Throughout history, both philosophers and non-philosophers have doubted that philosophical positions qua philosophical positions are justified and that philosophy is a rational enterprise. Today, such doubts are grouped under the term “Metaphilosophical Skepticism”. Nicholas Rescher, in his book Strife of Systems, includes Kant among the proponents of this kind of skepticism. I want to argue that while Rescher is wrong, Kant has con­tributed to a new version of such skepticism. In the first step, I characterize the basic idea of metaphilosophical (...) skepticism in more detail and identify a version of this idea, which I call “Second-Stage-Skepticism” and on which I will focus. In the following part, I reconstruct Rescher’s reading of Second-Stage-Skepticism as well as his reasons for considering Kant to represent this version. My main claim in this part will be that there is no reading of the mentioned basic idea that makes Rescher’s view reasonable. In the third step, I introduce a newer form of metaphilosophical skepticism — “Third-Stage Skepticism” — and conjecture that this form can be seen as inspired by Kant’s thought on philosophical diversity. Finally, I point out a way to reject this newer form. (shrink)

The text presents the current philosophical debate on conspiracy theories and discusses the positions of this debate. The focus is on the questions "What are conspiracy theories?" and "Is it justified to believe in conspiracy theories or how can we distinguish – if at all – warranted from unwarranted conspiracy theories?" The positions discussed will be explained and evaluated in recourse to current examples, e.g.regarding the Corona crisis. Finally, an assessment of the role of philosophy within media coverage and interdisciplinary (...) research on conspiracy theories is given. (shrink)

Felix Mühlhölzer’s book Wissenschaft (“Science”) appeared in the series “Grundwissen Philosophie” (“Basic Knowledge in Philosophy”), whose aim is to give an introduction to different philosophical topics. Thus, Mühlhölzer’s Wissenschaft can be read with profit by beginners, while not providing a straightforward introduction to the subject. Rather, the author puts forward an argumentation of his own, and in so doing, chooses to ignore some essential questions and problems of the Philosophy of Science.On the one hand, some very influential positions are not (...) mentioned or only implied, e.g. Popper’s Falsificationism, Lakatos’ approach to research programs or van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism. On the other hand, a lot of more specific issues are also not considered, e.g. Nancy Cartwright’s dilemma concerning the truth of natural-law-assertions or the regress-argument concerning the relationship between experiments and theories. Therefore my review will not discuss the didactic qualitie. (shrink)

Kritik: Michael Butter, »Nichts ist, wie es scheint«. Über Verschwörungstheorien, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2018.