This book argues that Hume is a radical epistemic skeptic who gives only practical reasons for retaining belief in sensory beliefs and the deliverances of reason. He advises us to take a moderate approach to the demands of philosophy, since they sometimes diverge from the demands of life.

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By “dissent,” we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry’s funding of studies (...) that questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by ’manufacturing doubt’. Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”. (shrink)

Nathan Sasser's ‘purely practical reading of Hume’s response to skepticism’ is so natural and compelling that it is almost surprising that his new monograph, Hume and the Demands of Philosophy, offers its first systematic defence. I praise the book's clarity and concision, and then raise concerns about omitted topics, especially concerning Hume's views on the practical value of sceptical philosophy.

Paul Thagard has recently argued that thought experiments are dangerous and misleading when we try to use them as evidence for claims. This paper refutes his skepticism. Building on Thagard’s own work in cognitive science, I suggest that Thagard has much that is positive to say about how thought experiments work. My last section presents some new directions for research on the intersection between thought experiments and cognitive science.

Here lyes that mighty Man of SenseWho, full of years, departed hence,To teach the other world Intelligence,This was the prodigious Man,who vanquish’ d Pope and Puritan,By the Magic of Leviathan.Had he not Controversy wanted,His deeper Thoughts had not been scanted;Therefore good Spirits him transplant:Wise as he was, he could not tellWhether he went to Heaven or Hell.Beyond the Tenth Sphere, if there be a wide place,He'll prove by his Art there's no infinite space:And all good Angels may thank him, for (...) thatHe has prov’ d they are something, tho men know not what.Hobbes's Epitaph. (shrink)

Very little scholarly attention has been devoted to Part 1 of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. This lack has been addressed recently by Tweyman, who argues for the importance of this part in understanding the positions defended by the characters in the remainder of the dialogue, in accordance with the types that Hume discusses in part 12 of the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding—Cleanthes is a philosophical dogmatist who requires the application of excessive skepticism by Philo to turn to the (...) approved position of mitigated skepticism, while Demea is and remains a religious dogmatist. In the present paper I will address the question of why the Dialogues continues beyond Part 1 in the face of the statement by Philo, who is generally considered to be Hume's spokesperson in the dialogue, that the inquiry being undertaken—the investigation into the nature of the Deity—is beyond human reason. (shrink)

The topic of expertise has become especially lively in recent years in academic discussions and debates about the politics of science. It is easy to understand why the topic holds such strong interest in Science & Technology Studies and related fields. There are at least two basic reasons for such interest. One is that experts are undoubtedly important in modern societies, and the other is that trends in STS research tend to be critical of the cognitive authority associated (...) with the public role of the expert. Putting the two together, STS researchers often align themselves with environmentalist and other movements that question the impartiality of experts and seek to democratize decisions about science and technology. Though such alignment is in many respects laudable, it can also be a source of confusion and misplaced political criticism. Toward the end of this brief synopsis of current STS research and debates on the topic of expertise, I will suggest an alternative agenda for engaging the politics of science and technology. (shrink)

In this introduction, I motivate the project of examining certain resonances between ancient skeptical positions, especially Pyrrhonism, and positions in contemporary epistemology, with special attention to recent work in the epistemology of science. One such resonance concerns the idea of suspension of judgment or belief in certain contexts or domains of inquiry, and the reasons for (or processes eventuating in) suspension. Another concerns the question of whether suspension of belief in such circumstances is voluntary, in any of the senses (...) discussed in current work on voluntarism in epistemology, which informs recent discussions of how voluntarism regarding epistemic stances may shed light on positions like scientific realism and antirealism. The aim of this special issue is thus to explore certain analogies and disanalogies between ancient and contemporary debates about skepticism, and to consider whether and to what extent the former can provide insight into the latter. (shrink)

In this account of the philosophical and scientific pursuits of Pierre Gassendi , I challenge a traditional view which says that the inspiration, motivation, and demonstrative grounds for his physical atomism consist not in his empiricism but in his historicist commitments. Indeed, Gassendi suggests that it's a consequence of our best theory of knowledge and sound scientific method that we get evidence which warrants his microphysical theory. ;The primary novelty of his theory of empirical knowledge is his proposal, against the (...) Stoics and Descartes, that it is not a necessary condition of our knowing some claim that we are certain of it. This move immediately broadens the scope of what we can know through the senses, as does his suggestion that we include among such knowledge claims those assertions about what is hidden to the senses which we legitimately infer from the evidence of the perceptually given. ;On the basis of these epistemological positions, Gassendi develops his views on scientific method according to which we attain and justify our best empirical claims by deduction yet, he believes, these claims are at root probabilistic, and we may maintain hypotheses as the basis of our scientific reasoning so long as there is some empirical evidence for them, however broadly construed. ;Hence Gassendi suggests that his atomism constitutes a 'most likely hypothesis' for which we have empirical evidence--which of necessity is found indirectly in 'indicative' signs, those surface level phenomena for which he takes the existence of atoms to be a sine qua non condition. Perhaps the paramount case of such evidence consists in those microscopic observations of crystalline formation and dissolution that he takes to demonstrate the molecular structure of matter--a key and innovative consequence of his atomism. ;The robust character of Gassendi's method emerges in his appeals to indirect evidence for claims about the unobservable and his willingness to count this as adequate empirical grounds for maintaining an atomist hypothesis. Remarkably, he stands at the dawn of the modern era with at least a proposal as to how to resolve one of empiricism's more vexing difficulties, still with us in some form today. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the role of authorship in balancing epistemological trust and skepticism in e-science. Drawing on studies of the diagnostic practices of doctors in British breast care units and the gate-keeping practices of a Californian publisher of horticultural works, I suggest that conventions of authorial designation have an important role to play in nurturing the skepticism essential for scientific rigor within the framework of epistemological trust that pragmatism and morality require. In so doing I (...) question the assumption of contemporary scholars that scientific works are determinate in fact, while nonetheless supporting the idea of semi-indeterminate authorship as a goal. I then consider the theoretical and practical consequences of that view with an analysis of the Anglo-American legal constraints on attributions of authorship, and the complex of other relevant interests and rights that may require different models of attribution oriented not around authors themselves, but rather their employer, their manager or supervisor, or some pseudonym deemed to be an appropriate organizing mechanism for the works in question. (shrink)

Radical skepticism endorses the extreme claim that large swaths of our ordinary beliefs, such as those produced by perception or memory, are irrational. The best arguments for such skepticism are, in their essentials, as familiar as a popular science fiction movie and yet even seasoned epistemologists continue to find them strangely seductive. Moreover, although most contemporary philosophers dismiss radical skepticism, they cannot agree on how best to respond to the challenge it presents. In the tradition of (...) the 18th century Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid, Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition joins this discussion by taking up four main tasks. First, it identifies the strongest arguments for radical skepticism, namely, underdetermination arguments, which emphasize the gap between our evidence and our ordinary beliefs based on that evidence. Second, it rejects all inferential or argument-based responses to radical skepticism, which aim to lay out good noncircular reasoning from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs to the conclusion that those beliefs are probably true. Third, it develops a commonsense noninferential response to radical skepticism with two distinctive features: it consciously and extensively relies on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about epistemic goods, such as knowledge and rationality, and it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Fourth, and finally, it defends this commonsense epistemic-intuition-based response to radical skepticism against a variety of objections, including those connected with underdetermination worries, epistemic circularity, disagreement problems, experimental philosophy, and concerns about whether it engages skepticism in a sufficiently serious way. (shrink)

We live in a world that is increasingly shaped by and bathed in science, with most scientific progress occurring in the past century, and much of it in the past few decades. Yet, several authors have puz- zled over the observation that modern societies are also characterized by a high degree of belief in a variety of pseudoscientific claims that have been thoroughly debunked or otherwise discarded by scientists (Anonymous, 2001; Ede, 2000).

Andreas Christiansen,Karin Jonch-Clausen,Klemens Kappel | : Many instances of new and emerging science and technology are controversial. Although a number of people, including scientific experts, welcome these developments, a considerable skepticism exists among members of the public. The use of genetically modified organisms is a case in point. In science policy and in science communication, it is widely assumed that such controversial science and technology require public participation in the policy-making process. We examine this view, (...) which we call the Public Participation Paradigm, using the case of GMOs as an example. We suggest that a prominent reason behind the call for public participation is the belief that such participation is required for democratic legitimacy. We then show that the most prominent accounts of democratic legitimacy do not, in fact, entail that public participation is required in cases of controversial science in general, or in the case of GMOs in particular. | : Beaucoup d’avancées scientifiques et de technologies émergentes sont controversées. Bien qu’un certain nombre de personnes, incluant des experts scientifiques, sont favorables à ces développements, la population demeure largement sceptique. Le recours aux organismes génétiquement modifiés illustre une telle situation. Dans les politiques et communications scientifiques, il est largement tenu pour acquis que de telles controverses scientifiques et technologiques requièrent la participation publique dans le processus de prise de décision politique. Nous examinons ce point de vue, que nous appelons le paradigme de la participation publique [Public Participation Paradigm], en nous servant du cas des OGM. Nous suggérons qu’une raison centrale en faveur de l’appel à la participation publique se situe dans la croyance qu’une telle participation est requise par la légitimité démocratique. Nous montrons ensuite que la plupart des principales conceptions de la légitimité démocratique n’impliquent pas, en fait, que la participation publique puisse être requise pour les controverses scientifiques en général, et pour les OGM en particulier. (shrink)

Modern science faces a series of problems that undermine confidence in its reliability. To solve these problems, we must reflect on what makes science work and what leads it astray. This book is about Science, its strengths and weaknesses. The papers that scientists write form a vast resource of evidence and theory that is doubling about every ten years, along with the number of scientists. The size of this resource makes it hard for it to be used (...) effectively by scientists, and along with this are growing concerns about its integrity and reliability. This book looks at the scientific method, as currently applied and as understood philosophically by scientists, the social structure of science, and the structure of scientific communication through journals. It includes case studies of controversies, and looks at how fields develop over time. (shrink)

This article examines how Modern theories of mind remain even in some materialistic and hence ontologically anti-dualistic views; and shows how Dewey's pragmatism, anticipating Merleau-Ponty, 4E cognitive scientists and especially enactivism, repudiates these theories. Throughout I place Dewey’s thought in the context of scientific inquiry, both recent and historical and including the cognitive as well as traditional sciences; and I show how he incorporated sciences of his day into his thought, while also anticipating enactive cognitive science. While emphasizing Dewey’s (...) continued relevance, my main goal is to show how his scientifically informed account of perception and cognition combats skepticism propagated by certain scientific visions, exacerbated by commonplace notions about mind, that jointly suggest that human beings lack genuine access to reality. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Ambiguity (herein the Ethics), Simone de Beauvoir declares that science condemns itself to failure if it takes as its task the total disclosure of being (Beauvoir 1948/1976, 130). I suggest that the Ethics actually parallels the spirit of some scientific programs, specifically those that utilize positive skepticism as method. I draw out connections among the Ethics, Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty 1945/1962) to which Beauvoir's works show much likeness, and Francis Bacon's The New (...) Organon (Bacon 1620/2000), the latter being at once a scientific and a positive skeptical program. Underscoring the ways in which Beauvoir's method of interrogating the being of beings and reality is compatible with some scientific pictures is important. It complicates the usual thought that existentialism is antiscience, problematizes Beauvoir's overly simplistic depiction of science, and nuances her analysis of the existent's experience of itself. (shrink)

Confucian scholars express skepticism about rights. This skepticism is relevant to managers who face issues about the recognition of workplace rights in a Confucian culture. My essay examines the foundations of this skepticism, and the cogency of potential leading Western liberal responses to it. I conclude that Confucian skepticism is more formidable than liberals have recognized. I attempt to craft an argument that defuses Confucian skepticism about workplace rights while at the same time respecting the (...) moral depth of Confucianism. (shrink)

Watkins sets out in this book to provide an answer for Humean scepticism as it affects the philosophy of science. His carefully argued conclusions display the great fruitfulness--and limits--of the basic approach pioneered by Karl Popper. The development here goes well beyond Popper's own work, but is more in tune with it than, say, the latter-day views of Imre Lakatos.

In this book, Henrik Lagerlund offers students, researchers, and advanced general readers the first complete history of what is perhaps the most famous of all philosophical problems: skepticism. As the first of its kind, the book traces the influence of philosophical skepticism from its roots in the Hellenistic schools of Phyrronism and the Middle Academy up to its impact inside and outside of philosophy today. Along the way, it covers skepticism during the Latin, Arabic, and Greek Middle (...) Ages and during the Renaissance before moving on to cover Descartes's methodological skepticism and Pierre Bayle's super-skepticism in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century, it deals with Humean skepticism and the anti-skepticism of Reid and Kant, taking care to also include reflections on the connections between idealism and skepticism. The book covers similar themes in a chapter on G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and then ends its historical overview with a chapter on skepticism in contemporary philosophy. In the final chapter, Lagerlund captures some of skepticism's impact outside of philosophy, highlighting its relation to issues like the replication crisis in science and knowledge resistance. (shrink)

Selection of thirty six articles by Putnam, mostly written after 2000.

Duhem’s problem arises especially in scientific contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science have cited its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging. To address these Duhemian arguments for skepticism, I offer an alternative approach based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account in which Duhem's problem is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities. This is illustrated in examples such (...) as the use of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward alternative approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science, in which we can be more balanced and productive in our scrutiny of the epistemic value of neuroimaging studies. (shrink)

Duhem’s problem arises especially in scientific contexts where the tools and procedures of measurement and analysis are numerous and complex. Several philosophers of cognitive science have cited its manifestations in fMRI as grounds for skepticism regarding the epistemic value of neuroimaging. To address these Duhemian arguments for skepticism, I offer an alternative approach based on Deborah Mayo’s error-statistical account in which Duhem's problem is more fruitfully approached in terms of error probabilities. This is illustrated in examples such (...) as the use of probabilistic brain atlases, comparison of different preprocessing protocols with respect to their error characteristics, and statistical modeling of fMRI data. These examples demonstrate the ways in which we can better understand and formulate the general methodological problem and direct the way toward alternative approaches to neuroimaging in philosophy of cognitive science, in which we can be more balanced and productive in our scrutiny of the epistemic value of neuroimaging studies. (shrink)

This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of Cavell is mistaken in two respects: he ignores Cavell’s inheritance of Kant as well as the differences Cavell emphasizes between external world and other minds skepticism. In the second half of the paper, I examine affinities between Cavell and Levinas’ thought, viz., acknowledging the facticity of the other and their remarks on (...) class='Hi'>skepticism. I close the paper by noting three metaphysical and ethical truths that arise from Cavell’s way with skepticism. (shrink)

The most frequently discussed skeptical arguments in the history of philosophy are to be found in the tightly argued twelve paragraphs of Descartes’ Meditation One. There is considerable controversy about how to interpret the skeptical arguments that Descartes offers; the extent to which those arguments rest upon implicit epistemological and/or metaphysical presuppositions; their originality within the history of skepticism; and the role they play within Cartesian philosophy and natural science. This chapter begins by tracing the complex argumentation of (...) Meditation One. The second section explores the differences between Cartesian skeptical arguments and the skeptical arguments discussed in the ancient world, while the third section considers whether there might be medieval antecedents for the radical doubts that end Meditation One. The final section suggests that the radical nature of the doubts raised in Meditation One has its sources in two fundamental characteristics of Cartesian science: the radical error that Cartesian science posits in our everyday experience of the world, and the hypothetical and (only) morally certain nature of the scientific edifice that is proposed to replace the commonsense view of the world enshrined in Aristotelian science. (shrink)

Moral skepticism is at present a vibrant topic of philosophical inquiry. Particularly since the turn of the millennium, the metaethical study of skepticism has profited from advances in general epistemology and findings in empirical sciences, in light of which new arguments for and against moral skepticism have been devised, while the traditional ones have been reexamined. This collection of original essays by leading metaethicists will advance the ongoing debates about various forms of moral skepticism by drawing (...) on recent innovative work on moral disagreement, moral knowledge and justification, moral error theory, moral fictionalism, moral phenomenology, moral psychology, and evolutionary debunking of morality. It will be a valuable resource for professionals and advanced students working in the areas of moral philosophy and moral psychology. (shrink)

This chapter offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche’s argument for moral skepticism, an argument that should be of independent philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and embarrassing fact about the history of (...) moral theorizing by philosophers over two millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics. According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral claims because the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The chapter concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for scepticism. (shrink)

For at least several decades, and arguably since the time of Descartes, it has been fashionable to offer scientific or quasi-scientific arguments for skepticism about human knowledge. I critique five attempts to argue for skeptical conclusions from the findings of science and scientifically informed common sense.

Em 1912, um conjunto de fragmentos de crânio, mandíbula e dentes foi apresentado na Inglaterra como pertencente a um ancestral do Homo sapiens. A nova espécie, batizada de Eoanthropus dawsoni – o “Homem de Piltdown” –, foi tratada como uma das descobertas mais extraordinárias da antropologia até então: finalmente, um hominídeo havia sido encontrado em solo inglês, e seu status era ainda maior por ser uma espécie da qual a nossa teria supostamente se originado. Quatro décadas depois, no entanto, a (...) fraude foi exposta: os vestígios do Homem de Piltdown haviam sido montados a partir de um crânio humano com mandíbula e dentes de orangotangos. As razões para a aceitação imediata da espécie entre os ingleses foram, provavelmente, as expectativas e os desejos de cientistas em ter o seu país como o berço da humanidade, e também o fato de que o espécime de Piltdown corroborava ideias aceitas na época a respeito da evolução humana. Apesar disso, como, então, sabemos hoje que o Homem de Piltdown é uma fraude? Argumentamos que a resposta a essa questão está no conceito de ceticismo organizado. O ceticismo organizado é um dos componentes do ethos científico propostos pelo sociólogo Robert Merton, um elemento institucional que envolve procedimentos de avaliação e revisão da prática e das ideias científicas feitas a partir de uma comunidade de investigação. No presente artigo, examinamos como o trabalho de uma comunidade de investigação foi fundamental para o desnudamento da farsa do Homem de Piltdown e, em um segundo momento, discutimos o que o ceticismo organizado pode nos ensinar a respeito da natureza da ciência e de nossos próprios processos de raciocínio cotidianos. Palavras-chave: Ceticismo organizado. Natureza da Ciência. Fraude científica. (shrink)

We know very little about mathematical skepticism in modem times. Imre Lakatos once remarked that “in discussing modem efforts to establish foundations for mathematical knowledge one tends to forget that these are but a chapter in the great effort to overcome skepticism by establishing foundations for knowledge in general." And in a sense he was clearly right: modem thought — with its new discoveries in mathematical sciences, the mathematization of physics, the spreading of Pyrrhonist doctrines, the centrality of (...) epistemological foundationalism and the diffusion of the geometrical method in philosophy — was the most natural arena in which skepticism and mathematics could confront each other. The problem remains, however, that no investigation of the whole topic has yet been attempted. Thus, as far as we know, mathematical certainties should have clashed with skeptical doubts, but whether and to what extent there was indeed a historical debate on mathematical skepticism in modern thought remains to be ascertained. (shrink)

A study of how contemporary cinema and film-philosophers explore radical skepticism about our knowledge of the world.

Less discussed than Hume’s skepticism about what grounds there could be for projecting empirical hypotheses is his concern with a skeptical regress that he thought threatened to extinguish any belief when we reflect that our reasoning is not perfect. The root of the problem is the fact that a reflection about our reasoning is itself a piece of reasoning. If each reflection is negative and undermining, does that not give us a diminution of our original belief to nothing? It (...) requires much attention to detail, we argue, to determine whether or not there is a skeptical problem in this neighborhood. Consider that if we subsequently doubt a doubt we had about our reasoning, that would suggest a restoration of some of the force of our original belief. We would then have instead of runaway skepticism an alternating sequence of pieces of skeptical reasoning that cancel each others’ effects on our justification in the original proposition, at least to some degree. We will argue that the outcome of the sequence of reflections Hume is imagining depends on information about a given case that is not known a priori. We conclude this from the fact that under three precise, explanatory, and viable contemporary reconstructions of what this kind of reasoning about reasoning could be like and how it has the potential to affect our original beliefs, a belief-extinguishing regress is not automatic or necessary. (shrink)

What is skepticism? -- Skepticism as selective doubt -- Scientific method and rational skepticism -- Skepticism and the new enlightenment -- The growth of antiscience -- Skepticism, science, and the paranormal -- Should skeptical inquiry be applied to religion? -- Skepticism and religion -- Are science and religion compatible? -- Skepticism and political inquiry -- Skepticism and ethical inquiry -- Moral faith and ethical skepticism reconsidered -- Skepticism and (...) eupraxsophy -- The new skepticism: a worldwide movement -- Skeptical inquiry: my personal involvement -- Science and the public: summing up thirty years of the skeptical inquirer -- The new skepticism: a statement of principles. (shrink)

Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by (...) epistemic trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (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)

The article juxtaposes Jan Srzednicki’s conception of cognition with Jean Piaget’s psychology of cognition. Human’s (child’s) cognition is syncretic. Various cognitive data are confused, systematized, dogmatized or become chaotic, and mistakes appear. These mistakes can be overcome thanks to analytical, intuitive or logical perspectives. Cognition moves from the sphere of “children’s dogmatism” to the world of “mature skepticism”. The syncretic cognition can be overcome thanks to various cognitive procedures, e.g., analytical, logical or intuitive. The intuitive cognition is primary and (...) synthetic—it is present in the acts of analytical cognition. Syncretism may lead to dogmatism if it is uncritical or to skepticism if it is connected with logical procedures. It is explained to a different extent both by Piaget’s epistemology of development and also by epistemology of Srzednicki’s logical gap. (shrink)

This book develops new techniques in formal epistemology and applies them to the challenge of Cartesian skepticism. It introduces two formats of epistemic evaluation that should be of interest to epistemologists and philosophers of science: the dual-component format, which evaluates a statement on the basis of its safety and informativeness, and the relative-divergence format, which evaluates a probabilistic model on the basis of its complexity and goodness of fit with data. Tomoji Shogenji shows that the former lends support (...) to Cartesian skepticism, but the latter allows us to defeat Cartesian skepticism. Along the way, Shogenji addresses a number of related issues in epistemology and philosophy of science, including epistemic circularity, epistemic closure, and inductive skepticism. (shrink)

What chemists take as molecular structure is a theoretical construct based on the concepts of chemical bond, atoms in molecules, etc. and hence it should be distinguished from tangible structures around us. The practical adequacy of it has been demonstrated by the established method of retro-synthetic analysis, for instance. But it is not derived a priori from quantum mechanical treatments of the molecule and criticized for being irrelevant to the reality of the molecule. There is persistent skepticism about it. (...) The present study aims to overcome this skepticism by having recourse to the concepts of affordance and phenomenal field. The basic idea of our approach is suggested by the following statement of Niels Bohr: ‘evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects’. This implies that we should take account of a context in which the cognition of a fact arises when we think about human activities including science. This can be realized by invoking affordances of a complex such as {agent, devices, methods, substances, surroundings}. That is to say, affordances are context-relative dispositional attributes of {agent-material world} complexes as is asserted by Harré and Llored. The phenomenal field is a conceptual device which schematizes the contextual aspect of affordance and, more importantly, serves as a link between the concept of affordance and Kant’s theory of knowledge, by which alone affordances are realized as the dispositional properties of {agent-material world} complexes. Because affordances become actualized in various phenomenal fields, affordances of one and the same object may well be distinct from one another. In conclusion we can take that molecular structure is the affordance of a complex that includes a chemist who is engaged in organic synthesis, whereas a quantum mechanical picture of the molecule may be one of the possible affordances of a complex that includes a quantum chemist who cares about electronic states of the molecule. (shrink)

What chemists take as molecular structure is a theoretical construct based on the concepts of chemical bond, atoms in molecules, etc. and hence it should be distinguished from tangible structures around us. The practical adequacy of it has been demonstrated by the established method of retro-synthetic analysis, for instance. But it is not derived a priori from quantum mechanical treatments of the molecule and criticized for being irrelevant to the reality of the molecule. There is persistent skepticism about it. (...) The present study aims to overcome this skepticism by having recourse to the concepts of affordance and phenomenal field. The basic idea of our approach is suggested by the following statement of Niels Bohr: ‘evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects’. This implies that we should take account of a context in which the cognition of a fact arises when we think about human activities including science. This can be realized by invoking affordances of a complex such as {agent, devices, methods, substances, surroundings}. That is to say, affordances are context-relative dispositional attributes of {agent-material world} complexes as is asserted by Harré and Llored. The phenomenal field is a conceptual device which schematizes the contextual aspect of affordance and, more importantly, serves as a link between the concept of affordance and Kant’s theory of knowledge, by which alone affordances are realized as the dispositional properties of {agent-material world} complexes. Because affordances become actualized in various phenomenal fields, affordances of one and the same object may well be distinct from one another. In conclusion we can take that molecular structure is the affordance of a complex that includes a chemist who is engaged in organic synthesis, whereas a quantum mechanical picture of the molecule may be one of the possible affordances of a complex that includes a quantum chemist who cares about electronic states of the molecule. (shrink)

What chemists take as molecular structure is a theoretical construct based on the concepts of chemical bond, atoms in molecules, etc. and hence it should be distinguished from tangible structures around us. The practical adequacy of it has been demonstrated by the established method of retro-synthetic analysis, for instance. But it is not derived a priori from quantum mechanical treatments of the molecule and criticized for being irrelevant to the reality of the molecule. There is persistent skepticism about it. (...) The present study aims to overcome this skepticism by having recourse to the concepts of affordance and phenomenal field. The basic idea of our approach is suggested by the following statement of Niels Bohr: ‘evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects’. This implies that we should take account of a context in which the cognition of a fact arises when we think about human activities including science. This can be realized by invoking affordances of a complex such as {agent, devices, methods, substances, surroundings}. That is to say, affordances are context-relative dispositional attributes of {agent-material world} complexes as is asserted by Harré and Llored. The phenomenal field is a conceptual device which schematizes the contextual aspect of affordance and, more importantly, serves as a link between the concept of affordance and Kant’s theory of knowledge, by which alone affordances are realized as the dispositional properties of {agent-material world} complexes. Because affordances become actualized in various phenomenal fields, affordances of one and the same object may well be distinct from one another. In conclusion we can take that molecular structure is the affordance of a complex that includes a chemist who is engaged in organic synthesis, whereas a quantum mechanical picture of the molecule may be one of the possible affordances of a complex that includes a quantum chemist who cares about electronic states of the molecule. (shrink)

What chemists take as molecular structure is a theoretical construct based on the concepts of chemical bond, atoms in molecules, etc. and hence it should be distinguished from tangible structures around us. The practical adequacy of it has been demonstrated by the established method of retro-synthetic analysis, for instance. But it is not derived a priori from quantum mechanical treatments of the molecule and criticized for being irrelevant to the reality of the molecule. There is persistent skepticism about it. (...) The present study aims to overcome this skepticism by having recourse to the concepts of affordance and phenomenal field. The basic idea of our approach is suggested by the following statement of Niels Bohr: ‘evidence obtained under different experimental conditions cannot be comprehended within a single picture but must be regarded as complementary in the sense that only the totality of the phenomena exhausts the possible information about the objects’. This implies that we should take account of a context in which the cognition of a fact arises when we think about human activities including science. This can be realized by invoking affordances of a complex such as {agent, devices, methods, substances, surroundings}. That is to say, affordances are context-relative dispositional attributes of {agent-material world} complexes as is asserted by Harré and Llored. The phenomenal field is a conceptual device which schematizes the contextual aspect of affordance and, more importantly, serves as a link between the concept of affordance and Kant’s theory of knowledge, by which alone affordances are realized as the dispositional properties of {agent-material world} complexes. Because affordances become actualized in various phenomenal fields, affordances of one and the same object may well be distinct from one another. In conclusion we can take that molecular structure is the affordance of a complex that includes a chemist who is engaged in organic synthesis, whereas a quantum mechanical picture of the molecule may be one of the possible affordances of a complex that includes a quantum chemist who cares about electronic states of the molecule. (shrink)

The social sciences often explain behavioral differences by appealing to membership in distinct cultural groups. This work uses the concepts of “cultures” and “cultural groups” like any other demographic category (e.g. “gender”, “socioeconomic status”). I call these joint conceptualizations of “cultures” and “cultural groups” _demographic cultures_. Such demographic cultures have long been subject to scrutiny. Here I isolate and respond to a set of arguments I call _demographic skepticism_. This skeptical position denies that the demographic cultures concept can support metaphysically (...) plausible and empirically principled research. I argue against the skeptic, showing that their position relies on a questionable alignment between the demographic cultures concept and what I call the _folk anthropological model_. While the commitments of that model are problematic—they are not necessary for comparative work in the social sciences. In addition to clarifying skeptical arguments, then, I provide four recommendations for the comparative social scientist that allow them to avoid demographic skepticism. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to do two things. First, I attempt to illustrate an interesting pattern of argument one can find in Hume's work. Next, I employ this Humean pattern of argument to show that IF there is a cogent and intuitive argument for any form of epistemological skepticism, which despite its cogency and intuitiveness has a unbelievable conclusion, THEN we lack a very important form of doxastic self-control, which I call rational self-control, over the beliefs problematized by (...) that skeptical argument. Thus, the challenge posed by skepticism is even deeper and more radical than commonly supposed: If any form of skepticism proves unanswerable and yet unbelievable, then we demonstrably lack RSC in the domain problematized by that form of skepticism. Thus, one's views on skepticism may entail definite views on doxastic self-control. (shrink)