Skepticism’s Pictures

Skepticism’s Pictures
Author: Melissa Lo
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2023-05-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0271096381

In seventeenth-century northern Europe, as the Aristotelian foundations of scientia were rocked by observation, experiment, confessional strife, and political pressure, natural philosophers came to rely on the printed image to fortify their epistemologies—and none more so than René Descartes. In Skepticism’s Pictures, historian of science Melissa Lo chronicles the visual idioms that made, sustained, revised, and resisted Descartes’s new philosophy. Drawing on moon maps, political cartoons, student notebooks, treatises on practical mathematics, and other sources, Lo argues that Descartes transformed natural philosophy with the introduction of a new graphic language that inspired a wide range of pictorial responses shaped by religious affiliation, political commitment, and cultural convention. She begins by historicizing the graphic vocabularies of Descartes’s Essais and Principia philosophiae and goes on to analyze the religious and civic volatility of Descartes’s thought, which compelled defenders (such as Jacques Rohault and Wolferd Senguerd) to reconfigure his pictures according to their local visual cultures—and stimulated enemies (such as Gabriel Daniel) to unravel Descartes’s visual logic with devastating irony. In the epilogue, Lo explains why nineteenth-century French philosophers divorced Descartes’s thought from his pictures, creating a modern image of reason and a version of philosophy absent visuality. Engaging and accessible, Skepticism’s Pictures presents an exciting new approach to Descartes and the visual reception of seventeenth-century physics. It will appeal to historians of early modern European science, philosophy, art, and culture and to art historians interested in histories that give images their argumentative power.

Anonymous Skeptics

Anonymous Skeptics
Author: Lance Ashdown
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2002
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9783161476792

At its deepest, philosophical skepticism questions the sense of language. Skepticism manifests itself in different forms, three of the most powerful being logical, external-world, and religious skepticism. How has philosophy of religion addressed these challenges? The attempt to answer this question leads Lance Ashdown to a consideration of three prominent contemporary philosophers of religion: Richard Swinburne, John Hick, and William Alston. The author shows that these philosophers are indeed open to the criticisms of the three types of skepticism mentioned above. According to Ashdown, they are rightly to be considered as 'anonymous skeptics'. Readers familiar with the work of the theologian Karl Rahner will recognize an echo of his famous doctrine that non-Christian religious believers are really 'anonymous Christians', i.e., Christian believers who do not recognize themselves as such. In a similar way, the philosophers of religion under consideration are skeptics who most certainly would not identify themselves as such. They are anonymous skeptics in the sense that their epistemologies create the very conditions that allow for the severe and, on their own terms, unanswerable challenges of skepticism. At the same time, none of these philosophers thinks that skeptical objections pose a devastating or unanswerable threat to their epistemologies. For example, each of them is an avowed believer in God and is fully aware of the challenge of religious skepticism, yet none believes that skepticism need cause a rational Christian to abandon his or her beliefs. Nevertheless, each of the three philosophers adheres to a philosophical theory that remains open to the devastating critique of Philo in David Hume's essay Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion - who argues at his deepest that talk of God is meaningless.

Skepticism and the Veil of Perception

Skepticism and the Veil of Perception
Author: Michael Huemer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2001
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780742512535

In opposition to both skeptics and representationalists, Huemer (philosophy, U. of Colorado, Boulder) presents a theory of perceptual awareness, according to which perception gives us direct awareness of real objects and non-inferential knowledge of the properties of these objects. He responds to the major arguments for skepticism, including the infinite regress argument, the problem of the criterion, the brain in the vat, and the impossibility of verification. c. Book News Inc.

Skepticism in the Modern Age

Skepticism in the Modern Age
Author: José Raimundo Maia Neto
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2009
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004177841

Since the publication of the first edition of Richard Popkin s classic The History of Scepticism in 1960, skepticism has been increasingly recognized as a major force in the development of early modern philosophy. This book provides a review of current scholarship and significant updated research on some of the main thinkers and issues related to the reappraisal of ancient skepticism in the modern age. Special attention is given to the nature, importance, and relation to religion of Montaigne s and Hume s skepticisms; to the various skeptical and non-skeptical sources of Cartesian doubt; to the skeptical and anti-skeptical impact of Cartesianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and to philosophers who dealt with skeptical issues in the development of their own various intellectual interests.

Varieties of Skepticism

Varieties of Skepticism
Author: James Conant
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110336790

This volume brings out the varieties of forms of philosophical skepticism that have continued to preoccupy philosophers for the past of couple of centuries, as well as the specific varieties of philosophical response that these have engendered — above all, in the work of those who have sought to take their cue from Kant, Wittgenstein, or Cavell — and to illuminate how these philosophical approaches are related to and bear upon one another. The philosophers brought together in this volume are united by the thought that a proper appreciation of the depth of the skeptical challenge must reveal it to be deeply disquieting, in the sense that skepticism threatens not just some set of theoretical commitments, but also-and fundamentally-our very sense of self, world, and other. Second, that skepticism is the proper starting point for any serious attempt to make sense of what philosophy is, and to gauge the prospects of philosophical progress.

Answering Moral Skepticism

Answering Moral Skepticism
Author: Shelly Kagan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2023-07-14
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197688977

Most thoughtful people worry at one time or another about whether there can actually be such a thing as objective moral truth. They might wonder, for example, whether the prevalence of moral disagreement makes it reasonable to conclude that there aren't really any moral facts at all. Or they might be bothered by questions like these: What could objective moral facts possibly be like? Isn't it obvious that morality is simply relative to particular societies and particular times? If there were moral facts, how could we ever come to know anything about them? Can morality really have the motivating and rational force we normally take it to have? How can one possibly find a place for objective moral values in a scientific worldview? Some people are driven by questions like these to the conclusion that we should embrace skepticism about morality, denying the very existence of anything worthy of the name. In Answering Moral Skepticism, Shelly Kagan shows how those who accept the existence of objective moral truth can provide plausible answers to these questions. Focusing throughout on issues that trouble reflective individuals, Kagan provides an accessible defense of the belief in objective morality will be of interest to both students of metaethics as well as anyone worried about the objectivity of their own moral judgements.

Looking Askance

Looking Askance
Author: Michael Leja
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2004-10-04
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780520238077

Michael Leja offers a new, specifically visual, model for understanding American art in the decades before and after 1900.

Modern Skepticism

Modern Skepticism
Author: Joseph Barker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1874
Genre: Skepticism
ISBN:

Gospel in Life Discussion Guide

Gospel in Life Discussion Guide
Author: Timothy Keller
Publisher: Harperchristian Resources
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780310329183

Through this eight-week small group Bible study, Gospel in Life, Timothy Keller explores with participants how gospel can change hearts, communities, and how we live in the world. This pack includes one softcover 230-page Participant Guide and one DVD.