Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte - Volume 108, Issue 1, 2016

Abstract Suspension of Judgment What does it take to suspend one’s judgment? In this introduction to the special issue ‘Scepticism and the suspension of judgment’, I present a conceptual analysis of suspension of judgment (what it is, what it isn’t, and why we might want to do it). Basically I argue that suspension is a mental attitude of neutrality. If you suspend judgment on a certain proposition, you are neutral tow Read More

Abstract Freedom Through Skepticism In this paper, I consider a form of skepticism that has a permissive conclusion, according to which we are rationally permitted to suspend judgment in an area, or to have beliefs in that area. I argue that such a form of skepticism is resistant to some traditional strategies of refutation. It also carries a benefit, namely that it increases voluntary control over doxastic states by introducing Read More

Abstract Suspension and Disagreement Some sceptics claim that in cases of peer disagreement, we ought to suspend judgment about the topic of discussion. In this paper, we argue that the sceptic’s conclusions are only correct in some scenarios. We show that the sceptic’s conclusion is built on two premises (the principle of evidential symmetry and the principle of evidentialism) and argue that both premises are incorrect. Fir Read More

Abstract The Triple Life of Ancient Thought Experiments There is no ancient Greek term corresponding to what we nowadays refer to as a thought experiment, and presumably ancient philosophers did not have our modern notion of a thought experiment. But there is no doubt that they did use thought experiments. In fact, they often employed them in ways similar to those of contemporary philosophers, that is, both for defendi Read More

Abstract The Practical and Epistemic Value of Pyrrhonism This paper assesses both the practical and the epistemic value of Pyrrhonism as this stance is described in Sextus Empiricus’s extant writings. It will first be explored whether the Pyrrhonist’s suspension of judgment and undisturbedness make us behave in a moral or immoral way, and whether they allow us to attain those goals that would make it possibl Read More

Abstract Overcoming the Suspension of Assent: The Academic Roots of Gassendi’s Probabilism In this paper, I show that, beyond the role played by Pyrrhonian arguments in rebuking Aristotelian theses, Academic philosophy offered to Gassendi a probabilist model of knowledge which, contrary to the Pyrrhonian suspension of assent, opened the possibility of a natural philosophy conceived as a science of appearances. In additio Read More