Conciliationism and the Menace of Scepticism

It is sometimes claimed that conciliatory views on disagreement ultimately lead to either global or widespread scepticism. This is deemed to be a serious problem for conciliationism either because scepticism of either kind is a patently untenable stance or because it poses a serious threat to our intellectual and social lives. In this paper, I first argue that the alleged untenability of both types of scepticism is far from being obvious and should therefore be established rather than taken for granted, and then that those who reject them because of the threat they pose surprisingly confuse pragmatic reasons with epistemic reasons

Pyrrhonian and Naturalistic Themes in the Final Writings of Wittgenstein

The following inquiry pursues two interlinked aims. The first is to understand Wittgenstein\u27s idea of non-foundational certainty in the context of a reading of On Certainty that emphasizes its Pyrrhonian elements. The second is to read Wittgenstein\u27s remarks on idealism/radical skepticism in On Certainty in parallel with the discussion of rule-following in Philosophical Investigations in order to demonstrate an underlying similarity of philosophical concerns and methods. I argue that for the later Wittgenstein, what is held certain in a given context of inquiry or action is a locally transcendental condition of the inquiry or action in question. In On Certainty, Wittgenstein\u27s analysis of the difference between knowledge and certainty forms the basis of his critique of both Moore\u27s Proof and radical skepticism. This critique takes the shape of rejection of a presupposition shared by both parties, and utilizes what I identify as a Pyrrhonian-style argument against opposed dogmatic views. Wittgenstein\u27s method in this text involves describing epistemic language-games. I demonstrate that this is consistent with the rejection of epistemological theorizing, arguing that a Wittgensteinian picture is not a theory, but an impressionistic description that accomplishes two things: (i) throwing into relief problems with dogmatic theories and their presuppositions, and (ii) describing the provenance of linguistic and epistemic practices in terms of norms grounded in convention. Convention, in turn, is not arbitrary, but grounded in the biological and social natures of human beings--in what Wittgenstein calls forms of life. Thus there is a kind of naturalism in the work of the later Wittgenstein. It is a naturalism that comes neatly dovetailed with Pyrrhonism--a combination of strategies traceable to Hume\u27s work in the Treatise. I read Hume as someone who develops the Pyrrhonian method to include philosophy done in a careless manner, and argue that Wittgenstein adopts a similar method in his later works. Finally, I explain the deference to convention in the work of both Hume and Wittgenstein by reference to a passage in Sextus\u27 Outlines, on which I provide a gloss in the final chapter of this work

Moral Uncertainty and Political Philosophy

This thesis addresses a methodological tendency in political philosophy whereby philosophers develop their ethical views independently of the political realm and then import those views into political argumentation intact, without considering whether this sort of primacy of the ethical is appropriate. Observing that the political is non-accidentally typified by disagreement about all manner of things, including, importantly, the ethical, reveals this to be deeply problematic. Through a discussion of moral epistemology, the thesis aims to show that we should not be certain about our moral beliefs in the face of disagreement, which means in turn that we must alter the way in which we approach political philosophy. It considers two responses to this concern: the Unilateral Solution, which argues that if you have access to the moral facts you may ignore disagreement, and the Pluralist Solution, which argues that moral disagreement ought to be taken seriously and that it is the job of political philosophy to provide a framework in which this disagreement can play out. After arguing that neither of these solutions is satisfactory, the thesis concludes that the moral uncertainty caused by disagreement is unavoidable, and offers some suggestions for how we might practice political philosophy in light of this situation

Scepticism and presuppositionlessness: Hegel and the problem of beginning

This thesis is concerned with what I call “the problem of beginning.” This problem expresses the difficulty involved in getting the type of critical, rational thinking proper to philosophical work underway in a manner that is not problematically arbitrary. This amounts to a dilemma between beginning dogmatically by depending upon unexamined presuppositions, and beginning dogmatically with some fundamentally arbitrary assertion. After motivating the problem and explicating it in some detail in the introduction, I identify a number of possible, but unappealing ways to respond. In Chapter 1 I argue that, motivated by his relationship with Pyrrhonism, Hegel is engaging with this same problem at the start of his Science of Logic. I identify a distinctive form of a solution to the problem in Hegel’s work which amounts to isolating a beginning which is both presuppositionless and non-arbitrary, or, in his terminology, both immediate and mediated. In Hegel’s work I identify two different possible ways in which the form of this solution can be fleshed out. They differ in terms of what they designate as the element of mediation in the beginning. In the first case, this element is stated to be the project of phenomenology, as carried out in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In the second case, this element is characterised as a project of “consummate scepticism,” but left problematically underdeveloped. In Chapter 2 I present reasons for rejecting the suitability of the former, and in Chapter 3 I attempt to sketch a project of “consummate scepticism” which would be capable of functioning as the element of mediation in a manner capable of producing a working, “Hegelian” solution to the problem of beginning. I draw the thesis to a close by considering both the costs and opportunities which follow from this reconstructed solution, especially concerning the establishment of idealism

Realistic fictionalism

Realistic Fictionalism, argues for two main claims: First, that there is no conceptual or logical incoherence in the idea of a fictionalist theory of some discourse which accommodates a form of realism about that discourse (a claim which has been made in passing by various people, but which has never been adequately explored and assessed); and Second, that just such a fictionalist theory promises to be the best theory of our ordinary moral commitments, judgements and deliberation. In Part I, I explore the spirit of fictionalism and argue that thinking of fictionalism as closely tied to an analogy between its target discourse and fiction is liable to be misleading and is not mandatory. It emerges that the fictionalist’s strategy requires just a semantic thesis (representationalism) and a thesis about the sort of ‘acceptance’ appropriate for some practice involving their target discourse (nondoxasticism). I offer a theory of what ‘acceptance’ is, which treats belief as a mode of acceptance and distinguishes the nondoxastic modes of acceptance from belief in a principled and independently plausible way. And I argue that the coherence of realistic fictionalism is preserved by the fact that a person (the realistic fictionalist) can perfectly coherently both believe and nondoxastically accept the same claims. In Part II, I employ the theory of acceptance developed in Part I to propose a fictionalist model of how our ordinary moral commitments often are and generally ought to be. I then give an argument to the conclusion that, in respect of the relation between moral commitment and action guiding at least, it would be better if our moral commitments were to be nondoxastic. I then argue that realistic fictionalism offers a better way of explaining why we ought to have any moral commitments at all than a non-realist fictionalist theory could

The Good and The Gross: Essays in metaethics and moral psychology

The three papers in this dissertation attempt to explore and defend a kind of middle ground with respect to the question of moral objectivity. In the first paper I use the case of disgust to show how not to go about raising skepticism about moral judgment; in doing so, I argue that disgust can be vindicated with an account on which it tracks social contagion as well as physical contamination. Therefore, the question of whether disgust is an appropriate reaction to moral wrongness can sometimes be answered in the affirmative. In the second paper, I use empirical data from anthropology and psychology to argue that moral disagreement makes trouble for the claim that morality is objective, but I don’t reject objectivity entirely— in the third paper I go on to argue that moral relativism best makes sense of a morality that appears to be objective with respect to some questions but not others.Ph.D.PhilosophyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86268/1/aplakias_1.pd