Schedule

Corinne Persinger: Why We Shouldn't be Skeptics About Animal Minds

Texas A&M

Ashley Labodda and Jonathan Mitchell: Trust and Uncertainty: A Skeptic's Trust in the External World

University of Rochester and University of Oklahoma

Brianna Morseth: The Benefits of Contemplative Doubt

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Neil Sims: Skepticism in Hadot, Ca'an Buddhism, and Descartes

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Aditya Guntoori: Dreams and Skepticism in Madhyamaka 

McGill University

Ben Birkinstock: Not Trying to Try: Guo Xiang's Solution to the Paradox of Self-Cultivation

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Ruel Mannette: Naturalist Skepticism: The Philosophy of Skepticism in Pierre Bayle and Wang Chong

 University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Lisa Paravan: Against Certainty: Exploring Peter Unger's Scepticism and its Relationship with the Knowledge Condition of Illocutionary Acts

University of British Columbia 

Keynote Speaker 

Karen Jones: Affective Regulation and Resistance

University of Melbourne

Abstract:
Many, including myself, have argued that emotions can put us in touch with values even when we hold ideologically driven beliefs that such emotions are unjustified. In this paper, I argue that this view, while not wholly wrong, ignores the social forces that regulate “outlaw” emotions. Norms for who is to feel what, when, go into making us fit for participation in social relations, including relations of dominance and subordination. Affective regulation is a core, but overlooked, people-making practice. I explore how affective regulation works and the ways in which dominant norms for feeling can be resisted and new norms established. I identify the following strategies: 1. Direct critique in which an emotional response is charged with being unwise, unfitting, out of proportion, or insufficiently grounded in evidence; 2. Enactment or the sincere and readable performance of counter-dominant affective responses aimed at licensing new ways of feeling; 3. Invitation into affect worlds through presupposition and naming; and 4. Embedding, or making available alternative ways of framing situations that support non-dominant affective responses. I explore the prospects for deploying these strategies from positions of relatively greater or lesser social power.

Keynote Speaker 

Hans-Georg Moeller: A Defense of Moral Foolishness: A Daoist View

University of Macau

Abstract:

This paper argues that moralization has not increased the ability of society or individuals to manage their problems more effectively. Based on Daoist philosophy and contemporary social systems theory, the paper proposes that the contrary is the case: Due to the complexity of society and individuals as well as to the nature of moral communication, moral framing does not bring about social consensus or individual well-being but creates further divisions. Instead of trying to identify a “minimal shared morality,” a Daoism-inspired approach aims at minimizing moral communication to reduce and resolve conflicts. Rather than striving for a minimalist morality, it advocates “moral foolishness.”

Lizibeth Fischer: Does Skepticism Foreclose the Possibility of Faith?

Oxford University 

Aditya Guntoori: Doubt in Nagarjuna and Nyaya

McGill University

David Simone: Santideva's Compassionate Response to the Moral Skeptic

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Brandon Yip: The Wisdom of Disgust

Australia National University

Yinli Lai: Coexist with Emotions- Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Emotions 

National Taiwan University

Maximino Robles: Would Pyrrhonian Skeptics Want Nothing to do with Aristotle's Eudaimonia?

University of Utah

Qian Cao: Plato on Dizziness, Projection, and the Psycholoy of Relativism

Columbia University

Keynote Speaker
Tamara Albertini: "Shades of Doubt and Degrees of Certainty: Lessons from al-Ghazālī and Descartes

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Abstract:
Extensive scholarly work has been dedicated to delineating the notable similarities between al-Ghazālī and Descartes. In my lecture, I intend to venture into less-explored terrain, drawing attention to al-Ghazālī's taxonomy of "doubt", as expounded in his Book of Knowledge, and Descartes's concept of "enumeration" from the Rules for the Direction of the Mind [Latin: Ingenium].