It is widely assumed that it is rational to suspend one’s belief regarding a certain proposition only if one’s evidence is neutral regarding that proposition. In this paper I broaden this condition, and defend, on the basis of an improved ancient argument, that it is rational to suspend one’s belief even if the available evidence is not neutral – or even close to neutral.

P. F. Strawson suggests an anti-sceptical strategy which consists in offering good reason for ignoring scepticism rather than trying to refute it, and the reason he offers is that beliefs about the external world are indispensable to us. I give an exposition of Strawson's arguments for the indispensability thesis and explain why they are not strong enough. I then propose an argument based on some of Davidson's ideas in his theory of radical interpretation, which I think can establish the indispensability (...) thesis. Finally, I spell out the force of Strawson's anti-sceptical strategy by arguing that we have good reason for ignoring scepticism not only because beliefs about the world are indispensable, but also because it is irrational to have both beliefs about the world and sceptical doubts. (shrink)

Donald Davidson has argued that 'most of our beliefs must be true' and that global scepticism is therefore false. Davidson's arguments to this conclusion often seem to depend on externalist considerations. Davidson's position has been criticised, however, on the grounds that he does not defeat the sceptic, but rather already assumes the falsity of scepticism through his appeal to externalism. Indeed, it has been claimed that far from defeating the sceptic Davidson introduces an even more extreme version of scepticism according (...) to which we cannot even know the contents of our own minds. This paper argues that these criticisms are mistaken and that Davidson does indeed have grounds to argue that scepticism is false. The externalism that figures in Davidson's antisceptical arguments is shown to be merely an element in Davidson's overall holism according to which the very possibility of having beliefs that could be true or false depends on most of those beliefs being true and their contents known. (shrink)

When in classical formal logic the notions of deduction, valid inference and logical consequence are defined, causal language plays no role. The founder of western logic, Aristotle, identified ‘non-cause’, or ‘positing as cause what is not a cause’, as a logical fallacy. I argue that a systematic re-examination of Aristotle's analysis of NCF, and the related language of logical causality, in the Sophistical Refutations, Topics, Analytics and Rhetoric, helps us to understand his conception of. It reveals that Aristotle's syllogismhood is (...) non-monotonic, and thus narrower than classical validity as consisting in, or coextensive with, necessary truth-preservation. It also supports the conclusion that a syllogism is a form of relevant consequence: the premisses must be causes of the conclusion in the sense that they are not only sufficient but also necessary for the conclusion to follow. Close analysis of NCF also suggests that syllogistic relevance is not a semantic matter, but a syntactic.. (shrink)

Sextus Empiricus: Outlines of Scepticism Translated by Julia Annas & Jonathan Barnes Cambridge University Press 1994 ISBN‐0–521–30950–6 Hardback ISBN 0–521–31205‐X Paperback Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649–1776 David Wootton Stanford University Press, 1994 viii, 497 pp. £35 ISBN 0804723567 John Marshall: John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility Cambridge University Press, 1994 Pp. xxi + 485. ISBN 0–521–44380–6 £55 0–521–44687–3 £22.95 Ian Harris: The Mind of John Locke: A Study of Political Theory in its Intellectual Setting Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 (...) Pp. xv + 429. ISBN 0–521–35603–2 Lawrence E. Klein: Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness Cambridge University Press, xii, 217 pp. £30 Cahiers Montesquieu: Lectures de Montesquieu, Actes du Colloque de Wolfenbuttel réunis par Edgar Mass et Alberto Postigliola Liguori Editore, Napoli; Universitas, Paris; Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 1993. ISBN 0–7294–0462–5. £18.00 George Armstrong Kelly: The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville, and French Liberalism with a foreword by Stephen R. Graubard, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0–521–41227–7. £35.00 Christopher J. Berry: The Idea of Luxury. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 xiv + 271 pp., 0–521–466911 pbk Sarah Gibbons: Kant's Theory of Imagination. Bridging Gaps in Judgement and Experience Oxford Philosophical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1994 pp. 205 plus x. £27.50 Andrew Brook: Kant and the Mind Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994. pp. 327 plus xii. £35.00 The Correspondence of John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte trans. and ed. by Oscar A. Haac New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1995 pp. xxvi + 403. £31.95 ISBN 1–56000–148–8 Alan P. F. Sell: Philosophical Idealism and Christian Belief University of Wales Press, 1995 ISBN 0–7083–1310–8. 338 pp. £35.00 Agnosticism: Contemporary Responses to Spencer and Huxley Ed. Andrew Pyle Thoemmes Press, Bristol, 1995, pp. xxvi + 301 ISBN 1–85506–404–9 £14.95, 1–85506–405–7 £45.00. (shrink)

Philosophy has four forms: wonder, faith, doubt and scepticism. These are not separate categories, but separate ideal possibilities. Modern academic philosophy has fallen, for several centuries, into an error: which is the error of supposing that philosophy is only what I call doubt. Philosophy may be doubt: indeed, it is part of my argument that this is undeniably one element of, or one possibility in, philosophy; but doubt is only one of four points of the compass. In this essay I (...) indicate the nature of each point of the compass as it has been found in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Chrysippus claims that some propositions perish. including some true conditionals whose consequent is impossible and antecedent is possible, to which he appeals against Diodorus?s Master Argument. On the standard interpretation. perished propositions lack truth values. and these conditionals are true at the same time as their antecedents arc possible and consequents impossible. But perished propositions are false, and Chrysippus?s conditionals are true when their antecedent and consequent arc possible, and false when their antecedent is possible and consequent impossible. The claim (...) of the Master Argument that Chrysippus rejects, then, is stronger ihan usually supposed. (shrink)