Insulation is a noticeable phenomenon in the case of most non-Pyrrhonian sceptics about human knowledge. A sceptic is experiencing insulation when his scepticism does not have any effect on his common sense beliefs, and his common sense beliefs do not have any effect on his scepticism. I try to show why this is a puzzling phenomenon, and how it can be explained. It is puzzling because insulation seems to require blindness to one's own epistemic irresponsibility and irrationality, (...) while the sceptic presumably cares a lot about being epistemically responsible and rational. Insulation can be explained by means of a notion of philosophical detachment: to be detached from one's own beliefs about the world is to take an other-personal position towards those beliefs, treating them as if they are another person's beliefs. It is because of this that the sceptic's scepticism is insulated from his scepticism because he cannot be detached from his beliefs about the world when he is engaging in everyday, practical activities. I conclude the paper with a brief discussion of the generality of the problem of insulation. (shrink)

It has been claimed that a key difference between ancient and contemporary skepticism is that, unlike the ancient skeptics, contemporary skeptics consider ordinary beliefs to be insulated from skeptical doubt. In the case of metaethics, this issue is related to the following question: what attitude towards ordinary moral thought and discourse should one adopt if one is a moral skeptic? Whereas moral abolitionists claim that one should do away with ordinary moral thought and discourse altogether, moral fictionalists maintain that, given (...) that morality produces practical benefits, one should continue to make moral utterances and have moral thoughts, while at the same time refraining from asserting such utterances and believing such thoughts. Focusing particularly on Mackie’s skeptical stance, the present essay considers whether the view that first-order moral beliefs are unaffected by moral skepticism is defensible, whether moral fictionalism is compatible with moral insulation, and whether contemporary moral skeptics are in general committed to there being insulation between first- and second-order levels. (shrink)

Ancient sceptics, unlike their modern counterparts, claim to live their scepticism. Nowadays scepticism, whether epistemological, moral, or of any other variety, is seen as a purely theoretical position, with no direct bearing on the actual living of one’s life; this is because philosophical theories and everyday attitudes are taken to be in some way “insulated” from one another. Serious questions may be raised about the character of this alleged “insulation,” but these are not my present concern; the fact is (...) that no such split between “the philosophical” and “the ordinary” was entertained in the ancient world. It follows that the viability of scepticism as a way of life is a crucial issue for ancient sceptics. It is no accident that one of the most enduring objections to ancient scepticism is to the effect that the sceptical attitude—that is, the posture of universal suspension of judgement—is incompatible with any kind of normal human action; this was known in antiquity as the charge of apraxia, “inaction.” The sceptics for their part, were just as persistent in arguing that suspension of judgement had no such damaging consequences. In as much as the assessment of actual or imaginable types of human life is the province of ethics, I take this debate between ancient sceptics and their detractors to be, in a broad sense, an ethical debate. (shrink)

Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do: We would be "insulated" from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique (...) from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the 'continuity argument'), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta-argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half-true theorists. (shrink)

A certain skeptical strategy involves a skeptical hypothesis that closely mirrors the structure of our standard theory of the world; this strategy insulates the skeptical argument from attacks based on standard criteria of theory choice. A standard reply to this strategy is to claim that proffered alternative is just the standard theory expressed in a different notation. But this reply does not succeed, given plausible assumptions about semantics. However, there is an alternative strategy--also semantical--which can deal with the problem, at (...) least in those cases where, intuitively, the skeptic's challenge should fail. (shrink)

Modern Empiricists are typically troubled by the two following problems: (1) There is an epistemic gap between experience of individuals and understanding universals such that empiricist accounts of concept formation seem to beg the question. (2) There needs to be an answer to the skeptic who denies that sensory experience warrants our belief in the existence of the material substances that underlie sensible qualities. Although Aristotle’s account of induction is subject to these problems prima facie, his theory of perception, his (...) teleologically driven reliabilism about the senses, and his broader metaphysical views concerning the relation between substance and accident serve to insulate his account of induction from the pitfalls of modern empiricism. The resolution to these problems proposed in this paper allows for a consistent reading of otherwise controversial Aristotelian texts, while recommending a defense of realism about material substance against the claims of the Humean skeptic. (shrink)

This PhD thesis provides an extended evaluation of evolutionary debunking arguments in meta-ethics. Such arguments attempt to show that evolutionary theory, together with a commitment to robust moral objectivity, lead to moral scepticism: the implausible view that we lack moral knowledge or that our moral beliefs are never justified (e.g. Joyce 2006, Street 2005, Kahane 2011). To establish that, these arguments rely on certain epistemic principles. But most of the epistemic principles appealed to in the literature on evolutionary debunking arguments (...) are imprecise, confused or simply implausible. My PhD aims to rectify that. Informed by debates in cutting-edge contemporary epistemology, Chapter 1 distinguishes three general, independently motivated principles that, combined with evolution, seem to render knowledge of robustly objective moral facts problematic. These epistemic principles state that (i.) our getting facts often right in a given domain requires explanation – and if we cannot provide one, our beliefs about that domain are unjustified; (ii.) higher-order evidence of error undermines justification; and (iii.) for our beliefs to be justified, our having them must be best explained by the facts they are about. Chapters 2-4 develop and critically assess evolutionary debunking arguments based on those principles, showing that only the one inspired by (iii.) succeeds. Chapter 2 investigates the argument that evolution makes explaining why we get moral facts often right impossible. I argue that Justin Clarke-Doane’s recent response (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) works, yet neglects an issue about epistemic luck that spells trouble for robust moral objectivity. Chapter 3 discusses the argument that evolution provides higher-order evidence of error regarding belief in robustly objective moral facts. I show that such an argument falls prey to Katia Vavova’s (2014) self-defeat objection, even if evolutionary debunkers tweak their background view on the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence. Chapter 4 develops the argument that evolution, rather than robustly objective moral facts, best explains why we hold our moral beliefs. I offer a systematic, comprehensive defence of that argument against Andreas Mogensen’s (2015) charge of explanatory levels confusion, Terrence Cuneo’s (2007) companion in guilt strategy, and David Enoch’s (2012, 2016) appeal to deliberative indispensability. Chapter 5 brings everything together. It investigates whether robust moral objectivity survives the worry about epistemic luck raised in Chapter 2 and the explanatory challenge developed in Chapter 4. Making progress, however, requires a better idea of how we form true, justified beliefs about and acquire knowledge of robustly objective moral facts. Since it offers the most popular and best-developed epistemology of robustly objective morality, my inquiry in Chapter 5 focuses on contemporary moral intuitionism: the view that moral intuitions can be the source of basic moral knowledge. I argue that its success is mixed. While moral intuitionism has the conceptual tools to tackle the problem of epistemic luck from Chapter 2, it cannot insulate knowledge of robustly objective moral facts against the sceptical worry raised by the evolutionary debunking argument developed in Chapter 4. Thus, evolutionary theory, together with a commitment to robust moral objectivity, does lead to a form of unacceptable moral scepticism. (shrink)

Some epistemologists resist skepticism about the external world even though they admit that it is supported by apparently convincing arguments that they do not see how to refute. I argue that such a seemingly irrational attitude towards skepticism is justified. The justification I offer consists in showing that anyone who accepts skepticism is in a patently irrational position, whereas we do not have to refute skepticism to have some reason to believe that we have knowledge of the world. Although this (...) does not show that skepticism is false, it does show that we can reasonably ignore skepticism even when we are engaging in epistemological investigations. My arguments require an examination of what it is to accept skepticism, and I argue against the idea that the acceptance of skepticism is rationally insulated from our everyday convictions. Having argued that there is a special irrationality in being a skeptic, I explain why most philosophers do not see it that way. In explaining that, I offer an account of what it is to be in a skeptical frame of mind and to be in a sense detached from one's own beliefs. (shrink)

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

Consider the skeptic about the external world. Let’s straightaway concede to such a skeptic that perception gives us no conclusive or certain knowledge about our surroundings. Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible—there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs. Let’s also concede to the skeptic that it’s metaphysically possible for us to have all the experiences we’re now having while all those experiences are false. Some philosophers dispute (...) this, but I do not. The skeptic I want to consider goes beyond these familiar points to the much more radical conclusion that our perceptual experiences can’t give us any knowledge or even justification for believing that our surroundings are one way rather than another. (shrink)

The early discovery of cis‐regulatory elements able to promote transcription of genes over large distances led to the postulate that elements, termed insulators, should also exist that would limit the action of enhancers, LCRs and silencers to defined domains. Such insulators were indeed found during the past fifteen years in a wide range of organisms, from yeast to humans. Recent advances point to an important role of transcription factors in insulator activity and demonstrate that the operational observation of an insulator (...) effect relies on a delicate balance between the “efficiency” of the insulator and that of the element to be counteracted. In addition, genuine insulator elements now appear less common than initially envisaged, and they are only found at loci displaying a high density of coding or regulatory information. Where this is not the case, chromatin domains of opposing properties are thought to confront each other at “fuzzy” boundaries. In this article, we propose models for both fixed and fuzzy boundaries that incorporate probabilistic and dynamic parameters. BioEssays 26:523–532, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Insulators play a central role in subdividing the chromosome into a series of discrete topologically independent domains and in ensuring that enhancers and silencers contact their appropriate target genes. In this review we first discuss the general characteristics of insulator elements and their associated protein factors. A growing collection of insulator proteins have been identified including a family of proteins whose expression is developmentally regulated. We next consider several unexpected discoveries that require us to completely rethink how insulators function (and (...) how they can best be assayed). These discoveries also require a reevaluation of how insulators might restrict or orchestrate (by preventing or promoting) interactions between regulatory elements and their target genes. We conclude by connecting these new insights into the mechanisms of insulator action to dynamic changes in the three‐dimensional topology of the chromatin fiber and the generation of specific patterns of gene activity during development and differentiation. (shrink)

The chapter begins by exploring a philosophical case study of the use of intuitions — viz., the debate regarding the problem of radical scepticism, paying particular attention to key figures within this debate such as Barry Stroud, John Austin, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It contends that this debate demonstrates something interesting about the nature of intuitions and the role that they can play in philosophical inquiry. In particular, the chapter argues that we need to think of the philosophical use of intuitions (...) as at least sometimes involving a significant level of expertise. The chapter closes by considering the relevance of this point about philosophical intuitions to the negative programme in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

The familiar Cartesian sceptical arguments all involve an explanation of our experiences. An account of the persuasive power of the sceptical arguments should explain why this is so. This supports a diagnosis of the error in Cartesian sceptical arguments according to which they mislead us into regarding our perceptual beliefs as if they were justified as inferences to the best explanation. I argue that they have instead a perceptual justification that does not involve inference to the best (...) explanation and that should not be put in doubt by the sceptical hypotheses. (shrink)

Newly accessible source material calls for a revision of our picture of the more technical transmission of sceptical epistemologies in the intellectual landscape of early Islam. Abū al‐Qāsim al‐Balkhīʼs (ninth/tenth century) Book of Doctrines shows that naẓar as the basic argumentative method of kalām is defined by the encounter with a broad spectrum of sceptical strategies. By the beginning of the tenth century, Greek traditions were amalgamated in a complex way with other intellectual traditions, most notably dualist ontologies. (...) This situation has shaped the evolution of kalām methodology decisively. Based on extensive paraphrases in Ibn al‐Malāḥimī (twelfth century) going back to Nawbakhtī (tenth century), it can be seen that arguments of the Greek sceptical tradition were accessible in Arabic in the early tenth century. The scarcity of coherent information on sceptical approaches before that time rather has to do with the problem that in general few sources of this earlier formative period of Islamic theology are preserved. Early Muʿtazilī treatises from this period are superseded by Ashʿarī texts in the later transmission. Sceptical approaches, being systematically involved in the very formation of early Muʿtazilī theology, are particularly invisible due to this process. (shrink)

'These propositions may seem mild, yet, if accepted, they would absolutely revolutionize human life.' With these words Bertrand Russell introduces what is indeed a revolutionary book. Taking as his starting-point the irrationality of the world, he offers by contrast something 'wildly paradoxical and subversive' Sceptical Essays has never been out of print since its first publication in 1928. Today, besieged as we are by the numbing onslaught of twenty-first-century capitalism, Russell's defense of scepticism and independence of mind is as (...) timely as ever. In clear, engaging prose, he guides us through the key philosophical issues that affect our daily life. (shrink)

Outside the philosophy classroom, global skeptics – skeptics about all (purported) knowledge of the external world – are rare. But there are people who describe themselves as “skeptics” about various more specific domains, including self-professed “skeptics” about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. There is little to no philosophical literature that juxtaposes the climate change skeptic with the external world skeptic. While many “traditional” epistemologists assume that the external world skeptic poses a serious philosophical challenge in a way that the (...) climate change skeptic doesn’t, many “applied” or “social” epistemologists assume that there isn’t much to be learned from debates about the external world skeptic, finding her challenge to be distant from both common sense and real-world concerns. I try to show that both of these views are mistaken. The external world skeptic raises deep questions that are important for our everyday deliberation about what to believe, and there are significant structural parallels between the arguments for external world skepticism and those for at least a form of climate change skepticism that is idealized – but not too idealized! – from the views of flesh-and-blood climate change skeptics. As such, we have strong reasons to think in parallel about how to reply to both skeptics’ challenges. I thus finish by (briefly) considering how different widespread responses to the external world skeptic might or might not generalize happily to the climate change skeptic’s challenge. (shrink)

We still ask the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Every generation seems to offer new and contradictory answers to the question. In the last thirty or so years, the most interesting characterisations of Enlightenment have been by historians. They have told us that there is one Enlightenment, that there are two Enlightenments, that there are many Enlightenments. This has thrown up a second question, ‘How Many Enlightenments?’ In the spirit of collaboration and criticism, I answer both questions by arguing in this (...) article that there are in fact three Enlightenments: Radical, Sceptical and Liberal. These are abstracted from the rival theories of Enlightenment found in the writings of the historians Jonathan Israel, John Robertson and J.G.A. Pocock. Each form of Enlightenment is political; each involves an attitude to history; each takes a view of religion. They are arranged in a sequence of increasing sensitivity to history, as it is this which makes it possible to relate them to each other and indeed propose a composite definition of Enlightenment. The argument should be of interest to anyone concerned with ‘the Enlightenment’ as a historical phenomenon or with ‘Enlightenment’ as a philosophical abstraction. (shrink)

On a common view of scenario-based sceptical arguments sceptical scenarios are error-possibilities, i.e. their point is to introduce the possibility of having only false beliefs. However, global error is impossible for purely logical/conceptual reasons: Even if one’s beliefs are consistent, the negations of one’s beliefs need not be consistent as well. My paper deals with the question of what the consequences of this result are. Two attempts at repairing scenario-based sceptical arguments within the framework of understanding (...) class='Hi'>sceptical scenarios as error-possibilities are found wanting. Instead, what should be given up is the assumption that sceptical scenarios are error-possibilities. What is thought-provoking about the scenario of the brain in a vat is not that none of its empirical beliefs are true, but that all of its empirical beliefs fall short of knowledge at the same time. Hence, sceptical scenarios are not error-possibilities, but ignorance possibilities. If this is so, both the closure argument and the underdetermination argument commit a subtle mistake and should be replaced by slightly different arguments. The principle of excluded ignorance-possibilities turns out to be an epistemological principle that is faithful to scepticism’s tenets without misinterpreting sceptical scenarios as error-possibilities. (shrink)

This article is a response to Stephen Law's article ‘The evil-god challenge’. In his article, Law argues that if belief in evil-god is unreasonable, then belief in good-god is unreasonable; that the antecedent is true; and hence so is the consequent. In this article, I show that Law's affirmation of the antecedent is predicated on the problem of good (i.e. the problem of whether an all-evil, all-powerful, and all-knowing God would allow there to be as much good in the world (...) as there is), and argue that the problem of good fails. Thus, the antecedent is unmotivated, which renders the consequent unmotivated. Law's challenge for good-god theists is to show that good-god theism is not rendered unreasonable by the problem of evil in the same way that evil-god theism is rendered unreasonable by the problem of good. Insofar as the problem of good does not render belief in evil-god unreasonable, Law's challenge has been answered: since it is not unreasonable to believe in evil-god (at least for the reasons that Law gives) it is not unreasonable to believe in good-god. Finally, I show that – my criticism aside – the evil-god challenge turns out to be more complicated and controversial than it initially appears, for it relies on the (previously unacknowledged) contentious assumption that sceptical theism is false. (shrink)

A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress presents a distinctive re-interpretation of Popper's 'critical rationalism', displaying the kind of spirit found at the L.S.E. before Popper's retirement. It offers an alternative to interpretations of critical rationalism which have emphasised the significance of research programmes or metaphysics (Lakatos; Nicholas Maxwell), and is closer to the approach of Jagdish Hattiangadi. Briskman gives priority to methodological argument rather than logical formalisms, and takes further his own work on creativity. In (...) addition to offering an important contribution to the understanding of critical rationalism, the book contains interesting engagements with Michael Polanyi and the Meno Paradox. This volume also contains an introduction by the editor, which situates Briskman's work in the history of the interpretation of 'critical rationalism'. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a novel challenge for sceptical theists. I present a line of reasoning that appeals to sceptical theism to support scepticism about divine assertions. I claim that this reasoning is at least as plausible as one popular sceptical theistic strategy for responding to evidential arguments from evil. Thus, I seek to impale sceptical theists on the horns of a dilemma: concede that either (a) sceptical theism implies scepticism about divine assertions, or (...) (b) the sceptical theistic strategy for responding to evidential arguments from evil fails. An implication of (a) is that sceptical theism is at odds with any religious tradition according to which there are certain claims that we can know to be true solely in virtue of the fact that God has told us that they are true. This result will render conceding (a) unattractive to many sceptical theists. (shrink)

Given plausible assumptions about the nature of evidence and undercutting defeat, many believe that the force of the evidential problem of evil depends on sceptical theism’s being false: if evil is...

I present an argument for a sophisticated version of sceptical invariantism that has so far gone unnoticed: Bifurcated Sceptical Invariantism (BSI). I argue that it can, on the one hand, (dis)solve the Gettier problem, address the dogmatism paradox and, on the other hand, show some due respect to the Moorean methodological incentive of ‘saving epistemic appearances’. A fortiori, BSI promises to reap some other important explanatory fruit that I go on to adduce (e.g. account for concessive knowledge attributions). (...) BSI can achieve this much because it distinguishes between two distinct but closely interrelated (sub)concepts of (propositional) knowledge, fallible-but-safe knowledge and infallible-and-sensitive knowledge, and explains how the pragmatics and the semantics of knowledge discourse operate at the interface of these two (sub)concepts of knowledge. I conclude that BSI is a novel theory of knowledge discourse that merits serious investigation. (shrink)

Ancient sceptics, both Pyrrhonian and Academic, cannot appeal to nature as other philosophers do without falling into the commitment to beliefs that they seek to avoid. Nonetheless, they rely on nature in an undogmatic way as support for life and action, when argument on both sides of a case has produced suspension of judgement. Tensions arise when this undogmatic reliance takes the form of a structured theory, as in Sextus Empiricus.

_A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress_ presents a striking re-interpretation of Popper’s ‘critical rationalism’. Briskman stresses methodological argument rather than metaphysics, develops a ‘Popperian’ response to the Meno Paradox, and takes further Briskman’s approach to problems concerning creativity.

The rapid developments in technologies -- especially computing and the advent of many 'smart' devices, as well as rapid and perpetual communication via the Internet -- has led to a frequently voiced view which Nicholas Agar describes as 'radical optimism'. Radical optimists claim that accelerating technical progress will soon end poverty, disease, and ignorance, and improve our happiness and well-being. Agar disputes the claim that technological progress will automatically produce great improvements in subjective well-being. He argues that radical optimism 'assigns (...) to technological progress an undeserved pre-eminence among all the goals pursued by our civilization'. Instead, Agar uses the most recent psychological studies about human perceptions of well-being to create a realistic model of the impact technology will have. Although he accepts that technological advance does produce benefits, he insists that these are significantly less than those proposed by the radical optimists, and aspects of such progress can also pose a threat to values such as social justice and our relationship with nature, while problems such as poverty cannot be understood in technological terms. He concludes by arguing that a more realistic assessment of the benefits that technological advance can bring will allow us to better manage its risks in future. (shrink)

_The Sceptics_ is the first comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of Greek scepticism, from the beginnings of epistemology with Xenophanes, to the final full development of Pyrrhonism as presented in the work of Sextus Empiricus. Tracing the evolution of scepticism from 500 B.C to A.D 200, this clear and rigorous analysis presents the arguments of the Greek sceptics in their historical context and provides an in-depth study of the various strands of the sceptical tradition.

No other recent book in Anglophone philosophy has attracted as much criticism and has found so few friends as Saul Kripke's "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language". Amongst its critics, one finds the very top of the philosophical profession. Yet, it is rightly counted amongst the books that students of philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American world, have to read at some point in their education. Enormously influential, it has given rise to debates that strike at the very heart of (...) contemporary philosophy of mind and language. In this major new interpretation, Martin Kusch defends Kripke's account against the numerous weighty objections that have been put forward over the past twenty years and argues that none of them is decisive. He shows that many critiques are based on misunderstandings of Kripke's reasoning; that many attacks can be blocked by refining and developing Kripke's position; and that many alternative proposals turn out either to be unworkable or to be disguised variants of the view they are meant to replace. Kusch argues that the apparent simplicity of Kripke's text is deceptive and that a fresh reading gives Kripke's overall argument a new strength. (shrink)

Seven chimpanzees in twenty-seven experiments run over the course of five years at his University of Louisiana laboratory in New Iberia, Louisiana, are at the heart of Daniel Povinelli’s case that chimpanzee thinking about the physical world is not at all like that of humans. Chimps, according to Povinelli and his coauthors James Reaux, Laura Theall, and Steve Giambrone, are phenomenally quick at learning to associate visible features of tools with specific uses of those tools, but they appear to lack (...) cognitive access to forces and other invisible causal features of those tools. Povinelli’s chimps appar- ently rely on a trial-and-error strategy to learn whether a particular tool is suitable for a particular task, and and having mastered one task they appear unable to generalize to other tasks on the basis of tool properties that are not directly visible. Thus, for instance, Povinelli’s research subjects did not immediately recognize that a tool that had been demonstrated to be non- rigid would be unsuitable for dragging a piece of food towards them. When presented with a choice between a rigid, T-shaped “rake” that they had used many times previously and a rake with non-rigid arms, Povinelli and Reaux found, over the course of eight trials, that their chimps chose the non-rigid rake as frequently as they chose the rigid one (experiment 9, chapter 7). (shrink)

Sceptical theism claims that we have vast ignorance about the realm of value and the connections, causal and modal, between goods and bads. This ignorance makes it reasonable for a theist to say that God has reasons beyond our ken for allowing the horrendous evils we observe. But if so, then does this not lead to moral paralysis when we need to prevent evils ourselves? For, for aught that we know, there are reasons beyond our ken for us to (...) allow the evils, and so we should not prevent them. This paralysis argument, however, shall be argued to rest on a confusion between probabilities and expected utilities. A connection between this paralysis argument and Lenman's1 discussion of the butterfly effect and chaos will be drawn, and the solution offered will apply in both cases. (shrink)

Abstract Relativism about knowledge attributions is the view that a single occurrence of ‘S knows [does not know] that p’ may be true as assessed in one context and false as assessed in another context. It has been argued that relativism is equipped to accommodate all the data from speakers’ use of ‘know’ without recourse to an error theory. This is supposed to be relativism’s main advantage over contextualist and invariantist views. This paper argues that relativism does require the attribution (...) of semantic blindness to speakers, viz. to account for sceptical paradoxes and epistemic closure puzzles. To that end, the notion of semantic blindness is clarified by distinguishing between content-blindness and index-blindness, and it is argued that the attribution of index-blindness required by the relativist account is implausible. Along the way, it is shown that error-theoretic objections from speakers’ inter-contextual judgments fail against relativism. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9783-5 Authors Dirk Kindermann, Arché, University of St Andrews, 17–19 College Street, St Andrews, KY16 9AL UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

The Hellenistic philosophers and schools of philosophy are emerging from the shadow of Plato and Aristotle and are increasingly studied for their intrinsic philosophical value. They are not only interesting in their own right, but also form the intellectual background of the late Roman Republic. This study gives a comprehensive and readable account of the principal doctrines of the Stoics, Epicureans and various sceptical traditions from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to around 200 A.D. Discussions (...) are arranged topically in order to address underlying issues and to make clear what the different schools have in common and how they differ. At the same time the coherence of each system as a whole is emphasized. (shrink)

Several theists have adopted a position known as ‘sceptical theism ’, according to which God is justified in allowing suffering, but the justification is often beyond human comprehension. A problem for sceptical theism is that if there are unknown justifications for suffering, then we cannot know whether it is right for a human being to relieve suffering. After examining several proposed solutions to this problem, I conclude that one who is committed to a revealed religion has a simpler (...) and more effective solution. In particular, according to traditional Judaism, God has permitted us, indeed commanded us, to relieve suffering, so we know that it is right for us to do so. I further show how God's command, according to Judaism, that we save lives provides an answer to an analogous argument put forward by David Hume. Thus, revealed theistic religions can sometimes solve problems more effectively than theism alone. (shrink)

Agnostics as well as theists should answer evidential arguments from evil, at least when confronted with them. In this paper, I answer such an argument by appealing to sceptical agnosticism. A sceptical agnostic is not only undecided about the existence of a perfectly good and omnipotent God, but also believes that we cannot make any judgement about whether or not seemingly gratuitous evil probably is gratuitous. I argue that such agnosticism has several advantages compared with sceptical theism.

I argue that J. L. Schellenberg's sceptical religion faces two problems of religious adequacy. The first has to do with its relationship to the goal of bringing persons into proper alignment with an ultimate good; the second, with the desideratum of sceptical religion's becoming sufficiently well-established as to be a vehicle for the accomplishment of great things on the stage of history. I argue that actual sceptical religion would need to accommodate itself to the requirements of historical (...) existence, and that such accommodation might well lead to a blurring of the distinctions Schellenberg draws between and sceptical religion. (shrink)

Punishment and democracy appear to exacerbate each other’s worst features. The institutions and moral intuitions used to punish those that break the law can hollow out civic participation, distort the electorate, and undermine core democratic values. Likewise, many have argued the decentralized character of democracy is a key, albeit indirect, cause of increasingly punitive public policies that are divorced from any reasonable penological purpose. Given the effects of electoral politics, many have called for the separation, or general insulation, of (...) state punishment from public influence. However, recent empirical work on punitive attitudes and institutional design has begun to chip away at this common sense. This article contextualizes and qualifies the various mechanisms of policy feedback and public opinion formation thought by political theorists to undermine democratic participation in penal institutions and makes a normative case that insulating the public from penal law actively sustains injustice. (shrink)

A study of Pyrrhonean scepticism, consisting of a new translation of Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism, accompanied by an analytic introduction and an in-depth, section-by-section commentary - the first of its kind available.

In this paper I develop a novel challenge for sceptical theists. I present a line of reasoning that appeals to sceptical theism to support scepticism about divine assertions. I claim that this reasoning is at least as plausible as one popular sceptical theistic strategy for responding to evidential arguments from evil. Thus, I seek to impale sceptical theists on the horns of a dilemma: concede that either sceptical theism implies scepticism about divine assertions, or the (...) sceptical theistic strategy for responding to evidential arguments from evil fails. An implication of is that sceptical theism is at odds with any religious tradition according to which there are certain claims that we can know to be true solely in virtue of the fact that God has told us that they are true. This result will render conceding unattractive to many sceptical theists. (shrink)