Certain Doubts

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Peter Unger’s Philosophical Papers is now out, in two volumes [Vol. 1 link, Vol. 2 link]. In an earlier post, where I was informing you that these volumes were coming, the title was given as An American Skeptic Collects His Wits; that seems to have given way to the more boring Philosophical Papers. In that earlier post, I also pasted a draft of Unger’s Preface to the collection. That Preface has been revised some, but those interested to read it, at least in draft form, can follow the above link to my old post. The table of contents has been shuffled around a bit since that earlier post, with the result that Unger’s great epistemology papers are now all together in Vol. 1; Vol. 2 is now the more metaphysicsy volume. I’ll put the table of contents here below the fold. (more…)

ANU is also hosting an epistemic modality conference, June 21-23, 2006. There seems to be no conference website as yet, but since I learned of the conference from David Chalmer’s blog, and he noted that it is sponsored by the Centre for Consciousness, there should be a link when available here.

RSSS, ANU, March 2-4, 2006

Speakers:
David Atkinson, U of Groningen
Brad Armendt, Arizona State University
David Chalmers, ANU
Mark Colyvan, University of Queensland
Andy Egan, University of Michigan, and ANU
Adam Elga, Princeton University
Lina Eriksson, ANU
Branden Fitelson, University of California at Berkeley
Jason Grossman, University of Sydney
Alan Hájek, ANU
Jenann Ismael, University of Arizona, and University of Sydney
Jim Joyce, University of Michigan
Jonathan Manton, ANU
Jeanne Peijnenburg, University of Groningen
Huw Price, University of Sydney
Michael Smithson, ANU

Conference website here.

Rich’s new book Epistemology, published by Blackwell, is now available. Here’s the Amazon link to the paperback edition.

Peter van Inwagen and Michael Tooley are scheduled to debate the question “Should We Believe in God?” at Amherst College this coming Friday (March 3). More info here. Though none of the information on the debate that I’ve seen specifies so, it’s an extremely good bet that PvI will be on the “yes” side & MT will be defending “no”! Given just the title, the debate may just concern arguments for & against the existence of God, and so may not involve any epistemology. But the title also leaves open the substantial possibility that religious epistemology will come into the picture, and may even play a large role in the debate.

Jonathan Adler’s new SEP piece by the above title is here. Check it out, it looks really nice!

via Prosblogion, I noticed a conference that may be of interest here:

2006 Saint Louis University Graduate Student Conference: The Epistemology of Religious Belief

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Robert Audi, Professor of Philosophy and David E. Gallo Professor of Business Ethics

Conference Dates: September 21-22, 2006
Location: Saint Louis University
Submission Deadline: May 22, 2006

The graduate students and faculty of the department of philosophy at Saint Louis University invite papers by all graduate students in any area relevant to the conference theme. We will consider papers from a broad range of topics including: evidentialism, reformed epistemology, the relationship between religion and science, natural theology, the possibility and prospects of philosophical theology, and the relationship between faith and reason.

Fritz is hear to talk and it’s really entitled “Eating Dead Animals,” but Matt and I are trying to figure out how this is going to be an epistemology talk (because, of course, the universe is as it ought to be). It reminded me of a Chisholm story Foley told me once. Chisholm was asked to teach a grad course in Aesthetics, and happily agreed. Quite surprising, until you hear about the first class period. Chisholm goes in and says, “This is a course in aesthetics, which deals with the concept of beauty. And the central question about beauty is how one can know whether something is beautiful. And for that, we need to investigate some principles…”

So Fritz will, perhaps, tell us how we can know whether something is a dead animal…

Guest-edited by Vince Hendricks, called 8 Bridges Between Mainstream and Formal Epistemology – it contains contributions from H. Arlo-Costa, Johan van Benthem, Luc Bovens and Stephan Harmann, Sven Ove Hansson, Vincent F. Hendricks & John Symons, Matthias Hild, Robert Stalnaker, and Heinrich Wansing. The Springer link is here.

Geoffrey Pynn has a very good bibliography on the epistemological problem of other minds posted here. If he’s missing good stuff, let him know.