PHI 634: Contemporary Skepticism

Spring 2006

Instructor: James Beebe, Ph.D.

Office hours: T 3:00-4:30pm, Th 1:00-2:30pm in 118 Park Hall; or by appointment

Office phone: 645-2444, ext. 118

Mailbox: 138 Park Hall

Email address: beebejames@yahoo.com

Course requirements:

Weekly Discussion Papers                                                                    25%

Research Paper                                                                                     55%

Class Participation                                                                                20%

Facts About Research Paper:

1. Your essay must be at least 20 pages in length.

2. I will employ the following penalty system for late assignments: Every day your assignment is late on the day it is due, you will lose one partial letter grade.

E.g., if your grade would have been an A, it will be an A- after being one day late, a B+ after two, a B after three, etc.

3. Your research paper will be due on: May 2, 2006.

Facts About Weekly Discussion Papers:

1. Each week you need to write one full page on the reading assignment for that day.

2. Each discussion paper should be a brief, critical examination of the nature of the position being advanced, the arguments given in favor of it, and objections or challenges you think the position faces.

3. Your discussion paper should include at least three questions you think need to be addressed in class concerning the reading for that week. Your questions will help structure class discussion.

4. Grades for the discussion papers will be on a scale from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).

Schedule of Topics

Part I. Introduction to Contemporary Skepticism

Lecture only

Part II: Knowledge as an Absolute

1. Peter Unger, “In Defense of Skepticism” [Philosophical Review 80(1971):198-219]

Part III: Externalist Rejections of Closure

2. Fred Dretske, “Epistemic Operators” [Journal of Philosophy 67(1970):1007-1023]

3. Fred Dretske, “The Pragmatic Dimension of Knowledge” [Philosophical Studies 40(1981):363-378]

4. Fred Dretske, “Conclusive Reasons” [Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49(1971):1-22] (pp. 1-7 only) [handout]

5. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981) (pp. 167-187, 197-211, 217-227, 230-240, 245-247)

6. Laurence BonJour, “Nozick, Externalism, and Skepticism” [In Steven Luper-Foy (ed.), The Possibility of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987), pp. 297-313]

Part IV: Other Externalist Responses to Skepticism

7. David Papineau, “Reliabilism, Induction and Scepticism” [The Philosophical Quarterly 42(1992):1-20]

8. Stewart Cohen, “Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge” [Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65(2002):309-329]

Part V: Attempts to Refute Skepticism Directly

9. Crispin Wright, “Scepticism and Dreaming: Imploding the Demon” [Mind 100(1991):87-116]

10. Jonathan Vogel, “Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation” [Journal of Philosophy 87(1990):658-666]

11. Laurence BonJour, “Foundationalism and the External World” [In James Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 13(1999):229-249]

12. Ram Neta, “Skepticism, Abductivism, and the Explanatory Gap” [Philosophical Issues 14(2004):296-325]

Part VI: Contextualist Responses to Skepticism

13. Stewart Cohen, “How to Be a Fallibilist” [In James Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 2(1988):91-123]

14. Keith DeRose, “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions” [Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52(1992):913-929]

Recommended reading: Keith DeRose, “Solving the Skeptical Problem” [Philosophical Review 104(1995):1-52]

15. David Lewis, “Elusive Knowledge” [Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74(1996):549-567]

Part VII: Contrastivism

16. Fred Dretske, “Contrastive Statements” [Philosophical Review 81(1972):411-437]

17. Jonathan Schaffer, “From Contextualism to Contrastivism” [Philosophical Studies 119(2004):73-103]

18. Duncan Pritchard, “Contrastivism, Evidence, and Scepticism”

Part VIII: Subject-Centered Invariantism

19. John Hawthorne, “Précis of Knowledge and Lotteries” [Philosophical Issues 14(2004):476-481]

20. Jason Stanley, (selections)

Part IX: Neo-Moorean Responses to Skepticism

21. Ernest Sosa, “How to Defeat Opposition to Moore” [In James Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 13(1999):141-153]

22. Duncan Pritchard, “Resurrecting the Moorean Response to the Sceptic” [International Journal of Philosophical Studies 10(2002):283-307]

23. James Pryor, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist” [Noûs 34(2000):517-549]

24. Tim Black, “A Moorean Response to Brain-in-a-Vat Skepticism” [Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80(2002):148-163]

Part X: A Priori Skepticism

25. James Beebe, “A Priori Skepticism”

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