Renata Ziemińska

Luca Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation. The Logic and History of the Self- Refutation Argument from Democritus to Augustine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. XX+394. Hardback, ISBN 9780521896313. L. Castagnoli in his book Ancient Self-Refutation rightly observes that self-refutation is not falsification; it overturns the act of assertion but does not prove that the content of the act is false. He argues against the widely spread belief that Sextus Empiricus accepted the self-refutation of his own expressions. Castagnoli also claims that Sextus was effective in answering to the self-refutation charge. The achievement of the book is discovery that in passages where Sextus seems to embrace the self-refutation of his expressions (PH 1.14-15), he does not use the term peritropé , technical for self-refutation, but term perigrafé , which means self-bracketing. Self-bracketing is weakening one’s own thesis but not overturning it. Castagnoli claims that Sextus embraces the self-bracketing of his expressions but never accepts their self-refutation. However, Castagnoli is not right that self-refutation is shameful mistake for everybody. The mature skeptic cannot even think that self-refutation is wrong, because it would be a dogmatic view. Sextus seems accept the self-refutation at the end of Against Logicians where he presents the argument against proof and the metaphor of the ladder (M 8.480-1). Regardless of Sextus declarations, we have reasons to think that he does not avoid self-refutation in pragmatic sense. Self-bracketing of his position is not a consistent dialectical strategy, as Castagnoli writes, but the end of rational discussion. Sextus avoids absolute self-refutation (we cannot falsify what he suggests) but he is unable to avoid pragmatic self-refutation (there is no way to assert his position without contradiction). It is the case, even if Sextus refuses asserting his position

Nozick is the author of the conditional definition of knowledge where two subjunctive conditionals replace internalistic notion of justification. If you know that p, you have true belief that p and also in the close possible worlds you would accept p when p is true and you would not accept p when p is false. Nozick agrees with skeptics that we do not know that we are not brains in the vat. But he claims that we do know all the trivial things we think we know. The only way to accept the two theses is to deny the Principle of Clousure. According to Nozick knowledge is not closed under known logical implication. But is it right to deny the principle? Our everyday knowledge implies that the skeptic is wrong. If I know that I am reading a text on Earth, it is false that I am on Alpha Centauri floating in a tank. To reject skeptic it is enough to deny the transparency principle (if I know, I know that I know). When knowledge is possible without knowledge about that knowledge, we can know even if we are not able to prove that we know

"Introspection" in its broad sense (Shoemaker, Armstrong) is each non-inferential access a person has to his/her own current mental states and events. It includes both introspection as a conscious act and introspection as pre-introspective awareness. "Introspection" in its narrow sense (Ryle, Dretske, Dennett) excludes pre-intro-spective awareness as not self-sufficient kind of access and part of some other conscious act. Introspection as a self-sufficient conscious act can be explained as second-order thought or reduced to third person knowledge but pre-introspective awareness can not (it is left as a mystery). Author claims that either pre-introspective awareness deserves the name "experience" and in source of special first-person knowledge (even if it is part of other sources of knowing and can be brought to consciousness only by proper introspection), either introspection as an act is a kind of experience and source of knowledge (sense experience is also some very fast interpretation of stimuli). Both pre-introspective awareness and proper introspection are kinds of experience if experience equals direct acquaintance, without any inference and stages. "Perception" can be left for sense perception of external objects. The result of introspection are not incorrigible but persons have "privileged access" to their own thoughts

The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. R. Bett (Ed.), New York: Cambridge University Press 2010, pp. 380+xii, ISBN 780521697545. The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism, edited by Richard Bett, consists of an Introduction and fifteen papers written by international authors (three of them have been diligently translated into English by the editor). The volume presents the major figures of ancient skepticism and the major interpretational problems. Separate papers are devoted to Pyrrho of Elis (Svavar Hrafn Svavarsson), Arcesilaus and Carneades (Harald Thorsrud), Aenesidemus (R.J. Hankinson) and Sextus Empiricus (Pierre Pellegrin). Agrippa seems to be the only missing figure on the list. Moreover, we can also find a lot of information about the minor figures of ancient skepticism. Mi-Kyoung Lee presents skeptical ideas in early Greek philosophy and Carlos Levy writes about the later academic skeptics, especially Clitomachus, Philo of Larissa and Cicero. Richard Bett in his Introduction lists the most important problems in interpreting ancient skepticism: What kinds of belief, if any, are open to a skeptic? Can a skeptic allow for choice and action and if so, then how? Is skepticism compatible with an ethical outlook? Is there a real difference between the Academic and Pyrrhonist varieties of skepticism? Casey Perin takes on the first one, Katja Maria Vogt—the second, Richard Bett—the third, and Gisela Striker—the last one. We also have the next five papers presenting other important aspects of ancient skepticism. Paul Woodruff writes about skeptical modes, James Allen about the relation between Pyrrhonism and medical schools, Emidio Spinelli about the critique of specialized sciences, Luciano Floridi about the modern rediscovery of ancient skepticism, and Michael Williams about its Cartesian transformation. The Companion is very rich in content and very up-to-date, presenting the latest hypotheses. Here I would like to discuss the problem of Pyrrho’s place within the skeptical tradition.

The article presents the debate between truth relativism and truth absolutism. The source of relativism is the lack of certainty (if we have no guarantee that any of our proposition is true, we can think that our concept of objective truth is useless and should be replaced by a concept of subjective and so relative truth). Relativism is the thesis that truth depends on subject, time, place and circumstances of assertion, and so, two opposite propositions can be both true (for instance for two different persons). Truth absolutism is the negation of truth relativism. It is a thesis that one and the same proposition can not be both true and false relative to any circumstances of its assertion (time, subject, place). The main contemporary relativist argument is concept relativism (we must think in a conceptual scheme, so the truth of our beliefs depends in some way on the scheme). But, the concept relativism does not entail truth relativism. Only existence of a proposition depends on a conceptual scheme. The truth of the proposition need not be so dependent, if we accept the existence of the objective world and the concept of objective truth. Objectivism entails absolutism (objective truth is timeless).

There are two basic notions of truth (objectivism and subjectivism) connected with two understandings of the world (respectively, realism and idealism). Author claims, against deflationists, that the concept of truth is not metaphysically neutral. Tarski’s T-schema requires some metaphysical reading. Reading the schema from the left to the right, leads to realism. Reading the schema from the right to the left, leads to anti-realism. The concept of truth is the part of some ontological package deal or alethic network. There are two basic packages, competing since centuries, that focus on two poles in human cognition: subject and object.

Two concepts of the internal should be distinguished in the current epistemic internalism/externalism debate: (1) the internal in an introspective sense as what is accessible by introspection and (2) the internal in a biological sense as what is inside the organism's nervous system. When "internal" is meant in the introspective sense, Goldman's process reliabilism is externalist, but when "internal" is taken in the biological sense, Goldman's process reliabilism is internalist. Goldman as a naturalist prefers "internal" in the biological sense, but the concept is unsuitable for presenting the current epistemic internalism/externalism controversy. If one understands "internal" in the introspective sense, Goldman's reliabilism is strongly externalist.