Project 1: Ancient Skepticism's Modern Legacy
The majority of my research over the past twenty years belongs more or less directly to this project. As currently envisioned, all of that work would result in a book consisting of the following chapters:
An overview of the Pyrrhonism of Sextus Empiricus, tailored to the larger project
Pyrrhonism in Montaigne
An interpretation of Descartes’s reconfiguration of skepticism according to which the Cartesian model of the skeptical problematic is best understood as a restricted and distorted variant of the ancient model
Pyrrhonism in Hume
A section outlining and contrasting the differing responses to Hume and/or Pyrrhonism in Kant and Hegel
Pyrrhonism in Nietzsche
Pyrrhonism in Heidegger (esp. Being and Time)
Pyrrhonism in Wittgenstein (esp. On Certainty)
Drafts of three of these chapters—on Montaigne, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein respectively—are already published or forthcoming, while material for the section on Descartes figures prominently in my dissertation.
Project 2: Reality, Relativity, and the Five Modes of Agrippa
This project combines a close reading of Sextus Empiricus with explorations of important issues in contemporary epistemology. It would begin with a paper, but could easily expand to book-length. The basis of the project is my theory of a "System of the Five Modes of Agrippa."
Taken individually, each of the Five Agrippan Modes—dispute (or 'disagreement'), infinite regress, relativity, arbitrary assumption (or 'hypothesis'), and vicious circularity (or 'reciprocity')—represents an important and 'live' epistemological problem. Sextus suggests that the Modes are meant to work together as a sort of skeptical system, yet he never clearly illustrates how that purported system is supposed to work. Many scholars have concentrated instead on what Hans Albert dubbed "Münchhausen’s Trilemma" and Michael Williams calls "Agrippa’s Trilemma," an epistemological challenge that can be traced back to Aristotle. The Trilemma jettisons dispute and relativity. Attempts have been made to reintergrate the orphaned Modes, but these either subordinate dispute and relativity to the Trilemma, thus failing to integrate them fully, or else they fall short on interpretive grounds. The greatest difficulty scholars have faced is to work out the nature of relativity both in Sextus's texts and, as a result, in the logic of the System of the Five Modes. Thus, my theory is innovative not only in offering a fully integrated account of the Five Modes, but also in grounding that account in a close reading of Sextus's texts, a task which includes showing how the Five Modes relate centrally to the arguments codified in the Two Modes , the Three Modes, and the Ten Modes.
If it can be satisfactorily worked out, my reading of the Five Modes should be game-changing with respect to our understanding not only of the Five Modes in Sextus but also of the nature and power of the skeptical threat that continues to bedevil contemporary epistemologists despite all their efforts to exorcise it.
Further Down the Road, Hopefully
I would like to extend my research deeper into ethics and philosophy of mind. Regarding ethics, I do not consider epistemological concerns to be purely theoretical, devoid of practical significance. Rather, I see epistemology and ethics as intertwined, and though I have heretofore concentrated on the epistemological, it is the ethical that most concerns me. As for philosophy of mind—which for me also bears importantly on ethical matters—I would like to put a Pyrrhonian spin on the work of so-called ‘neuro-skeptics,’ who argue for radically skeptical conclusions on the basis of ongoing research in neuroscience and cognitive science.