Death and the Maiden in Philostratus, About Apollonius of Tyana 4.45

The Vita Apollonii leaves much open to interpretation. In 4.45 Philostratus tells us about a young woman who was thought dead by her family and the whole of Rome. Apollonius whispers something in her ear and the maiden starts talking again. The narrator comments it was impossible for the bystanders and still is impossible for him to say whether the girl was really dead or not: whether it was a case of Scheintod which proved Apollonius’s extraordinary powers of observation or whether it was a resurrection-miracle which would signal a special ontological status for ‘the man’ from Tyana. In his suspension of judgment, Philostratus uses the words arrhêtos hê katalêpsis combining a technical term from Stoic epistemology (katalêpsis) with a concept related to the Mysteries (arrhêtos). We discuss the Philostratean interpretative strategies, link them to the Pythagorean tradition of selective communication, and read the reference in this chapter to the story of Alcestis to the epistemological debates between Stoics and Skeptics about the limits of human wisdom.

Epistemic Explanations

This book develops an improved virtue epistemology and uses it to explain several epistemic phenomena. Part I lays out a telic virtue epistemology that accommodates varieties of knowledge and understanding particularly pertinent to the humanities. Part II develops an epistemology of suspension of judgment, by relating it to degrees of confidence and to inquiry. Part III develops a substantially improved telic virtue epistemology by appeal to default assumptions important in domains of human performance generally, and in our intellectual lives as a special case. This reconfigures earlier virtue epistemology, which now seems a first approximation. This part also introduces a metaphysical hierarchy of epistemic categories and defends in particular a category of secure knowledge.

Suspension, Confidence, and Inquiry

This chapter begins by reconsidering the nature and varieties of suspension of judgment, and then takes up four questions: First, how is suspension related to degrees of confidence? Second how is it relate to instrumental means=end reasoning? Third, how is it related to inquiry? Fourth, when and how is suspension epistemically appropriate? The chapter begins by laying out an important distinction between deliberative and non-deliberative suspension. That suggests a model for epistemology generally. Thus, we can distinguish between two ways of intentionally omitting judgment: the deliberative and the non-deliberative.

Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat

This paper has two main goals. The first and most central goal is to develop a framework for understanding higher-order defeat. The framework rests on the idea that higher-order evidence provides direct reasons for suspending judgment which leave evidential support relations on the first order intact. Equally importantly, we also seek to explain how this sort of defeat is possible by showing how direct reasons for suspension of judgment flow from the functional profile of suspension of judgment. As a result, our framework is embedded within an account of the nature of suspension of judgment that shows how new insights about its nature lead to a different picture of its rational profile. A second and subsidiary goal of the paper is to show how our framework provides a compelling basis for more moderate positions about disagreement and epistemic akrasia. We show that the puzzles about these topics rest on more fundamental mistakes about suspension and the relationship between reasons for suspension, reasons for belief, and evidence.

Aesthetic Practice as Critique: The Suspension of Judgment and the Invention of New Possibilities of Perception, Thinking, and Action

From the perspective of media education theory and aesthetic education, this article discusses some considerations of aesthetic practice as media-critical practice. Media-critical practice is described as a reflexive-transformative practice with and in media and no longer as a distanced, self-reflexive and rational critique of media or media use. It first shows that in this perspective, subjects no longer (only) intentionally deal with media, but first and foremost become subjects in relation to medial apparatuses. In a second step I shall relate to contemporary artists of the so-called post-internet art. Their aesthetic practices have the potential to criticize (to question, reflect, or subvert) the entanglement of human beings into contemporary media-cultural environments.

Gorgias’ Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος and Its Relation to Skepticism

The paper examines whether Gorgias’ On What Is Not should be considered an instance of skepticism. It begins with an analysis of the work as reported by the two sources, Sextus Empiricus and the anonymous author of On Melissus, Xenophanes and Gorgias. It is then argued that the Pyrrhonian skeptics did not regard On What Is Not as skeptical. Nonetheless, it is possible to read the work as offering counter-arguments to Parmenides, with a view to inducing suspension of judgment in Pyrrhonian fashion. However, it is also possible to regard it as skeptical in a sense current in modern philosophy: that is, as posing challenges to our understanding of things with a view to forcing philosophers to come up with better theories. In this light, it can be seen as an important stimulus to the philosophical breakthroughs apparent in Plato’s Sophist.

Institutioni Scholasticae Minime Accommodata

This contribution reconstructs the controversy between Gerard de Neufville (1590-1648) and Johann Clauberg about the comparative merits of Bacon and Descartes in the university classroom. This controversy had a crucial pragmatic dimension, evaluating the question of how Baconian and Cartesian philosophical projects could meet the pedagogical needs of the university as an educational institution. The exchange between de Neufville and Clauberg shows that textbooks of natural philosophy contain important discussions of pedagogical practice. De Neufville fears that a revolution of natural philosophy along Baconian lines may well take centuries. But professors still need something to teach to students. Therefore, he envisions a Baconian philosophia nov-antiqua that reintroduces certain aspects of Aristotelian science into a broadly Baconian empirical investigation of nature. Clauberg’s criticism of his teacher focuses on two perceived weaknesses. First, Baconian doubt renders natural philosophy unteachable; while Cartesian doubt does not, because it can be dissolved comparatively quickly. Second, de Neufville’s evolutionary approach may inadvertently convey false doctrines to students, thereby preventing their epistemic progress. The only defence against unexamined opinions is the suspension of judgment. Besides that, he argues, de Neufville’s pragmatic worries are unfounded: Cartesians are successful professionals in theology, medicine, and in the university itself.