejudice and obscurity. British philosophers instead used the concept of “improvement,” and in France, the endeavours of the philosophes were largely associated with a determined fight against the dogmatic teachings of an all-powerful church and for religious and political freedom. But not every philosopher who employed skeptical arguments or the method of skepticism was therefore a skeptic, or someone who intended to establish a form of skepticism. And [End Page 171] some who sought to provide philosophy with a firm anti-skeptical foundation found themselves being accused of being skeptics themselves. Berkeley’s dogmatic Immaterialism was accused immediately of leading right away to the most abstruse kind of skepticism ever heard of, and Kant’s critical philosophy was forbidden in Hessia because of its alleged skepticism. Furthermore, many philosophers were indebted to some form of skepticism while not being skeptics themselves. Thus Reid’s common-sense-philosophy owed as much to Hume’s skeptical philosophy as did J. G. Hamann and F. H. Jacobi.Modern skepticism goes back to ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism, which many philosophers of the Enlightenment for one reason or another still considered as a live option. But exactly what kind of skepticism their own writings entail and to what extent they were influenced by more modern types of skepticism—like that to be found in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and others—is not always easy to decide. In addition, skepticism was sometimes viewed as a kind of systematic philosophy and the skeptic was considered to be a specific kind of philosopher, different from a Platonist, Stoic, or Epicurean, as in Hume for instance. But the vast majority of philosophers used skeptical arguments as instruments, or as the first step in laying the foundation for a new philosophical system. Finally, there are many much more subtle traces of skepticism in Enlightenment thought, which cannot always be put together easily in a comprehensive picture. The many-sided history of skepticism in the eighteenth century is accordingly difficult to tell.Richard H. Popkin’s work has been decisive for a further investigation of eighteenth century skepticism. His early “Scepticism in the Enlightenment” (1963) was seminal. Popkin pointed out in this article Hume’s central position. Hume marked the beginning of an increasing debate about different and variable types and contents of Enlightenment skepticism. Scepticism in the Enlightenment contains articles by Popkin himself, as well as articles by the late Giorgio Tonelli, known to many as an expert in Kant’s precritical philosophy, and by the late Ezequiel de Olaso, which were directly or indirectly occasioned by Popkin’s work. Only two of the ten articles are new (de Olaso on “Scepticism Old and New,” and Popkin’s very useful contribution on “Berkeley in the History of Scepticism”). But Tonelli’s “Kant and the Ancient Skeptics,” which appeared in 1967 in German, appears here for the first time in English translation. Although Tonelli’s scholarly article is still of interest today, Hume’s influence on Kant’s thought in the middle of the 1760’s should not be underestimated. Tonelli also seems to be too sceptical about Kant’s first-hand knowledge of ancient skepticism. For instance, Johann Matthias Gesner’s Chrestomathia Graeca (Leipzig, 1731), the school book used in the Greek class Kant attended as a... (shrink)

Recent work on Descartes has drastically revised the traditional conception of Descartes as a paradigmatic rationalist and foundationalist. The traditional picture, familar from histories of philosophy and introductory lectures, is of a solitary meditator dedicated to the pursuit of certainty in a unified science via a rigourous process of logical deduction from indubitable first principles. But the Descartes that has emerged from recent studies strikes a more subtle balance between metaphysics, physics, epistemology and the philosophy of science. There (...) is much to be praised in this revaluation, but a dangerous amount of over-compensation has gone on, particularly in the reinterpretation of the role of sceptical doubt in Descartes' thought. This reinterpretion plays down the epistemological reasons for worrying about scepticism, suggesting that Cartesian physics is what ultimately drives the introduction of scepticism in the First Meditation. (shrink)

This paper replies to Peter Millican (Mind, 2009), who argues that Hume denies the possible existence of causal powers which underlie the regularities that we observe in nature. I argue that Hume's own philosophical views on causal power cannot be considered apart from his mitigated skepticism. His account of the origin of the idea of causal power, which traces it to a subjective impression, only leads to what he calls ‘Pyrrhonian scepticism’. He holds that we can only escape such (...) excessive skepticism by way of a natural judgment based on the association of ideas, which forms the basis of what he calls ‘a legitimate ground of Assent’. (shrink)

Can we know anything for certain? There are those who think we can (traditionally labeled the "dogmatists") and those who think we cannot (traditionally labeled the "skeptics"). The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, is the great debate between the two. This book is an introductory and historically-based survey of the debate. It sides for the most part with the skeptics. It also develops out of skepticism a third view, fallibilism or critical rationalism, which incorporates an uncompromising realism about perception, (...) class='Hi'>science, and the nature of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scepticism in the Enlightenment ed. by Richard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso, Giorgio Tonelli, and: The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society ed. by Johan van der Zande, Richard H. PopkinHeiner F. KlemmeRichard H. Popkin, Ezequiel de Olaso and Giorgio Tonelli, editors. Scepticism in the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Pp. xiii + 192. Cloth, $99.00.Johan van der Zande and (...) Richard H. Popkin, editors. The Skeptical Tradition around 1800: Skepticism in Philosophy, Science, and Society. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Pp. xix + 462. Cloth, $150.00.Who could reasonably question the importance of skepticism for the philosophical achievements of the period known as the Enlightenment? Skepticism seems to be the most appropriate means for illuminating a philosophical landscape shrouded in fog. The relatively restrained metaphor of “Aufklären” was used first by German philosophers to describe their project of removing prejudice and obscurity. British philosophers instead used the concept of “improvement,” and in France, the endeavours of the philosophes were largely associated with a determined fight against the dogmatic teachings of an all-powerful church and for religious and political freedom. But not every philosopher who employed skeptical arguments or the method of skepticism was therefore a skeptic, or someone who intended to establish a form of skepticism. And [End Page 171] some who sought to provide philosophy with a firm anti-skeptical foundation found themselves being accused of being skeptics themselves. Berkeley’s dogmatic Immaterialism was accused immediately of leading right away to the most abstruse kind of skepticism ever heard of, and Kant’s critical philosophy was forbidden in Hessia because of its alleged skepticism. Furthermore, many philosophers were indebted to some form of skepticism while not being skeptics themselves. Thus Reid’s common-sense-philosophy owed as much to Hume’s skeptical philosophy as did J. G. Hamann and F. H. Jacobi.Modern skepticism goes back to ancient Academic and Pyrrhonian Skepticism, which many philosophers of the Enlightenment for one reason or another still considered as a live option. But exactly what kind of skepticism their own writings entail and to what extent they were influenced by more modern types of skepticism—like that to be found in the works of Montaigne, Bayle, and others—is not always easy to decide. In addition, skepticism was sometimes viewed as a kind of systematic philosophy and the skeptic was considered to be a specific kind of philosopher, different from a Platonist, Stoic, or Epicurean, as in Hume for instance. But the vast majority of philosophers used skeptical arguments as instruments, or as the first step in laying the foundation for a new philosophical system. Finally, there are many much more subtle traces of skepticism in Enlightenment thought, which cannot always be put together easily in a comprehensive picture. The many-sided history of skepticism in the eighteenth century is accordingly difficult to tell.Richard H. Popkin’s work has been decisive for a further investigation of eighteenth century skepticism. His early “Scepticism in the Enlightenment” (1963) was seminal. Popkin pointed out in this article Hume’s central position. Hume marked the beginning of an increasing debate about different and variable types and contents of Enlightenment skepticism. Scepticism in the Enlightenment contains articles by Popkin himself, as well as articles by the late Giorgio Tonelli, known to many as an expert in Kant’s precritical philosophy, and by the late Ezequiel de Olaso, which were directly or indirectly occasioned by Popkin’s work. Only two of the ten articles are new (de Olaso on “Scepticism Old and New,” and Popkin’s very useful contribution on “Berkeley in the History of Scepticism”). But Tonelli’s “Kant and the Ancient Skeptics,” which appeared in 1967 in German, appears here for the first time in English translation. Although Tonelli’s scholarly article is still of interest today, Hume’s influence on Kant’s thought in the middle of the 1760’s should not be underestimated. Tonelli also seems to be too sceptical about Kant’s first-hand knowledge of ancient skepticism. For instance, Johann Matthias Gesner’s Chrestomathia Graeca (Leipzig, 1731), the school book used in the Greek class Kant attended as a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 109-110 [Access article in PDF] Paul Stanistreet. Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2002. Pp.xi + 226. Cloth, $69.95. Any new book on David Hume enters an already overcrowded field. There is no shortage of commentary on Hume's philosophy to be found in a broad range of journals such as Hume Studies, and in (...) recent years a steady stream of monographs and collections have appeared. In addition to this rapidly expanding body of literature, rigorous textual scholarship is being brought to bear on Hume's philosophical writings in the Clarendon edition of Hume's works; significant eighteenth-century editions of Hume are more widely available thanks to facsimile reprints; and a new edition of Hume's correspondence is in preparation. Moreover, this activity has not taken place in a vacuum, insofar as the study of the Scottish Enlightenment and of key figures like Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid has itself been something of an academic growth industry. Consequently, the interpretation of Hume now requires considerable intellectual expertise, a familiarity with an increasingly technical secondary literature, and a firm grasp on the divergent approaches to Hume that have emerged over the past quarter century.In Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature, Paul Stanistreet aims both to "provide the reader with an accessible guide to the most significant recent developments in Hume scholarship" and "[defend] a general interpretation of Hume's philosophy" (viii) that is largely based on a close reading of Book I of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. Although Stanistreet's introductory statement of his intentions may seem innocuous to the student readership his book is least partly intended for, the apparent innocence of his opening remarks masks a serious issue, namely the validity of grounding a reading of Hume primarily on the first book of the Treatise. A number of leading Hume scholars would argue, pace Stanistreet, that one cannot offer such an interpretation without reference to the two Enquiries and other texts by Hume. Furthermore, Hume himself can be read as opposing Stanistreet's approach. In the face of hostile critics like James Beattie and Thomas Reid, who focussed their attacks on the Treatise, Hume chose to exclude his first publication from the Humean canon and thereby deflect some of the ill-tempered criticism he had been forced to endure in his later years. Thus, in the "Advertisement" prefacing the 1777 edition of the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, he explicitly disavowed the Treatise and announced that his philosophical principles were to be found exclusively in the works included in the Essays and Treatises. For the long line of commentators fixated on the Treatise, the "Advertisement" poses questions of interpretation that cannot be ignored, and, for the benefit of his readers, Stanistreet therefore should have not only acknowledged that such questions exist, but also provided some justification for the approach to Hume he adopts.According to Stanistreet, the key to understanding Hume's philosophy is to see how he reconciles his positive programme of constructing a "science of man" with the apparently sceptical thrust of the major arguments advanced in Book I of the Treatise. To show how this reconciliation is achieved, Stanistreet first elucidates Hume's conception of the science of human nature and then proceeds to a detailed consideration of Hume's version of the theory of ideas, his treatment of causation and probable reasoning, and his analysis of our belief in objects external to and independent of ourselves. What emerges from Stanistreet's patient exposition of Hume's position is that Hume was no Pyrrhonian, but rather an advocate for a form of mitigated scepticism that was of a piece with his science of man. For anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Hume literature, this will hardly be a startling conclusion. Nor is it news that Hume was supposedly engaged in establishing a genuinely Newtonian science of the mind, as Stanistreet argues at length in Chapter 1... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn response to the rising popularity of empirical models of scholarship and an increasingly sharp sceptic criticism against historiography, early modern historiographers strived to place their reconstruction of the past on a more ‘scientific’ basis through a new approach to historical writing. Their strategies included the mobilization of various other scholarly disciplines, such as geography, chronology, linguistics, ethnography, philology, etc. that came to function as ‘auxiliary sciences’ of early modern historiography. These came to fulfil three main roles in historical writing. (...) Firstly, they supplied knowledge on cultural-historical topics that were newly introduced into the subject range of historiography. Secondly, they offered new solutions to the problem of reliable historical evidence by opening up new sources of historical information. And thirdly, they proved helpful in deciding scholarly discussions among historical writers. Through a detailed study of the use of ‘auxiliary sciences’ in seminal texts from the new current in historical writing, I will shed light on the range of scholarly disciplines that were enlisted in early modern historiography and how they contributed to the development of a new, more ‘scientific’ approach to the reconstruction of the past. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism. It is argued that a fundamental argument for contemporary epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. Pyrrhonian scepticism is compared and contrasted with Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Humean scepticism about induction. Epistemic relativism is characterized as relativism due to the variation of epistemic norms, and is contrasted with other forms of cognitive relativism, such as truth relativism, conceptual relativism and (...) ontological relativism. An argument from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion to epistemic relativism is presented, and is contrasted with three other arguments for epistemic relativism. It is argued that the argument from the criterion is the most fundamental argument for epistemic relativism. Finally, it is noted how the argument of the present paper fits with the author’s previous suggestion that a particularist response to the Pyrrhonian sceptic may be combined with a naturalistic view of epistemic warrant to meet the challenge of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

Outlines of Scepticism, by the Greek philosopher Sextus Empiricus, is a work of major importance for the history of Greek philosophy. It is the fullest extant account of ancient scepticism, and it is also one of our most copious sources of information about the other Hellenistic philosophies. Its first part contains an elaborate exposition of the Pyrrhonian variety of scepticism; its second and third parts are critical and destructive, arguing against 'dogmatism' in logic, epistemology, science and (...) ethics - an approach that revolutionized the study of philosophy when Sextus' works were rediscovered and published in the sixteenth century. This volume presents the accurate and readable translation which was first published in 1994, together with a substantial new historical and philosophical introduction by Jonathan Barnes. (shrink)

Hegel’s Science of Logic is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest works of European philosophy. However, its contribution to arguably the most important philosophical problem, Pyrrhonian scepticism, has never been examined in any detail. Pyrrhonian Scepticism and Hegel's Theory of Judgement fills a great lacuna in Hegel scholarship by convincingly proving that the dialectic of the judgement in Hegel’s Science of Logic successfully refutes this kind of scepticism. Although Ioannis Trisokkas has written the book (...) primarily for those students of philosophy who already have an interest in Hegel’s epistemology and philosophy of language and/or his Science of Logic, it will also appeal to those who investigate the problem of scepticism independently of the Hegel corpus. (shrink)

Paul Stanistreet's Hume's Scepticism and the Science of Human Nature seeks to address its subject matter at a level somewhere between that of an introductory text and an original, scholarly contribution to Hume scholarship. Stanistreet states that the book is written "with the general reader or beginning student of Hume in mind." At the same time, he says.

Musgrave opens the book defending the general claim that knowledge consists of justified true beliefs. He concedes that there may well be other kinds of knowledge--knowledge of things, knowing how --but still, he contends, there is much of interest in "knowledge that", and this kind of knowledge is best analyzed in terms of a justified true belief account. If, then, knowing that is a matter of belief, truth, and justification, the most obvious difficulty concerns what counts as an appropriate justification. (...) Generally, knowledge may be justified by appeal to experience or by appeal to certain propositions known a priori. The bulk of Musgrave's book details the three-cornered fight between the empiricists, the rationalists, and the sceptics. (shrink)

In mathematics we have demonstrably insoluble problems, one example being that of trisecting an arbitrary angle in elementary geometry. Every now and then, we encounter engineers and others who offer solutions of the insoluble and make some stir. To those who feel convinced of the demonstration of insolubility, these claimed solutions do not seem to deserve any serious considerations. In fact, such solutions have long since ceased to attract attention from mathematicians.The situation in philosophy seems different. Here we do not (...) possess demonstrations as clear and distinct as in mathematics. For example, it has been a fashion among philosophers for two centuries or so to answer Hume's scepticism concerning induction. Although, presumably, there never has been any answer or solution which is as widely accepted among philosophers as Hume's sceptical argument, yet philosophers continue to enjoy elaborating arguments for and against Hume's scepticism. And people who feel convinced by Hume's resaoning often find it difficult to understand why philosophers persist in trying to contradict Hume flatly instead of seeking for some more devious way out. (shrink)

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream (...) class='Hi'>scepticism, and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop a novel response to counterfactual scepticism, the thesis that most ordinary counterfactual claims are false. In the process we aim to shed light on the relationship between debates in the philosophy of science and debates concerning the semantics and pragmatics of counterfactuals. We argue that science is concerned with many domains of inquiry, each with its own characteristic entities and regularities; moreover, statements of scientific law often include an implicit ceteris paribus clause (...) that restricts the scope of the associated regularity to circumstances that are ‘fitting’ to the domain in question. This observation reveals a way of responding to scepticism while, at the same time, doing justice both to the role of counterfactuals in science and to the complexities inherent in ordinary counterfactual discourse and reasoning. (shrink)

Cet article s’interroge sur ce qu’est l’ἀριθμητική τέχνη visée par Sextus dans le Contre les arithméticiens. Après avoir rappelé brièvement le contenu de M IV, on examine la nature de cette discipline. Une fois clarifiée la question de savoir en quoi consistait l’ἀριθμητική τέχνη dans l’Antiquité – et donc ce que visait Sextus dans M IV –, on examine son rapport avec les autres disciplines critiquées par Sextus dans le Contre les Professeurs. Cette enquête mène à mettre en lumière une (...) importante présupposition implicite dans l’attitude de Sextus à l’égard des sciences. (shrink)