Epistemology After Sextus Empiricus

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
The Core ◽  
Pyrrhonian Skepticism ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Epistemology

Pyrrhonian skepticism is defined by its commitment to inquiry. The Greek work skepsis means inquiry—not doubt, or whatever else later forms of skepticism took to be at the core of skeptical philosophy. The book proposes that Sextus Empiricus’s legacy in the history of epistemology is that he developed an epistemology of inquiry. The volume’s authors investigate epistemology after Sextus, both ways in which he has influenced the history of philosophy and ways in which he and the Pyrrhonian tradition he represents ought to contribute to contemporary debates. As a whole, the book aims to (re)instate Sextus as an important philosopher in these discussions in much the same way that Aristotle has been brought into discussions in contemporary ethics, action theory, and metaphysics. Sextus provides a fresh take on contemporary debates because he approaches issues of perception, disagreement, induction, and ignorance from the perspective of inquiry. The volume’s contributions address four core themes of Sextus’s skepticism: (1) appearances and perception, (2) the structure of justification and proof, (3) belief and ignorance, and (4) ethics and action. These themes are explored in some historical authors whose work relates to Sextus, including Peripatetic logicians, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche, and German idealists; and they are explored as they figure in today’s epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and ethics.

Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick M. Chisholm ◽  
Peter Simons
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Descriptive Psychology ◽  
Phenomenological Movement ◽  
Precise Statement ◽  
Philosophical Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sparse Ontology

Brentano was a philosopher and psychologist who taught at the Universities of Würzburg and Vienna. He made significant contributions to almost every branch of philosophy, notably psychology and philosophy of mind, ontology, ethics and the philosophy of language. He also published several books on the history of philosophy, especially Aristotle, and contended that philosophy proceeds in cycles of advance and decline. He is best known for reintroducing the scholastic concept of intentionality into philosophy and proclaiming it as the characteristic mark of the mental. His teachings, especially those on what he called descriptive psychology, influenced the phenomenological movement in the twentieth century, but because of his concern for precise statement and his sensitivity to the dangers of the undisciplined use of philosophical language, his work also bears affinities to analytic philosophy. His anti-speculative conception of philosophy as a rigorous discipline was furthered by his many brilliant students. Late in life Brentano’s philosophy radically changed: he advocated a sparse ontology of physical and mental things (reism), coupled with a linguistic fictionalism stating that all language purportedly referring to non-things can be replaced by language referring only to things.

Wilfrid Sellars

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Wolf ◽  
Jeremy Randel Koons
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Large Corpus

Wilfrid Sellars (b. 1912–d. 1989) did some of the most interesting and challenging work in Western philosophy in the 20th century. At a time when most philosophers were moving toward increasingly narrow specialization in their scholarship, he produced a large corpus that was both systematic and extensive in scope. Sellars is also a difficult philosopher to read, however. “I revise my papers until only I can understand them,” he is rumored to have said, “and then I revise them once more.” His prose is both idiosyncratic and ambitious, striking out in novel directions while striving to address the concerns of the past on every page. This article strives to address his most significant contributions to epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Most of the details of his work in the history of philosophy, particularly his work on Kant, are passed over. Wherever possible, original dates and sources of publication are included to give the reader a sense of the progression of Sellars’s work, but nearly all of these papers are included in one or more of the anthologies listed.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Justin Vlasits ◽  
Katja Maria Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
Pyrrhonian Skepticism ◽  
Theory Of Inquiry

Pyrrhonian skepticism is defined by its commitment to inquiry. The Greek work skepsis means inquiry. The introduction proposes that Sextus Empiricus’ legacy is that he developed an epistemology of inquiry—not as a theory of inquiry, but as a practice. Sextus provides a fresh take on contemporary debates because he approaches issues of perception, disagreement, induction, and ignorance from the perspective of inquiry. The volume’s contributions, which are summarily sketched in the introduction, address four core themes of Sextus’ skepticism: (1) appearances and perception, (2) the structure of justification and proof, (3) belief and ignorance, and (4) ethics and action. These themes are explored in some historical authors whose work relates to Sextus, including Peripatetic logicians, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche, and German idealists; and they are explored as they figure in today’s epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and ethics.

John King-Farlow and Roger A. Shiner (Eds.): New Essays in the Philosophy of Mind

Dialogue ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 679-685
Author(s):  
Myles Brand
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
General Quality

It is difficult to understand why this volume is named New Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Some of the essays are better classified as metaphysics, some as philosophy of science, and at least one as philosophy of language. But no matter, the name of the volume is unimportant: it is the contents that count. And the contents are very interesting. The general quality of the papers is high, higher than is often found in contemporary journals. The articles all share the methodological trait of being well-argued, and perhaps it is this trait more than anything else that unifies the volume. In what follows, I shall comment briefly on two articles on action theory, and then even more briefly on the remaining six papers.

scholarly journals Contemporary Phenomenology at Its Best: Interview With Professor Dan Zahavi

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi ◽  
Andrei Simionescu-Panait
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Cognitive Research ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scientific Context ◽  
The University

This time around, we have the chance of getting to know Prof. Dan Zahavi of the University of Copenhagen, one of phenomenology's top researchers, whose thought expresses a particular voice in the philosophy of mind and interdisciplinary cognitive research. Today, we shall explore topics regarding phenomenology in our present scientific context, Edmund Husserl's takes on phenomenology, the influence of the history of philosophy on shaping contemporary cognitive research and the links and possibilities between phenomenology and psychology, in both method and practice.

The Aristotelian Theos in Hegel's Philosophy of Mind

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-101
Author(s):  
Ermylos Plevrakis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Vanishing Point ◽  
Speculative Philosophy ◽  
Systematic Significance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Systematic Point

AbstractAlthough Hegel does not pass up the opportunity to express his deep admiration for specific aspects of the Aristotelian notion of God, he is not interested in giving a concrete account of its systematic significance for his Philosophy of Mind as a whole. In this article, I seek to take an overarching perspective on both the Aristotelian God and the Hegelian mind. By contrast to the common practice of focusing on Hegel's interpretation of Aristotle in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, I first examine the Aristotelian text itself and then focus on Hegel's Encyclopaedia Philosophy of Mind, in order to explore the coincidence between the two conceptions from a systematic point of view. With regard to Aristotle, I argue that ‘God’ represents the conceptual vanishing point of his philosophy at which all philosophical sciences appear to converge. With regard to Hegel, I show that it is precisely such conceptual convergence of all philosophical sciences that constitutes both the starting and ending points of the Philosophy of Mind. The result is a novel meta-scientific and non-theistic conception of ‘God’ that provides the means not only to re-evaluate the systematic relation between Hegel and Aristotle but also to reconsider the character, content and aim of speculative philosophy in general.

scholarly journals Revisiting the Early Modern Philosophical Canon

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA SHAPIRO
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Questions

ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the central philosophical questions and allow for a greater range of figures to be philosophically central. However, the history of science is but one context in which to situate philosophical works. Looking at the historical context of seventeenth-century philosophy of mind, one that weaves together questions of consciousness, rationality, and education, does more than shift the central questions—it brings new ones to light. It also shows that a range of genres can be properly philosophical and seamlessly diversifies the central philosophers of the period.

scholarly journals Divine and Human Agency from the Standpoint of Historicalism, Scientism, and Phenomenological Realism

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Charles Taliaferro
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Phenomenological Realism ◽  
Realist Perspective

Phenomenological realism, in the tradition of Dietrich von Hildebrand, is advanced as a promising methodology for a theistic philosophy of divine and human agency. Phenomenological realism is defended in contrast to the practice of historicalism – the view that a philosophy of mind and God should always be done as part of a thoroughgoing history of philosophy, e.g. the use of examples in analytic theology should be subordinated to engaging the work of Kant and other great philosophers. The criticism of theism based on forms of naturalism that give exclusive authority to the physical sciences (or scientism) is criticized from a phenomenological, realist perspective.

Hintikka, Jaakko (1929–2015)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilkka Niiniluoto
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Inductive Logic ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Formal Epistemology ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Independence Friendly Logic

Jaakko Hintikka was a Finnish philosopher who developed important new methods and systems in mathematical and philosophical logic. Over a distinguished career in universities in Finland and the USA, he was one of the most cited analytic philosophers and published prolifically in mathematical and philosophical logic, philosophy of language, formal epistemology, philosophy of science and history of philosophy. Hintikka was a pioneer of possible-worlds semantics, epistemic logic, inductive logic, game-theoretical semantics, the interrogative approach to inquiry and independence-friendly logic. He was an expert on Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Peirce and Wittgenstein. He also influenced philosophy as a successful teacher and the long-time editor of the journal Synthese.

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