Some Reluctant Skepticism about Rational Insight

Some Skepticism About Normative Constitutional Advice

Skepticism about Character Traits

Sartre (1956) describes ways in which one may present oneself to others as being a certain sort of person. In one of his examples, a waiter presents himself as a waiter by as it were acting the part of a waiter. More generally, Sartre argues that, wanting to be, or at least to appear to others to be, a person of a certain sort or character, one often acts the part of a person of that sort of ch...

Response to “Skepticism about desert”

Swartzer concludes the paper with the claim that desert is not a basic normative notion. It cannot “supply first principles of justice.” (p. 1) In other words, desert is to be defined in terms of justice, not the other way around. What we deserve just is what we are to receive according to the demands of justice. On this view, to say that a just distribution of goods is such that everyone recei...

Acquaintance and Skepticism about the Past

I consider the problem of skepticism about the past within Richard Fumerton’s acquaintance theory of noninferential justification. Acts of acquaintance occur within the fleeting present. But if the data for noninferential justification is limited to the fleeting present then the options for avoiding a far-reaching skepticism are quite limited. I consider Fumerton’s responses to skepticism about...

Central IRBs: why are some institutions reluctant to sign on?

There are several good reasons why hospitals and cancer centers would want to use central institutional review boards (IRBs) to supplement their often over-burdened local boards that are charged with overseeing research involving human subjects. What's more, several national agencies support central IRBs: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a draft guidance in March to help increase aw...