Modes Of Scepticism Research Articles

Shakespeare and Montaigne. Edited by Lars Engle, Patrick Gray, and William M. Hamlin

Lars Engle usefully explains (p. 38) that the sixteen chapters in this edited volume are divided into those which draw a comparison between Montaigne and Shakespeare and those which argue for an influence of the first on the second. Yet the beauty of this volume is that other understandings of its organization and purpose are also richly available. For instance, Colin Burrow’s careful preface raises an implicit question that is central to the volume’s overall concerns: is any syncrisis between the essayist and the playwright a matter of exact verbal parallels or of a conference, a conferring, a vibration through moments of empathy and silent, perhaps even accidental, affinity? Burrow’s deliberate unpicking of the notion of source as being inadequate to the task of what reading — let alone imitation — might mean in this debate is followed by N. Amos Rothschild’s contribution on the rhetoric of imitation, and then further refracted in Peter G. Platt’s ‘hovering and haunting’ (p. 242), in Richard Scholar’s delicate probing of Shakespeare’s and Montaigne’s rhetorical manner as well as matter, and in The Tempest’s ‘essay-like processes of thought’ analysed by Engle (p. 56). In a not dissimilar vein, Richard Hillman discusses the imitative generic patterns of tragedy and comedy. A second thematic strand studies how or whether Shakespeare and Montaigne can speak to our modernity: Anita Gilman Sherman interrogates selfhood, William McKenzie narcissism, and David Schalkwyk gender; in the book’s longest chapter (forty-seven pages), Patrick Gray proposes a dissenting view of liberalism. Likewise, there is a marked philosophical edge to a number of chapters — another thematic undercurrent. Maria Devlin McNair uses Bernard Williams’s notion of moral luck, Cassie M. Miura deploys Stanley Cavell, and Zorica Bečanović-Nikolić examines subjectivity through the writings of Paul Ricœur; Pyrrhonism occurs in chapters by Alison Calhoun, Richard Dillane, and William M. Hamlin, while Daniel Vitkus champions a neo-pagan reading of Antony and Cleopatra. Alongside this prismatic sense of the chapters, with each change of perspective bringing a new dimension of Shakespeare and Montaigne into view, the volume also reflexively enlarges on and assesses its own emphases through its abundant paratexts — a preface, two introductions, and two afterwords. They fulfil diverse functions. Hamlin offers a history of criticism about Shakespeare and Montaigne, whereas Engle views the pair in terms of thought-experiments. The afterwords, by contrast, tend to be contestatory. Thus, echoing Gray, George Hoffmann warns us not to take Montaigne straightforwardly as our liberal ancestor and, like Burrow, sees the self chiefly as a product of performance albeit now in a philosophical, sceptical mode. Meanwhile, Katharine Eisaman Maus points up some of the differences rather than the similarities between the playwright and the essayist. Curiously, none of the contributions considers whether oral transmission through report, news, or even word of mouth among circles of acquaintances might have played any part in Shakespeare’s encounter with the Essais. This reservation notwithstanding, the volume offers a wide-ranging yet coherent body of reflection and represents a distinguished and stimulating illustration of the key themes, ideas, and approaches in its field.

What Is Holding Us Together? David Hume, Edgar Allan Poe and the Problem of Association

Abstract Poe’s experimental fiction revitalizes Hume’s ambivalent empiricism, the complexities of which were sometimes obscured in the philosopher’s nineteenth-century American reception. Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ broaches formally the question of how one thought leads to another, while ‘The Man that Was Used Up’ stages the question of what grounds the unity of one’s thoughts. Reading both tales together exposes the scope and limits of an associationist paradigm often traced back to Hume. But reading Hume through Poe’s verbal art reveals that Hume’s ‘mitigated scepticism’ about personal identity is more difficult to grapple with, and potentially more devastating for Western Reason, than the modes of scepticism that more comfortably entered the English canon. In ‘Rue Morgue’, Detective Dupin’s presumption to reconstruct fully the narrator’s train of thought may be the real locus of the tale’s horror. In the ‘Man that Was Used Up’, the heroic General A.B.C. Smith disintegrates on the floor into a talking ‘bundle’ that parodically literalizes Hume’s most famous metaphor in the Treatise. Hume’s bundle thus reappears in Poe as the proto-surrealist ‘terminus’ of a reductive explanation that has become physically real. To say with Hume that the mind is a ‘fiction’ is not to deny the goings-on of mental phenomena, but to attempt a much more challenging claim: that our minds conceptualize themselves out of their own limited nature, but not in a way that necessarily accords with that nature. If Hume brings out the parody in Poe, we might also say that Poe amplifies the irony in Hume.

Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes by Stefan Sienkiewicz

Reviewed by: Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes by Stefan Sienkiewicz Justin Vlasits Stefan Sienkiewicz. Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. x + 204. Cloth, $65.00. This book, which originated as the author's 2013 Oxford dissertation, treats five modes of argument described by the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus. In the first book of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH), Sextus claims that these modes (disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity, and relativity) bring about suspension of judgment, a mental state in which one finds the considerations for and against some claim to be balanced. We see the modes used both alone and in combination when Sextus investigates dogmatic philosophy. Accordingly, Sienkiewicz assigns a chapter to each mode and concludes with how they might work together. This book has much to commend it: Sextus's text is clearly explained, distinctions are carefully drawn, the prose is clear, and attention is paid to philological and philosophical issues. Sienkiewicz's main claim is that we must attend to how the modes might make not only the dogmatist suspend judgment, but also the skeptic. This latter task is more difficult, since the skeptic is limited in the beliefs that she can appeal to. Approaching the modes from a skeptical and not dogmatic perspective is important and has never been pursued in depth. Sienkiewicz's essential idea is to conceive of these modes as argument schemata about a given proposition, for instance, the mode of disagreement: "(i). There is peer disagreement over P. (ii). If there is peer disagreement over P, then S should suspend judgment over P. Therefore, (iii). S should suspend judgment over P." (29) Sienkiewicz then asks if the skeptic, given her lack of beliefs, is entitled to believe (i), (ii), or (iii) for any P. In this case, he argues that, since (ii) is a controversial claim in contemporary epistemology, held on the basis of argument, a Pyrrhonian skeptic cannot believe it and cannot use it in the argument to establish suspension of judgment, according to any interpretation of skeptical belief. For four modes, Sienkiewicz argues that the skeptical mode involves opposing arguments. The main problem facing this interpretation is that Sextus only mentions oppositions for two modes. Sienkiewicz thinks this is the only permissible way for the skeptic to employ these modes. Were that true, it would give some support for his interpretation. But Sienkiewicz says that, even with the skeptical versions of the modes, the mature skeptic does not believe the conclusion that she ought to suspend judgment on the basis of rational argumentation from the premises. Instead, the skeptic suspends judgment due to a "disposition" to do so that was developed when she was a "proto-skeptic" (45–46) and still felt rationally compelled to draw such conclusions. But once we say this about skeptical modes, we can say the same thing about dogmatic modes. The mature skeptic has a disposition to suspend judgment in accordance with the modes even though she does not believe the premises or conclusion. If that is so, we can retain the "dogmatic" versions of the modes when they fit the text and no longer need to resort to filling in imagined gaps in Sextus's argumentation. Indeed, so long as the premises are true, even if the skeptic does not believe them, suspension of judgment might be warranted. [End Page 813] Something must be said about the relationship between this book and Jonathan Barnes's justly celebrated Toils of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1990), which it structurally mirrors and alludes to even to the point of illustrating an undecided disagreement with a debate about Aristotle's ethical works and ending with a joke about suspending judgment. At many points, Sienkiewicz surely corrects Barnes's readings. Sienkiewicz is also to be commended for incorporating the mode of relativity, which is conspicuously absent in Barnes, even though Sienkiewicz thinks that in the end it is inconsistent with the mode of disagreement. However, both largely put to one side the question of the historical roots of these modes, how they relate to other sets of modes in the Pyrrhonian tradition, and how they are...

The Two Modes of Scepticism and the Aporetic Structure of Foundationalism

The purpose of the present article is to show that the key to understanding the philosophical meaning of the Two Modes of Scepticism is directly linked to the metaepistemic function performed by the criterion of truth ( kriterion tes aletheias ) in the Hellenistic theories of knowledge. Since the criterion can also be regarded as an epistemic instrument through which it is possible to immediately identify the foundational elements upon which our knowledge of the world is based, the Two Modes show the problems that arise when we try to incontrovertibly identify a set of special and foundational elements that have no need of further justification.

Aftereffects of Knowledge: Dogmatic Retreats and Sceptical Adventures

A distinction between nature and culture is usually thought to be a condition of possibility of criticism. The idea is that, in comparison to natural laws, norms and conventions are merely relative and, therefore, susceptible to criticism and change. This paper contests this view and argues that critical practice is still possible, and even more productive, when nature and culture are seen to be continuous with one another. A general contrast is developed between ‘dogmatic’ and ‘sceptical’ modes of criticism. The suggestion is that theorists as diverse as Jürgen Habermas and Judith Butler adopt the dogmatic approach. An alternative, sceptical critical mode is elaborated in connection with Nietzsche and the ancient sceptics. This sceptical approach is based upon an identity between nature and culture, and has affinities with the aesthetic emphasis of some contemporary political theory.

Competition in the regeneration niche between conifers and angiosperms: Bond's slow seedling hypothesis

What features of angiosperms have enabled them to dominate the biomass of much temperate and tropical vegetation despite the high productivity of many adult gymnosperms, especially conifers? Bond (1989) argued that slow-growing gymnosperm juveniles are poor competitors with angiosperms regenerating in forest gaps and other well lit, well watered habitats. Consequently, gymnosperms are restricted to areas where growth of angiosperm competitors is reduced, for example by cold or nutrient shortages. A historical implication of Bond's hypothesis is that angiosperms overran gymnosperms during the Cretaceous and Tertiary by invading their regeneration niche. Bond's (1989) 'slow seedling' hypothesis has considerable appeal because it seeks to explain major phytogeographical patterns and evolutionary trends in terms of observable vegetative traits. Data suitable for testing Bond's plausible arguments were then quite limited, and what was proposed as hypothesis has often been cited as fact in recent reviews of conifer biology (Enright & Hill 1995; Richardson 1998; Smith & Hinckley 1995). Studies of large-scale trends may be exploratory (generating hypotheses) or sceptical (testing hypotheses); both modes of inquiry are essential and indeed complementary (McShea 1998). This review emphasizes the sceptical mode, and aims to test some of the main premises and generalizations of Bond's (1989) slow seedling hypothesis. Although Bond's arguments embraced the polyphyletic gymnosperms, relevant data are mostly limited to the monophyletic conifers, also constraining this review. A key element of Bond's (1989) hypothesis is that conifer seedlings cannot match the fastest growth rates of angiosperms. This is supported here for earlysuccession angiosperms, but not for late-succession, north-temperate trees. Few comparative data are available from regions where both angiosperms and conifers have long-lived leaves, a trait that is correlated with reduced seedling growth rate (Reich 1998). Whether Bond's hypothesis can explain the rarity of conifers and gymnosperms in lowland tropical forests therefore remains uncertain. Bond (1989) attributed the slow growth of juvenile conifers to an inefficient transport system and a low

Descartes and Ancient Skepticism: Reheated Cabbage?

This paper began life as part of a longer paper, versions of which were read at MIT (May, 1997), Stanford (October, 1997), the University of Michigan (December, 1997), and the Classical Seminar in Corpus Christi College, Oxford (June, 1998). A version of the present paper was presented at Cornell's Society for the Humanities (March, 1999), and at the Keeling Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, held at University College, London (November, 1999). I thank the audiences on these occasions for helpful comments, especially Jean-Marie Beyssade, Chris Bobonich, Justin Broackes, Lesley Brown, David Charles, Ed Curley, Stephen Everson, Dan Garber, Louis Loeb, Gisela Striker, and Ralph Wedgwood. Thanks are also due to Carl Ginet, who saved me from a mistake and suggested a way to repair it; to Michael Ayers, Al-Quassim Cassam, and Zoltdn Szab6 for stimulating discussion; to Julia Annas, both for stimulating discussion and for showing me her as yet unpublished paper Hume and Ancient Scepticism, which has influenced my paper a lot; to Charles Brittain for stimulating discussion and helpful written comments; to an anonymous referee for, and the then editors of, the Philosophical Revieur, and to Christopher Taylor, my commentator at the Keeling Colloquium. Marjorie Grene's paper, Descartes and Ancient Skepticism, Review of Metaphysics 52 (1999): 553-71, reached me only after my paper had been completed; I regret that I was not able to take account of it. 1See (to take only a few of many examples) M. F. Burnyeat, Can the Skeptic Live His Skepticism? in Skeptical Tradition, ed. M. F. Burnyeat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 117-48, at 118-19 (originally published in Doubt and Dogmatism, ed. M. Schofield, M. Burnyeat, and J. Barnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1980), 2053);J. Annas andJ. Barnes, Modes of Scepticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 7-8; B. Mates, Pyrrhonism and Modern Scepticism: Similarities and Differences, in Philosophie, Psycholoanalyse, Emigration, ed. P. Muhr, P. Feyeraband, C. Wegeler (Vienna: WUV-Universitatsverlag, 1992), 210-28, at 219-21; R. Hankinson, Sceptics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1995), 21-23; S. Gaukroger, The Ten Modes of Aenesidemus and the Myth of Ancient Scepticism, British Journal for the History of Philosophy 3 (1995): 371-87, and his Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 1995), 310ff. However, the claim is often qualified. Annas and Barnes, for example, say

Antiquarianism, religion and the Scottish Enlightenment

One of the most dramatic changes in Scottish culture during the era of Enlightenment was the abandonment of a patriotic myth of national origins for a more detached and sceptical mode of 'philosophical history. According to the legend which was debunked, the Scottish kingdom had enjoyed an almost uninterrupted existence since its foundation in 330 BC by Fergus MacFerquhard, the military leader of a colony of Scots from Ireland who had settled in the west Highlands. This myth had served a number of useful purposes. It upheld the claim that Scotland had always been a sovereign independent monarchy. Moreover, in the influential version of the foundation story retailed by the Protestant monarchomach George Buchanan (1506-82), Fergus had been elected king, which meant that Scotland had an ancient constitution under the auspices of which kings were accountable to the nation. This function was of the utmost importance after 1689 in justifying the deposition of James VII. Therefore it is substantially to the credit of the enlightened whig historians of eighteenth-century Scotland that they came to reject their precious historical totems, and, disenchanted, attempted to legitimise their political preferences by other means. However, it is not so clear that Scottish whig historical culture

The Struggle for the Soul of the French Novel: French Catholic and Realist Novelists, 1850-1970

The sceptical mode the limping devil of Barbey d'Aurevilly Zola's new testament Huysmans and the art of conversion the symbolist imagination of Leon Bloy belief and narrative form in the novels of Francois Mauriac Julien Green's scale of realities the Bernanosian Synthesis.

The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations.

The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations.

The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations

The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations

The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (review)

The Modes of Scepticism. Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (review)

The Modes of Scepticism: Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations.

1. Sceptical philosophy 2. Scepticism in ancient philosophy 3. The ten modes 4. Humans and other animals 5. Human variations 6. The senses 7. Circumstances 8. Places and positions 9. Mixtures 10. Quantities 11. Relativity 12. The common and the rare 13. Customs and persuasions Appendix A. Philo and Diogenes on the modes Appendix B. The eight modes against causal explanations Appendix C. The five modes of Agrippa Appendix D. The two modes Appendix E. Textual notes.

Going Out the Window: A Comment on Tweyman

86 GOING OUT THE WINDOW: A COMMENT ON TWEYMAN Whether your scepticism be as absolute and sincere as you pretend, we shall learn bye and bye, when the company breaks up: We shall then see, whether you go out at the door or the window; and whether you really doubt; if your body has gravity, or can be injured by its fall; according to popular opinion, derived from our fallacious senses and more fallacious experience. My paper is divided into two sections. In the first section I will summarize and comment on Stanley 2 Tweyman' s paper and in the second section present an alternative reading of Parts X and XI of the Dialogues. SECTION I In his paper Tweyman claims that, although Philo's argument in Parts I-IX of the Dialogues are Pyrrhonian, in Parts X and XI a major change of strategy occurs in which Pyrrhonian arguments are replaced by hypothetico-deductive ones. Recent scholarship on Hume's Dialogues has revolved around two questions: (1) the identification of the sources and personages of the Dialogues and (2) Hume's attitude toward religion. Tweyman and I agree that Philo speaks for Hume. We differ on the character of Philo's challenge to Cleanthes' experimental theism. Philo's methodological shift in Parts X and XI is said to consist in his presentation of scientific hypotheses for appraisal, in contrast to the alternative hypotheses of the earlier Parts, where sceptical arguments are used to undermine Cleanthes' position. I take it that the scientific hypotheses in question are construed realistically 87 and not instrumentally; they are supposedly true or false and permit deductions to be made from them. The first evidence of the methodological shift, we are told, occurs in Part VIII in which Philo speaks in the third and not the first person, "a clear signal to the reader ... that his Pyrrhonism ... has now been abandoned." (Tweyman, 77) I find this claim unconvincing since in the majority of instances throughout the passage Philo writes in first-person fashion (D 186). Any detectable changes here seem to me to be purely stylistic in character. Tweyman uses the terms 'scepticism' and 'Pyrrhonism' interchangeably. His account of Pyrrhonism involves two theses, the second of which is derived from the first: (1) scepticism involves suspense of judgment between alternative beliefs; and (2) Philo presents his "position in order to show that the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes is false." (Tweyman, 76) In his sceptical mode in Parts I-IX Philo makes no truth claim for the hypotheses he sets out. But, according to Tweyman, ...this does not establish that Philo is a Pyrrhonian throughout the Dialogues, and that he always supports positions ... to argue against the hypothesis advanced by Cleanthes. (Tweyman, 76) Tweyman gives two examples of Philonian scepticism in Parts I-VIII. The first is the debate in Part IV over the deity's relation to the world. Cleanthes contends that the deity is external to his creation, and Philo questions the validity of Cleanthes' causal inferences. (D 160) The second is the argument in Parts VI and VII in which Philo argues that the available data do not support the hypothesis of an intelligent designer. I find the account at this point unexceptionable. 88 The first example in which Philo's arguments become "distinctly un-Pyrrhonian" (Tweyman, 77) is the passage in which Philo details the 'inconveniences' of anthropomorphism. Philo begins by saying: ...you can still persevere in your anthropomorphism and assert the moral attributes of the Deity, his justice, benevolence, mercy, and rectitude, to be of the same nature with these virtues in human creatures? (D 198) But, he continues, "the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity." ( Ibid. ) Cleanthes' has asserted human happiness, a thesis which Philo denies. We are no longer dealing with an alternative hypothesis designed to undermine Cleanthes' account but with "the hypothetico-deductive method for testing Cleanthes' hypothesis." (Tweyman, 78) Part XI divides into the three sections which are each discussed to show that Philo's arguments are not Pyrrhonian. since the argument is similar in all three cases, I will remark only on the discussion of the 'indifference hypothesis,' Philo's argument that...

The Modes of Scepticism

<i>The Modes of Scepticism</i>