Agrippa's trilemma: scepticism and contemporary epistemology

Take any belief of yours – even one about which you feel supremely confident. The Sceptic will ask: why do you think it is true? You might take yourself to have a very good reason to believe what you do. But the sceptic will also want to know why you think that this second thing is true as well. You might offer yet a third reason for believing that, but the sceptic won't stop. He will want, again, to know why you believe that third thing. How will you choose to answer the sceptic's constant questioning? You might just keep going on, offering yet more and more reasons every time the sceptic questions you. Or you might argue in a circle, so that you defend your original belief by an argument which eventually appeals again to that very belief. Or you might argue that your original belief can eventually be defended by appeal to a set of assumptions for which you do not have any further reasons. But are any of those options really acceptable, or should you give up your original belief? If the latter, then since the sceptic could question any of your beliefs in this way, does that mean that you should give up all of your beliefs? Are you open to blame and criticism just for believing anything at all? The Pyrrhonian sceptic tries to convince us that the answers to these questions are “yes”. In this work, I explicate the sceptical strategy in detail and consider philosophical attempts to evade its dire conclusion. My development of Scepticism draws on the ideas of Sextus and three of his scholars, Barnes, Bailey and Machuca, as well as BonJour and Oakley. A number of philosophers have criticized Scepticism on the grounds that it presupposes a nonordinary definition of “knowledge”. The sceptic tries to show that our common-sense belief that we know all sorts of things about the world is really a giant error, but the only way he manages to do it, according to these philosophers, is by starting with a definition of “knowledge” vastly removed from our usual one. This strategy is the dominant way of criticizing Scepticism in contemporary epistemology. It is deployed by John Greco, Alvin Goldman, Mark Kaplan and many others. Against these philosophers, I urge that the sceptic's using the word “know” in a non-ordinary way does not harm the substance of his arguments at all. A number of philosophers have argued that the sceptic's standards for right or justified belief should be rejected. I argue that the standard which the Pyrrhonian lays down is not at all ridiculous. All he asks of us is that we have some reason, no matter how weak, for believing that P rather than -P – a reason which might convince someone who did not already believe that P. And so the sceptic lays down a standard which it may be very difficult to give up. What's more, I argue, by discussing the views of Michael Williams and Michael Huemer, that it is far from clear that there is anything in the neighbourhood that is particularly plausible as an ethics of belief. These two broad anti-sceptical gambits are the currently dominant ones. In showing them to be unsatisfactory, I show that the sceptic still has us firmly in his net

Hypothetical Justifications

A basic conviction in moral non-cognitivism is: only hypothetical norms may be justified. Hartmut Kliemt argues for a moderate variant: there are only hypothetical justifications of norms whether the norms are hypothetical or categorical in kind. In this paper the concept of 'hypothetical justification' is analyzed. It is argued that hypothetical justifications are not of the kind that we should look for in normative ethics.non-cognitivism, hypothetical norms, hypothetical justification

Dialogue Games in Defeasible Logic

In this paper we show how to capture dialogue games in Defeasible Logic. We argue that Defeasible Logic is a natural candidate and general representation formalism to capture dialogue games even with requirements more complex than existing formalisms for this kind of games. We parse the dialogue into defeasible rules with time of the dialogue as time of the rule. As the dialogue evolves we allow an agent to upgrade the strength of unchallenged rules. The proof procedures of (Antoniou, Billington, Governatori, Maher 2001) are used to determine the winner of a dialogue game

Irish Harps, Scottish Fiddles, English Pens: Romantic Satire and British Nationalism

Irish Harps, Scottish Fiddles, English Pens: Romantic Satire and British Nationalism discusses the intersection between satire and nationalism in late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury British Romantic poetry. Using case studies of three prominent satirists, Robert Burns, Thomas Moore, and George Gordon, Lord Byron to represent marginalized nationalities within the British state, I examine the ways in which each poet expresses a sense of dis-ease or uncomfortableness with their own national identity, an anxiety caused either by the ways in which their nationality was perceived within the British public, or by their own ability or inability to express that nationality. Thus, Burns, Moore, and Byron use satire as a means to self -identify and/or promote a sense of national identity. While the lyrics of Burns and Moore have been studied as examples of nationalist poetry, little attention has been given to their satires or to Byron\u27s Hours of Idleness and English Bards and Scotch Reviewers as expressions of nationalism and national identity. Satire becomes a fitting genre for expressing the anxieties and frustration surrounding their identities, particularly as these negative emotions are directed toward the structures of power – political, cultural, and theological – that reinforce the perceived supremacy of English culture at the cost of the Scottish and Irish nations. The expressions of these identities are complicated by several variables, including education, social status, socio-economic status, and nationality itself. I argue that through the melding of satire and nationalism, ultimately, the figure of the bard, a traditional record-keeper of national culture and history, merged with the persona of the satirist to become an active, nationshaping force rather than a passive observer

Limits and Possibilities of Interdisciplinary Research into Law

Intro: To a growing extent, legal scholars seem to be dissatisfied with established disciplinary boundaries and turn to other disciplines, such as sociology (Cotterrell 2006), psychology (Wagenaar, Van Koppen & Crombag 1993), philosophy (Alexy 2003), economics (Posner 2007) and even literature studies (White 1985), for inspiration. In law faculties all over the world multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research groups are operative, such as the Jurisprudence and Social Policy program at the University of California, Berkeley, or the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. In the hope of increasing their chances to acquire a grant, applicants nowadays try to cut a dash with promises of combining insights from many different sources (Vick 2004, 171). One may wonder who will undertake the important but time-consuming task of analysing and classifying the existing body of legal norms in the future, when legal scholars are getting more and more reluctant to do so. However exciting these new research directions may appear, a fundamental question which deserves more attention is: What are the limits and possibilities of interdisciplinary research into law? Can concepts and methods from one discipline directly be transplanted into another discipline? What is lost and what is gained when insights from different origins are combined? In this article, we want to explore what might make interdisciplinary research possible, on the one hand, and what makes it difficult or even impossible, on the other hand

Skepticism, rhetoric, and Nietzsche: an examination of the skeptical underpinnings of postmodern rhetoric

This thesis examines how skepticism forms the underpinning of postmodern rhetoric by tracing uncertainty, incommensurability, and judgment through the history of skepticism. The examination starts with a look at the Hellenistic Skeptics and how their form of skepticism allowed for an epistemology without the assumption of universal truth. The next chapter looks at how Nietzsche\u27s perspectivism is a refinement of classical skepticism that favors rhetoric and does not rely on the assumption of a universal truth. Finally, the last chapter looks at how Stanley Fish and Thomas Kuhn take the epistemology developed by the Hellenistic Skeptics and Nietzsche and use it to explain how good decisions are made rhetorically in fields as diverse as science and law without universal truth. Throughout the paper an emphasis is placed on how skepticism and rhetoric can explain the fundamental assumptions of many fields with a certain understanding of uncertainty, incommensurability, and judgment

Rawls and the European Union

Renowned political philosopher John Rawls once expressed skepticism about the moral status of the European Union (EU). Yet generally EU scholars have either ignored Rawls or rather uncritically established positive links between his theory of domestic and international justice and the EU. This article argues that the EU cannot be morally justified from a Rawlsian perspective. Thus, Rawls’s Euro-skepticism is not just a personal opinion, but is embedded in his political philosophy. The argument basically entails that the EU cannot plausibly be understood in terms of a Rawlsian (i) domestic society or (ii) society of peoples. It is also argued that Rawls’s seemingly favorable yet rare mentioning of the ‘European Community’ means no theoretical support for the EU. Moreover, counter-arguments that the EU can be seen as in line with Rawls’s notion of a realistic utopia are shown to be false. In consequence, serious adherents of Rawls’s political philosophy cannot be committed EU defenders.Keywords: European integration, European Union, John Rawls, Law of Peoples, political liberalism,theory of justic