Evan O'Donnell

The global skeptic, who claims to not know anything, is often met by the self-contradiction objection, which claims that if they can establish their own position then they must have knowledge of at least that conclusion. I consider a response to this problem from Francisco Sanches, a 16th-century global skeptic. Sanches’ response is unique in that it concedes the charge of self-contradiction, but argues that self-contradiction does not impede an argument for global skepticism. I first establish that Sanches’ response to the objection differs from that of ancient global skeptics. Then I reconstruct Sanches’ argument, using the underdetermination principle to show that a successful argument for global skepticism does not lead to knowledge of any proposition. Finally, I show how such an argument can be useful to a global skeptic nonetheless, arguing that, if accepted, it gives one a reason to suspend judgment on the question of knowledge.

There is substantial scholarship concerning the origin and use of the question “quid facti” in Kant’s Transcendental Deduction. There is also substantial scholarship concerning the question in the work of Salomon Maimon, the skeptical critic of Kant. The pictures of the “quid facti” question that emerge from these two bodies of literature, however, are rather different, and there has been no attempt to reconcile them. The goal of this paper is thus to compare Kant’s and Maimon’s understandings of the quaestio facti in order to understand how and why they differ. Part I begins by summarizing the legal context of the quaestio facti and identifying three sub-questions within it. Part II lays out Kant’s understanding of the quid facti as concerning the question of the empirical origin of a judgment. Part III shows how Maimon’s skeptical use of the quid facti question was made possible by his focus on a different aspect of the legal question: the question of whether a judgment has been made. Finally, using these results, Part IV argues, against the usual interpretation, that Maimon’s skeptical use of the quaestio facti can stand alone, separate from the quaestio juris.

In this paper, I propose to describe Deleuze’s theory of knowledge as set out in Difference & Repetition. First, I show that despite Deleuze’s hostility towards a knowledge-centered approach to philosophy, we should nevertheless read him as having an epistemological theory. Second, I examine Deleuze’s theory of knowledge by proceeding from a discussion of learning as a process of resolving practical problems to a discussion of Deleuze’s theory of questions. Questions, I show, express practical imperatives that set problems into motion. Knowledge, then, is a case of solution to this question via a grappling with the problems that it brings about. I end by discussing a key feature of Deleuzian knowledge: that it never answers once and for all the problems and questions from which it springs. Instead, an instance of knowledge should be understood as one possible resolution to the practical problem it answers.

I propose to dissolve the distinction between “rustic” and “urbane” interpretations of Sextus Empiricus’ account of Pyrrhonian assent to appearances. On the traditional picture, the “rustic” takes the skeptic to have no beliefs while the “urbane” takes the skeptic to have some “everyday” beliefs. I examine the distinction in two forms. First, in the original suite of papers by Frede, Burnyeat, and Barnes, I find that aside from a few differences in English terminology choice, the three authors substantially agree on the interpretation of assent to appearances. Second, turning to the revised distinction proposed by Fine, I find that the two supposedly divergent interpretations give us pictures of the Pyrrhonist indistinguishable from each other on the basis of the skeptic’s actions or assent. The distinction dissolved, I propose a unified interpretation that expresses what I find to be the ultimate agreement between the two supposedly different camps. Finally, I turn to the question of the skeptical life and use this unified interpretation to argue that both an everyday life and an unconventional one are equally consistent with Pyrrhonian practice.