Brian Ribeiro

In this paper I consider an understudied form of the design argument which focuses on the beauty of the natural world and which argues, on that basis, that the world requires a divine Artist in order to explain its beauty. Against this view, one might raise a question concerning the beauty of, and in, this divine Artist. What explains the divine beauty? This kind of explanatory regress objection is exactly like that used by Philo in Hume’s Dialogues to undercut standard versions of the design argument focused on the orderliness of the world. Here I argue that Philo’s explanatory regress objection likewise significantly undercuts versions of the design argument focusing on the beauty of the world.

The work of Richard H. Popkin both introduced the concept of skeptical fideism and served to impressively document its importance in the philosophies of a diverse range of thinkers, including Montaigne, Pascal, Huet, and Bayle. Popkin’s landmark History of Scepticism, however, begins its coverage with the Renaissance. In this paper I explore the roots of skeptical fideism in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, with special attention to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, the oldest surviving text to clearly develop a skeptical fideist perspective.

While contemporary readers may find what appear to be appealing streaks of liberalism in Montaigne's 'Essays', I argue that a more careful analysis suggests that Montaigne's overall stance is quietistic and conservative. To help support this claim I offer a close reading of 'Essays' III.11 ("Of Cripples"), where Montaigne offers his famous critique of the witch trials of early modern Europe. Once Montaigne's objections to the witch trials are properly understood, we see that Montaigne did not seriously or consistently dispute the church's authority in political matters, though certain undeveloped seeds of liberalism do leave an unresolved tension in his writings.

Supposing you were convinced by certain radical skeptical arguments that many of your beliefs were not justifiably believed by you, what stance could/should you adopt with regard to those skeptically-problematized beliefs? This paper explores a range of possible reactions, aiming to be reasonably comprehensive in coverage though admittedly suggestive rather than decisive in its treatment of each individual reaction. In considering this variety of responses we begin to see suggestive intimations of the ways in which radical skepticism could represent a threat to our notions of cognitive self-mastery.

Disagreement as we find it in both the history and the contemporary practice of philosophy is an inadequately understood phenomenon. In this paper I outline and motivate the problem of disagreement, arguing that "hard cases" of disagreement confront us with an unresolved, and seemingly unresolvable, challenge to the rationality of philosophical discourse, thereby raising the specter of a worri-some form of metaphilosophical skepticism. A variety of responses and attempted evasions are considered, though none are found to be particularly satisfying: Thus, the specter remains unexorcised. El desacuerdo que encontramos tanto en la historia como en la práctica contemporánea de la filosofía es un fenómeno mal entendido. En este trabajo hago un esbozo y aduzco los motivos del problema del desacuerdo, argumentando que los "casos difíciles" de desacuerdo nos confrontan con un problema sin resolver y al parecer sin posibilidad de resolverse, que pone en duda la racionalidad del discurso filosófico, y con lo cual surge el espectro de una preocupante forma de escepticismo metafilosófico. Examino varias respuestas y tentativas de evasiones, aunque ninguna de ellas es particularmente satisfactoria. Así, el espectro sigue sin ser exorcizado.

Though it seems rather surprising in retrospect, until about twenty-five years ago no philosopher in the Western tradition had explicitly formulated the question whether there could be an epistemic analogue to practical akrasia. Also surprisingly, despite the prima facie analogue with practical akrasia (the possibility of which is not much disputed), much of the recent work on this question has defended the rather bold view that epistemic akrasia is impossible. While the arguments purporting to show the impossibility of epistemic akrasia have been criticized by some, I propose instead to make a head-on attack and defend the substantive view that epistemic akrasia is possible — indeed, actual. This leaves for another day the project of diagnosing exactly where the arguments for the impossibility of epistemic akrasia go wrong. Here, I content myself with trying to show that they must go wrong, since — as I will argue — epistemic akrasia is possible.

This paper develops a programmatic 'theory sketch' of a new theory of humour, pitched at roughly the same level of detail, and intended to have roughly the same level of inclusiveness, as the other available philosophical "theories" of humour. I will call the theory I propose the distance theory. After an appeal to some intuitive illustrations of the distance theory's attractions, I move on to offer an analysis of observational comedy using the distance theory. I conclude the paper with some speculative remarks about the possible connections between the practice of observational comedy and the discipline of philosophy.

Over the last twenty-five years skeptical theism has become one of the leading contemporary responses to the atheological argument from evil. However, more recently, some critics of skeptical theism have argued that the skeptical theists are in fact unwittingly committed to a malignant form of moral skepticism. Several skeptical theists have responded to this critique by appealing to divine commands as a bulwark against the alleged threat of moral skepticism. In this paper we argue that the skeptical theists’ appeal to divine commands fails to rescue their position from the threat of a worrisome form of moral skepticism

An argument against the rationality of desiring to go to heaven might be put in the form of a trilemma: (1) any state of being that both lasts eternally and preserves me as the person I am would be hellish and therefore would not be a state of being that I could have any reason to desire; (2) any state of being that lasts eternally and yet fails to preserve my personhood by turning me into a non-person would not be a state of being that I (qua person that I am) could have any reason to desire; and (3) any state of being that lasts eternally and yet fails to preserve my personhood by turning me into some other person would not be a state of being that I (qua person that I am) could have any reason to desire. This paper offers defenses of each of the three horns of this trilemma and concludes that there is no rationally compelling reason for any human being to desire to go to heaven

The pragmatic theory of truth (PTT) seeks to illuminate the concept of truth by focusing on concepts like usefulness or adaptivity. However, contrary to common opinion, PTT does not merely face a narrow band of (perhaps) rather artificial counterexamples (as in a case of empirically unfounded but life-extending optimism in a cancer patient); instead, PTT is faced with a fast psychological research literature which suggests that inaccurate beliefs are both (1) pervasive in human beings and, nonetheless, (2) fully adaptive in many cases. Call this the "pervasive adaptive illusions" (PAI) objection to PTT. According to PAI, the kind of connection drawn by PTT between the beliefs that we (intuitively or pretheoretically) regard as "true" and the beliefs we regard as useful is undercut by hard-nosed empirical work in psychology -- work that no empirically minded pragmatist can ignore. According to PAI, the connection drawn between truth and utility by PTT is subject to a simply overwhelming set of counterexamples (drawn from psychological research, and reviewed below). Thus, PTT is a theory any sensible theorist of truth must reject.

In 'Of the Standard of Taste' Hume aspires to silence the 'extravagant' cavils of the anything-goes de gustibus sceptic by developing a programme of aesthetic education that would lead all properly-trained individuals to a set of agreed-upon aesthetic judgements. But I argue that if we read Hume's essay as an attempted direct theoretical refutation of de gustibus scepticism, Hume fails to achieve his aim. Moreover, although some recent commentators have read the essay as aiming at a less ambitious ‘sceptical solution’ to the de gustibus challenge, I argue that this ‘sceptical solution’ reading also fails to save Hume's project. Thus the anything-goes de gustibus sceptic remains unvanquished.

In ' Unnatural Doubts' Michael Williams argues that Cartesian skepticism is not truly an "intuitive problem" (that is, one which we can state with little or no appeal to contentious theories) at all. According to Williams, the skeptic has rich theoretical commitments all his own, prominent among which is the epistemic priority thesis. I argue, however, that Williams's diagnostic critique of the epistemic priority thesis fails on his own conception of what is required for success. Furthermore, in a brief "Afterword" I argue that the later Wittgenstein (to whom Williams sometimes appeals) would concur with my critique of Williams's antiskeptical efforts.

In this paper I aim to address--and also to better understand--what is perhaps the most intuitive objection to Pyrrhonian skepticism, namely, that to completely suspend one's judgment is psychologically impossible. I propose to come to an understanding of Sextus's relation to this objection by trying to more clearly understand Sextus's claims about the "Skeptic". I hope to show that it is at least possible for us to understand Sextus and his claims about the "Skeptic" without being driven to either (1) invoke restrictive interpretations of his claims or (2) adopt implausible hypotheses concerning his sincerity

Despite their divergences, I argue that Sextus, Montaigne, and Hume are committed to several substantive points of commonality and that these commonalities justify us in speaking of them as belonging to a unitary Pyrrhonist tradition. In this tradition, Pyrrhonizing doubt serves to chart the boundary of that-which-resists-doubt, thereby simultaneously charting the shape of that complex of nature and custom which constitutes the bedrock of human life — the life that remains after doubt has done its worst

In this paper I aim to do two things. First, I attempt to illustrate an interesting pattern of argument one can find in Hume's work. Next, I employ this Humean pattern of argument to show that IF there is a cogent and intuitive argument for any form of epistemological skepticism, which despite its cogency and intuitiveness has a unbelievable conclusion, THEN we lack a very important form of doxastic self-control, which I call rational self-control, over the beliefs problematized by that skeptical argument. Thus, the challenge posed by skepticism is even deeper and more radical than commonly supposed: If any form of skepticism proves unanswerable and yet unbelievable, then we demonstrably lack RSC in the domain problematized by that form of skepticism. Thus, one's views on skepticism may entail definite views on doxastic self-control.

In a recent paper (in Argumentation, 2006) Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin suggest that we ought to recognize two distinct forms of the straw man fallacy. In addition to misrepresenting the strength of an opponent’s specific argument (= the representation form), one can also misrepresent the strength of one’s opposition in general, or the overall state of a debate, by selecting a (relatively) weak opponent for critical consideration (= the selection form). Here I consider whether we as philosophy professors could be seen as sometimes committing the selection form of the straw man through the performance of our regular teaching duties.

While Hume is famous for his development and defence of various arguments for radical scepticism, Hume was bothered by the tension between his ‘abstruse’ philosophical reflections and ordinary life: If he often felt intensely sceptical in his study, he nonetheless felt genuinely unable to take these sceptical views seriously when he returned to the concerns and activities of everyday life. Hume's published work shows a deep and ongoing preoccupation with this tension, and I believe it also shows that Hume's view about the ‘durability’ of scepticism (that is, the extent to which sceptical insights can have an abiding impact on our cognitive lives) underwent an evolutionary development throughout the course of his publishing career. In this paper I propose to trace these textual developments in detail. In particular, I will argue that Hume's concern for intellectual stability is what drives the evolution, as he struggled to understand the ‘durable value’ in scepticism

Baron Reed has developed a new argument for skepticism: (1) contemporary epistemologists are all committed to two theses, fallibilism and attributabilism; unfortunately, (2) these two theses about knowledge are incompatible; therefore, (3) knowledge as conceived by contemporary epistemologists is impossible. In this brief paper I suggest that Reed's argument appears to rest on an understanding of attributabilism that is so strong (call it maximal attributabilism) that it's doubtful that many contemporary epistemologists actually embrace it. Nor does Reed offer any direct argument for the truth of maximal attributabilism. Therefore, we need not be persuaded by Reed's new argument for skepticism.

Recent literature on skepticism has raised a nearly univocal voice in condemning skeptical argumentation on the grounds that such argumentation necessarily involves our adopting some nonordinary or unnatural perspective. Were this really so, then skeptical conclusions would not speak to us in the way in which skeptics think they do: We would be "insulated" from any such conclusions. I argue that skeptical argumentation need not rely on any nonordinary or unnatural standards. Rather, the skeptic's procedure is to offer a critique from within. Having given my argument for this claim (which I call the 'continuity argument'), I consider and respond to two important objections. I conclude that the skeptic has a powerful meta-argument to be deployed in defending the legitimacy of his skeptical conclusions against the slings and arrows of (those I call) the half-true theorists.

In an earlier paper ("Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument," 'Metaphilosophy' 2004: 714-732) I suggested that the well-known "plane-spotters" story-first proposed by Thompson Clarke and later developed by Barry Stroud-distorts the very skeptical view it aims to elucidate. However, considerations of space prohibited me from fleshing out my criticisms of the Clarke/Stroud story in that paper. In this paper I aim to fill in this lacuna by showing how the Clarke/Stroud story distorts the skeptic's view. I conclude the paper by briefly sketching the alternative position I endorse and explaining how it avoids the distortions encouraged by the Clarke/Stroud story

Various evangelists of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries are credited with having asked some version of the question “Why must the Devil have all the good tunes?” If we were to substitute “externalists” for the Devil and “books” for tunes, the question would be a good one to ask about recent work on skepticism. Greco’s book, like Michael Williams’s penetrating Unnatural Doubts, is both a defense of a form of externalism and one of the finest books on skepticism of recent vintage. It seems that on all sides epistemologists are coming to see that dealing with skeptical problems is not only necessary but also philosophically rewarding. In this matter I am in complete agreement with both Greco and Williams, and Greco’s book, like Williams’s, may serve the cause of bringing new converts around to our way of seeing things.

Brian Ribeiro argues that the pragmatic theory of truth massively misrepresents the actual use of the terms “true” and “truth.” Truths, he observes, can be distinguished from “illusions.” The latter misrepresent reality and the former do not. Psychologists, as they report on the way mentally healthy people commonly overestimate themselves, draw just this distinction. They tell us of many beliefs that are “adaptive” but illusory. Pragmatists cannot draw this distinction because their theory explains truth as adaptiveness. Therefore no sensible person will be a pragmatist. In fact, however, Ribeiro paints a flawed picture of what both psychologists and pragmatists do. Psychologists provide us not with “reality-based accurate beliefs” but instead with beliefs that work, and pragmatists do not identify all beliefs that are adaptive or useful for individuals as true. Pragmatism turns out to be quite sensible, though often misunderstood.

The dialogue Octavius by Minucius Felix is a point of reception in the legacy of Ciceronian skeptical fideism, and as such it deserves its place in the history of skeptical fideism. Drawing on his Ciceronian model, Minucius depicts a skeptical fideist—Caecilius—struggling to hold on to his religious traditions in the face of the challenges posed by the new religion of Christianity. But Minucius himself is a convert to the new religion and writes in its defense. And this authorial intent distorts the skeptical fideism which Minucius found in Cicero’s De natura deorum by adding credulous and/or dogmatic elements that are ill-fitted to skeptical fideism but well-suited to his authorial intention of answering all available objections to Christianity in the hopes of winning converts.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Montaigne on Witches and the Authority of Religion in the Public SphereBrian RibeiroThe pleasure in reading Michel de Montaigne, the French Counter-Reformer and fideistic skeptic, is due in no small part to the ways in which he so frequently defeats our expectations. The surprises occur at several levels, beginning with the very titles of his essays, which frequently have little to do with the topics he actually discusses. Who, for example, would expect an essay titled "Of Three Good Women" (II.35) to praise the three women for their variously successful attempts at committing suicide—and little else? Or who would expect an essay with the innocent title "On Some Verses of Virgil" (II.5) to be richly confessional, as well as very explicitly sexual? Or, as one final example, who would expect an essay "Of Cripples" (II.11) to either (a) discuss the witch trials or (b) discuss cripples principally in terms of whether the lame make better sexual partners?The surprises are not confined to the formal features of Montaigne's text, but also appear in the views he articulates. We would not expect an early modern Frenchman to write so sympathetically and even admiringly about the cannibals of the New World (I.31). Nor would we expect an early modern French Catholic to write in opposition to the witch trials. Montaigne does both—with incredible finesse. But despite the attractively progressive attitude seemingly manifested in these two stances, Montaigne's overall view is in fact far more conservative and quietistic than we might expect, were we judging based only on these few cases. And so he surprises us yet again: We are surprised to find him opposing the witch trials, and we are surprised a second time to find that his opposition does not signal any deeper tendency toward progressive or politically liberal views. In short, there is good reason [End Page 235] to see Montaigne's general stance as firmly traditional. While he sometimes expresses apparently progressive views, he does so in a way that has no stable basis in his overall conceptual scheme, as I will argue. Of course, merely observing this tension in Montaigne's work is nothing new. Hugo Friedrich, writing in 1949, and discussing II.11, claimed that "Montaigne bravely takes a position against the delusion of the masses and against clerical fanaticism."1 But in the same passage (and elsewhere) Friedrich shows himself to be well-aware that this apparent radicalism is balanced by Montaigne's conservatism.2 That tension—in a nutshell—encapsulates the debate.3 However, "Of Cripples" presents this tension in its most perplexing form, making a detailed analysis of II.11 our best hope of making progress on the debate.4To support these claims I propose to offer a careful textual analysis of Montaigne's discussion of the witch trials in "Of Cripples."5 After considering several philosophical interpretations of his key Augustinian principle, I will argue that Montaigne's critique of the witch trials is primarily driven by problems internal to the religious perspective, and so does not represent an attempt to circumscribe the authority of religion in the public sphere more generally.6 Such a position, then, is both traditional and quietistic—another of Montaigne's surprises for his readers. If this is correct, then one of the principal texts used for promoting a "liberal" Montaigne—namely, II.11—can be be reappropriated by the defenders of a "quietistic" Montaigne. Nonetheless, even on my reading, there remain some incompletely resolved tensions. That, perhaps, is no less than we should expect from history's only self-proclaimed "accidental philosopher."7IMontaigne opens "Of Cripples" by discussing the Gregorian reform of the calendar, which had been adopted in France in 1582. Yet as odd as this opening is, it serves to quickly introduce a familiar theme in the Essays: Even so basic a matter as the calendar is subject to "[s] o much uncertainty"—just like everything else—that "we are every day in doubt" about how to "keep a record of past events" (F, pp. 784–85). These thoughts are then quickly transformed into a skeptical reflection on human reason itself...

In section 1 I present a case for understanding Cicero as a radical Academic skeptic, based on evidence from the Academica. In section 2 I offer an explanation of the concept of skeptical fideism and present a way to taxonomize various versions of the view. The material in sections 1 and 2 positions us to ask, was Cicero, the Academic augur, a sincere orthopraxic skeptical fideist? In section 3 I attempt to answer that question, beginning with an examination of De divinatione. Reading that work in a skeptical light, as I do, we are led to an impasse on our central question. However, in section 4 I consider two lines of argument that might enable us to determine Cicero’s own views.