Periodic attacks of uncertain origin, where the clinical presentationresembles epilepsy but there is no evidence of a somatic disease, arecalled Pseudo-Epilepsy or Pseudo-Epileptic Attack Disorder (PEAD). PEADmay be called a `non-disease', i.e. a disorder on the fringes ofestablished disease patterns, because it lacks a rationalpathophysiological explanation. The first aim of this article is tocriticize the idea, common in medical science, that diseases are realentities which exist separately from the patient, waiting to bediscovered by the doctor. We argue that doctor and (...) patient construct adisease, and that the construction of the disease PEAD includes manynormative evaluations. The second aim is to provide insight into thesuffering of patients with PEAD. We focus on three aspects of thepatient, identity, autonomy and responsibility. We present somecharacteristic descriptions of (pseudo-)epileptic attacks by FjodorDostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert and Thomas Mann. We argue that diagnosingPEAD reduces a meaningful life event into an insignificant, thoughintriguing, medical phenomenon, and that the patient will not benefitfrom being diagnosed as having PEAD. (shrink)

The distinction between the essence of an object and its properties has been obscured in contemporary discussion of essentialism. Locke held that the properties of an object are exclusively those features that ‘flow’ from its essence. Here he follows the Aristotelian theory, leaving aside Locke’s own scepticism about the knowability of essence. I defend the need to distinguish sharply between essence and properties, arguing that essence must be given by form and that properties flow from form. I give a (...) precise definition of what the term of art ‘flow’ amounts to, and apply the distinction to various kinds of taxonomic issues. (shrink)

The present article provides an overview of the different positions throughout history on the connections between science and religion. We expose the diffi culty to classify these connections and the defi ciency in the taxonomic proposals. This study is intended to revise this interplay from the perspective of the impertinences committed to each other, as well as from the benefi ts that one has received from the other. From this point of view, we can get a glimpse of a (...) more complex and rich scene than that offered by a simple classifi cation. We also reveal that, when one of these fi elds ignores what pertains to the other and fi nally rejects it, it ends up either taking its role or accepting it as its own, but in a poor or completely unfocussed way. The consequence of this is unavoidably scepticism. (shrink)

"I had read the book before in the shorter Harper Torchbook edition but read it again right through--and found it as interesting and exciting as before. I regard it as one of the seminal books in the history of ideas. Based on a prodigious amount of original research, it demonstrated conclusively and in fascinating details how the transmission of ancient skepticism was a bital factor in the formation of modern thought. The story is rich in implications for th history of (...) philosophy, the history of science, and the history of religious thought. Popkin's work has already inspired further work by others--and the new edition takes account of this, most importantly the work of Charles Schmitt. The two new chapters extend the story as far as Spinoza, with special reference to the beginnings of biblical criticism.... Popkin's history is of great potential interest to a wide readership--wider than most specialist publications and wider than it has (so far as I can tell) reached hitherto."--M.F. Burnyeat, Professor of Philosophy, University College London. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In this article, a novel interpretation of one of the problems of Hume scholarship is defended: his view of Metaphysical Realism or the belief in an external world (that there are ontologically and causally perception-independent, absolutely external and continued, i.e. Real entities). According to this interpretation, Hume's attitude in the domain of philosophy should be distinguished from his view in the domain of everyday life: Hume the philosopher suspends his judgement on Realism, whereas Hume the common man firmly believes in (...) the existence of Real entities. The defended reading is thus a sceptical and Realist interpretation of Hume. As such, it belongs to the class of what can be called no-single-Hume interpretations (Richard H. Popkin, Robert J. Fogelin, Donald L. M. Baxter), by contrast to single-Hume readings, which include Realist (naturalist, New Humean) and the traditional Reid-Green interpretation (i.e. Hume believes that there are no Real entities). Hume's distinction between the domains of philosophy and everyday life, which is argued to be epistemological, is employed in order to reconcile his scepticism with his naturalism and constructive science of human nature. The article pays special attention to the too much neglected second profound argument against the senses in Part 1, Section 12 of Hume's first Enquiry and the corresponding argument in Section 4, Part 4, Book 1 of the Treatise. (shrink)

Predictivism, the thesis that all things being equal a hypothesis that predicts a piece of evidence is better supported by that evidence than a hypothesis that only accommodates that evidence, comes in strong and weak forms. Interestingly, weak predictivism, which is widely accepted, can be used to formulate a persuasive argument against some forms of external world scepticism. In this article I formulate this predictivist argument and I explain why it deserves serious consideration despite the fact that it only (...) succeeds as a response to some forms of external world scepticism. (shrink)

I understand (MR) as meaning that there is a way the world is that is independent of our minds or representations. One may also state (MR) in terms of ‘A description/language independent world/reality’ or ‘a conceptual scheme independent world/reality’. For our purposes, we need not distinguish these variants of formulation.

The history of the transmission, recovery and posthumous influence of ancient scepticism is a fascinating chapter in the history of ideas. An extraordinary collection of philosophical texts and some of the most challenging arguments ever devised were first lost, then only partly recovered philologically, and finally rediscovered conceptually, leaving Cicero and Sextus Empiricus as the main champions of Academic and Pyrrhonian scepticism respectively. This chapter outlines what we know about this shipwreck and what was later salvaged from it.

This paper compares Wittgenstein's conception of ?objective certainty? with Descartes's ?metaphysical certainty?. According to both conceptions if you are certain of something in these senses, then it is inconceivable that you are mistaken. But a striking difference is that for Descartes, if you are metaphysically certain of something it follows both that the something is so and that you know it is so; whereas on Wittgenstein's conception neither thing follows. I try to show that there is a form of ? (...) class='Hi'>scepticism? in Wittgenstein's outlook on the concept of certainty, although it is not the familiar Philosophical Scepticism. The Appendix takes issue with a recent essay by John Cook which argues that the ?hinge propositions? of On Certainty are based on ?the metaphysics of phenomenalism? (shrink)

Why has Thomas Reid’s philosophy been neglected? One answer to this question might cite Reid’s treatment by critics of his day. But Reid may also have been neglected because his terminology suggests a kind of quaint, naive dogmatism: a “philosophy of common sense” might belong to a philosopher who resists skepticism by just saying “no” to all that fancy philosophizing. Indeed, Reid tells us in the Inquiry: “I despise Philosophy, and renounce its guidance, let my soul dwell with Common Sense.” (...) But Reid’s announcement holds only if skepticism can’t be refuted, and what Reid takes himself to have done is precisely that: refute skepticism. Philip de Bary’s Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His Reliabilist Response is an admirable account of Reid’s strongly philosophical response to skepticism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:121. HUME'S Of Scepticism with regard to reason: A STUDY IN CONTRASTING THEMES.* This paper attempts to describe the complex dialectical interplay among the contrasting rational, sceptical and naturalist elements which appear in Section I, Part IV of Book I of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. At the same time we shall try to show that, contrary to Hume's own evaluation of that section, it is the sceptical (...) element, in which the unreliability of reason is supposedly demonstrated, as opposed to the naturalist element, in which its unreliability is supposed to remain hidden from us, that deserves to triumph. With these two goals in mind and in order to make it easier for the reader to follow the inevitable twists and turns of the dialectic, we have divided the paper into two three-sectioned parts. The first part bears the title "Reason and Scepticism", while the second part bears the title "Naturalism". The first section of Part I is concerned with proving that Hume's attempted reduction of all knowledge to probability is frustrated by his failure to explain how we can make mistakes in simple operations with small numbers. If so, the first phase of his sceptical assault against reason fails to dislodge her from her throne. If the second section is right, the second stage of the sceptical assault fares no better. For Hume's attempted reduction of all probabilities to zero is shown to rely on an unsatisfactory formula for calculating the probabilities in question. In the third section an effort is made to show that the attempted reduction of the second section, i_f it had been a success instead of a failure, would have destroyed reason but left scepticism intact. *I should like to thank Howard Sobel for his penetrating and unsparing criticism of an earlier version of this paper. 122. Hume's conviction, on the other hand, that the flawed reduction in question is unflawed and destroys both leads to a prolonged discussion, initiated in the first section of Part II, of his naturalism. Indeed, this theme dominates the rest of the paper. Thus it deserves a part to itself. If we are correct in the first section of Part II, Hume's naturalism is best interpreted as a doctrine of instincts relying for its doctrinal status upon a failure to accept the conclusion of the sceptical argument directed against reason. But, as we try to bring out in the second section, the specific psychological inability with which Hume could in the final analysis give substance to this failure of acceptance is left without any causal foundation. Finally, in the third section that inability is seen to run afoul of reason as Hume himself understands it. And note is taken of the fact that reason so understood and the sceptical argument directed against reason that Hume adopts for his own both commit him willy-nilly to rejecting for good or ill one standard definition of knowledge. Reason and Scepticism Nowhere are the rational elements in Hume's philosophy more in evidence, ironically enough, than in Section I, Part IV of Book I of the Treatise entitled Of Scepticism with regard to reason. For it is there we are told in the very first paragraph that in all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible. Our reason, moreover, must be consider ' d as a kind of cause, of which truth is the natural effect. (T180) In other words, reason, left to its own devices, would produce truth and, presumably, only truth. Anyone who steadfastly adheres to such principles will reject out of hand one kind of scepticism with regard 123. to reason. That is the kind which results from the alleged discovery that reason, left to its own devices, compels us to embrace one or more contradictions, an obvious form of 2 falsity. It is a kind of scepticism which Bayle cultivated so assiduously. And yet, despite the influence which Bayle 's writings exerted upon Hume, they never convinced him of the viability of this kind of scepticism. On the contrary, apart from some wavering in the Enquiry, he was as adamant as any Leibnizian rationalist that right reason3 ing leads only... (shrink)

The paper is a sustained analysis of some recent work on transcendental arguments with a view to assessing both its relevance to Kant's philosophy and its historical accuracy. Robert Stem's reading of Kant's philosophical aims is examined and criticized narrowly, and Barry Stroud's influential objection to transcendental arguments as a class is shown to be harmless. Kant is presented as a friend rather than a foe of scepticism, and his 'proto-verificationist' criterion of meaning is shown to underpin, rather than (...) undermine, the sceptical position. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is to seek clarification on the relationship between epistemic relativism and scepticism. It is not infrequent to come across contemporary discussions of epistemic relativism that rely upon aspects of scepticism and, vice versa, discussions of scepticism drawing upon aspects of relativism. Our goal is to highlight the difference between them by illustrating that some arguments thought to be against relativism are actually against scepticism, that there are different ways of understanding the (...) relationship between relativism and scepticism, and that a commitment to either relativism or scepticism does not entail commitment to the other. The paper focuses upon the works of Peter Unger and Paul Boghossian to show how this terrain can be variously conceived and to illustrate that Boghossian's conception of the landscape is incorrect. (shrink)

It is well known that taxonomists rely on many different methods and criteria for species delimitation, leading to different kinds of groups being recognised as species. While this state of relative disorder is widely acknowledged, there is no similar agreement about how it should be resolved. This paper considers the view that the disorder in species classification should be resolved by a system of taxonomic governance. I argue that such a system of governance is best seen as a combination (...) of standardisation, unification and regulation, each of which can be implemented in different forms. I investigate the forms that these three components should take for taxonomic governance by looking into two successfully governed classification systems, namely, virus classification and enzyme classification. The last part of the paper then defends the governance view against five objections. (shrink)

We present the first comprehensive taxonomic revision and review the biology of the olingos, the endemic Neotropical procyonid genus Bassaricyon, based on most specimens available in museums, and with data derived from anatomy, morphometrics, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, field observations, and geographic range modeling. Species of Bassaricyon are primarily forest-living, arboreal, nocturnal, frugivorous, and solitary, and have one young at a time. We demonstrate that four olingo species can be recognized, including a Central American species (Bassaricyon gabbii), lowland species (...) with eastern, cis-Andean (Bassaricyon alleni) and western, trans-Andean (Bassaricyon medius) distributions, and a species endemic to cloud forests in the Andes. The oldest evolutionary divergence in the genus is between this last species, endemic to the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador, and all other species, which occur in lower elevation habitats. Surprisingly, this Andean endemic species, which we call the Olinguito, has never been previously described; it represents a new species in the order Carnivora and is the smallest living member of the family Procyonidae. We report on the biology of this new species based on information from museum specimens, niche modeling, and fieldwork in western Ecuador, and describe four Olinguito subspecies based on morphological distinctions across different regions of the Northern Andes. (shrink)

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

Exegetical scepticism is a strand of scepticism about meaning running through the German Enlightenment. This paper provides the first modern account of its tenets, critics, and proponents, and argues that it shares essential features with modern varieties of meaning-scepticism that have been a preoccupation among philosophers of language since the middle of the twentieth century. I argue that exegetical scepticism is a type of epistemological scepticism first introduced as a philosophical position in a theological debate (...) between August Pfeiffer (1640–1698) and Philipp Jacob Spener (1635–1705). Under contention, so I argue, was the idea that interpretation is never certain because it is necessarily underdetermined by the evidence. Following the effects of this controversy, I show that exegetical scepticism caused a great deal of unrest in German letters in the eighteenth century and can be seen to contribute to the great proliferation of hermeneutical theories in the Aufklärung, indeed to the very birth of hermeneutics as a standalone discipline. Bringing this type of scepticism to contemporary attention supports a reassessment of issues at the heart of meaning-scepticism and hermeneutics itself, and a reconsideration of the histories of Enlightenment scepticism and hermeneutics. (shrink)

This article examines the sceptical dimension of Salomon Maimon’s theory of invention. It suggests the following: (i) Most of Maimon’s methods are intended to increase the degree of certainty that we can attribute to propositions, but not to achieve apodictic certainty. (ii) Maimon’s various forms of scepticism, for example, doubt and the antinomies, should be considered as belonging to a scale of doubt wherein degrees of certainty and probability can increase and decrease. (iii) His methods of invention offer various (...) means for increasing the degree of certainty, such as finding more connections to other propositions and analyzing whether a condition expressed in a proposition is true or whether it is only a pseudo-condition. (iv) The method of transforming problematic propositions into true propositions indicates that Maimon’s sceptical stance sometimes made way for rational dogmatic thought, since this transformation is in the opposite direction of what is usually advocated by sceptics. (shrink)

Professor Grayling’s book provides an illuminating and insightful analysis of one variety of epistemological scepticism. It is not a study of scepticism per se; rather, it is an attempt to refute the claim that we can never be satisfactorily justified in our general assertions about the world.

This paper (in English) highlights a hitherto neglected feature of Hegel’s 1807 Phenomenology of Spirit: its critique of the content of our basic categorial concepts. It focusses on Hegel’s semantics of cognitive reference in ‘Sense Certainty’ and his use of this semantics also in ‘Perception’ and ‘Force and Understanding’. Explicating these points enables us to understand how Hegel criticizes Pyrrhonian Scepticism on internal grounds.

Originally published in 1968. Scepticism is generally regarded as a position which, if correct, would be disastrous for our everyday and scientific beliefs. According to this view, a sceptical argument is one that leads to the intuitively false conclusion that we cannot know anything. But there is another, much neglected and more radical form of scepticism, Pyrrhonism, which neither denies nor accepts the possibility of knowledge and is to be regarded not as a philosophical position so much as (...) the expression of a philosophical way of life. Professor Naess argues that, given a sympathetic interpretation, Sextus Empiricus’s outline of Pyrrhonian scepticism provides the essentials of a genuine and rational sceptical point of view. He begins with a brief account of Pyrrhonism, then goes on to argue for the psychological possibility of this kind of scepticism, defending it against common objections, and examining some of its implications. The last two chapters provide detailed support for the rationality of Pyrrhonism, drawing mainly on certain methodological distinctions in semantics which both justify the Pyrrhonist’s failure to make assertions and restrict the scope of recent epistemological arguments against scepticism in such a way as to modify severely the conclusions based on them. (shrink)

How can experience provide knowledge, or even justified belief, about the objective world outside our minds? This volume presents original essays by prominent contemporary epistemologists, who show how philosophical progress on foundational issues can improve our understanding of, and suggest a solution to, this famous sceptical question.

The ‘standard interpretation’ of John Taurek’s argument in ‘Should the Numbers Count?’ imputes two theses to him: first, ‘numbers scepticism’, or scepticism about the moral force of an appeal to the mere number of individuals saved in conflict cases; and second, the ‘equal greatest chances’ principle of rescue, which requires that every individual has an equal chance of being rescued. The standard interpretation is criticized here on a number of grounds. First, whilst Taurek clearly believes that equal chances (...) are all-important, he actually argues for a position weaker than the equal greatest chances principle. Second, the argument Taurek gives for the importance of equal chances ought to commit him to being more hospitable to the significance of numbers than he seems to be. Third, and as a result, Taurek should not have dismissed the significance of numbers but embraced a form of pluralism instead. Fourth, this result should be welcomed, because pluralism is more plausible than either the equal greatest chances principle or the saving the greater number principle. (shrink)

In epistemology the nagging voice of the sceptic has always been present, whispering that 'You can't know that you have hands, or just about anything else, because for all you know your whole life is a dream.' Philosophers have recently devised ingenious ways to argue against and silence this voice, but Bryan Frances now presents a highly original argument template for generating new kinds of radical scepticism, ones that hold even if all the clever anti-sceptical fixes defeat the traditional (...) sceptic. Sharp, witty, and fun to read, Scepticism Comes Alive will be highly provocative for anyone interested in knowledge and its limits. (shrink)

Saul_Jennifer, Scepticism and Implicit Bias.

I have argued for a kind of ‘counterfactual scepticism’: most counterfactuals ever uttered or thought in human history are false. I briefly rehearse my main arguments. Yet common sense recoils. Ordinary speakers judge most counterfactuals that they utter and think to be true. A common defence of such judgments regards counterfactuals as context-dependent: the proposition expressed by a given counterfactual can vary according to the context in which it is uttered. In normal contexts, the counterfactuals that we utter are (...) typically true, the defence insists, while granting that there may be more rarefied contexts in which they are false. I give a taxonomy of such contextualist replies. One could be a contextualist about the counterfactual connective, about its antecedent, or about its consequent. I offer some general concerns about all these varieties of contextualism. I then focus especially on antecedent-contextualism, as I call it. I firstly raise some high-level objections to it. Then, I look at such a contextualist account due to Sandgren and Steele. I think it has many virtues, but also some problems. I conclude with some avenues for future research. (shrink)

McDowell has argued that external world scepticism is a pressing problem only in so far as we accept, on the basis of the argument from illusion, the claim that perceiving that p and hallucinating that p involve a highest common factor.

Arguments for scepticism about perceptual knowledge are often said to have intuitively plausible premises. In this discussion I question this view in relation to an argument from ignorance and argue that the supposed persuasiveness of the argument depends on debatable background assumptions about knowledge or justification. A reasonable response to scepticism has to show there is a plausible epistemological perspective that can make sense of our having perceptual knowledge. I present such a perspective. In order give a more (...) satisfying response to scepticism, we need also to consider the standing of background beliefs. This is required since the recognitional abilities that enable us to have perceptual knowledge are informed by, or presuppose, a picture or conception of the world the correctness of which we have not ascertained. The question is how, in the face of this, to make sense of responsible belief-formation. In addressing this problem I make a suggestion about the standing of certain crucial beliefs linking appearances with membership of kinds. (shrink)

In a shift of position that has gone largely unnoticed by the great majority of commentators, Thomas Kuhn's version of the incommensurability thesis underwent a major transformation over the last decade and a half of his life. In his later work, Kuhn argued that incommensurability is a relation of translation failure between local subsets of interdefined theoretical terms, which encapsulate the taxonomic structure of a theory. Incommensurability arises because it is impossible to transfer the natural categories employed within one (...) taxonomic structure into the categorial system of another such structure. Apparently on the basis of such taxonomic incommensurability, Kuhn asserted a number of antirealist theses about truth, reference and reality. In this paper, it will be argued, however, that, far from leading to antirealist consequences about the relationship between theory and reality, the taxonomic incommensurability thesis may be incorporated unproblematically within a reasonably robust scientific realist framework. (shrink)

Our aim in this article is to bring some clarity to the clinical ethics expertise debate by critiquing and replacing the taxonomy offered by the Core Competencies report. The orienting question for our taxonomy is: Can clinical ethicists offer justified, normative recommendations for active patient cases? Views that answer “no” are characterized as a “negative” view of clinical ethics expertise and are further differentiated based on (a) why they think ethicists cannot give justified normative recommendations and (b) what they think (...) ethicists can offer, if they cannot offer recommendations. Views that answer “yes” to the orienting question are characterized as a “positive” view of clinical ethics expertise. Positive views are distinguished according to four additional questions. First (P1), how are those recommendations generated? Second (P2), what is the nature of the recommendations? Third (P3), we ask, how are the recommendations justified? And finally (P4), how are the recommendations communicated? (shrink)

Berger and Mylopoulos (2019) critique recent scepticism about unconscious perception, focusing on experimental work from Peters and Lau, and theoretical work of my own. Central to their wide-ranging discussion is the claim that unconscious perception occupies a default status within both experimental and folk psychology. Here, I argue to the contrary that a conscious-perception-only model should be our default. Along the way, I offer my own analysis of Peters and Lau's study, assess the folk psychological status of unconscious perception, (...) discuss vision-for-action, and confront an important dilemma which Berger and Mylopoulos raise for the sceptic concerning the existence of unconscious mentality in general. (shrink)