Guido Tana
PhD Philosophy
- Philosophy
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
Contact details
- Email: gtana@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Room 2.17, Dugald Stewart Building
- City
- 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9AD
Background
PhD Candidate in Philosophy 2016-2019
In the Academic Year 2018/2019 I will be visiting doctoral student and research associate (DAAD-Stipendiat) at the Humboldt-Chair of Professor James Conant, University of Leipzig, and at the Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism.
-----
DAAD-Stipendiat (Universität Leipzig) 2018
MA in Philosophy (University of Pavia/Freie Universitat Berlin) 2014
DAAD-Stipendiat (Freie Universitat Berlin) 2013
BA in Philosophy (University of Pavia/ Universitat Konstanz) 2013
CV
61383.pdf
Responsibilities & affiliations
Organizer and Coordinator of the 8th Edinburgh Graduate Conference in Epistemology
Undergraduate teaching
Morality and Value (Fall Semester 2017)
Greats: From Plato to the Enlightenment (Spring Semester 2018)
Mind, Matter, and Language (Fall Semester 2019)
Logic 1 (Summer Semester 2020)
Epistemology and Evidence Law (Summer Semester 2020)
Morality and Value (Fall Semester 2020)
Philosophy of Science 1 (Fall Semester 2020)
Nominated for the Teaching Award "Tutor of the Year" AY 2019/20
Epistemology and Evidence Law (Summer Semester 2020)
Research summary
Areas of Specialization:
Epistemology, in particular Scepticism, Foundations of Knowledge, Normativity, Theories of Justification
History of Philosophy, in particular German Idealism (Hegel, Kant), Wittgenstein, Pyrrhonism, and Descartes
Areas of Competence:
Philosophy of Mind (Intentionality, Social Cognition), Philosophy of Culture (Recognition Theory, Second Nature), Philosophy of Science (Feyerabend, Lakatos, Van Fraassen)
History of 20th Century Philosophy, in particular Sellars, Heidegger, McDowell, Brandom, Husserl, Rorty
Project activity
The Truth of Skepticism. A post-Kantian Inquiry on the Nature of Philosophical Doubt
Abstract
The Cartesian picture of knowledge underlies the central epistemological questions in contemporary philosophy. However, Cartesian epistemology paves the way for a sceptical threat about the knowledge of the external world, due to the way the engagement between subject and reality is framed. Dogmatist and Moorean answers appear to fail to engage with the sceptical problem in a satisfactory way, while at the same time the ordinary requirements on knowledge seemingly make room for a surrender to radical scepticism. Internalist and Externalist theories of knowledge propose to override the sceptical arguments each by defending a conception of experience in which some fundamental units of justification and belief supervene on something given, non-epistemic and non-normative. While both strategies individuate crucial components of what knowledge is, namely the responsiveness to one's environment and to one's own reasons for knowledge, the Cartesian picture that opposes the internal to the external aspects of cognition is the proper source of the sceptical problem itself. Hence, scepticism is to be understood both as a paradox arising from as well as a reaction to epistemological claims. Through the lenses of a Sellarsian critique of Cartesianism, scepticism is diagnosed as arising from the presuppositions and implicit claims of this paradigm, understood as a kind of foundationalism or epistemological realism that relies on something Given in either the environment or the subject. Due to this diagnosis, Cartesian scepticism will be shown to be a boundary case of a wider normative, justificatory question regarding the standing of the subject within the space of reasons, akin to the Underdetermination-based skeptical problem. This issue has roots in the Kantian investigation regarding the content and possibility of knowledge. Knowledge itself will therefore be understood not as something that is passively obtained, or that supervenes from one of the two sides of the internal/external distinction. Instead, knowledge is the exercise of our rational capability of engaging with reality through concepts and judgements where no gap is meaningful in the first place. This Kantian perspective will be connected to contemporary epistemological stances that rely on this diagnosis of Cartesian scepticism, such as Transcendental Arguments and especially Disjunctivism. Ultimately, both approaches will be shown as falling prey to the same foundational obstacles, due to their aim of supplying an underlying fundamental justification for the whole normative framework that makes our experience of the world factive or based on foundational transcendental structures. The impossibility of escaping Agrippa's Trilemma will bring us to endorse a Pyrrhonian answer to the epistemological worries that create the sceptical threat in the first place. The Pyrrhonian perspective on knowledge takes up from this impasse, eliminating the need for foundational or transcendental justification, proposing a therapeutic attitude towards what we expect from epistemology. Pyrrhonism, investigated through two stances that explicitly refer to the worries arising from this justificatory and normative issue, the Hegelian and Wittgensteinian ones, will therefore offer a proposal about knowledge that frees it from the need of delivering an ultimate foundation to either the content of experience or to its normativity. Knowledge as an exercise of rationality is an intersubjective, conceptual and normative practice, which displays and develops the grammar of our engagement with the world and with other epistemic subjects. This engagement is understood as anti-foundationalist and social externalist, in which transcendental questions about the ultimate knowledge and certainty of reality have to be seen as meaningless. The outcome of this diagnosis of the connection between scepticism and epistemology shows the need to change the dialectic of both knowledge and doubt, to undercut reasons both for radical doubts and for a foundational grasp of reality.
A Taxonomy of Skepticism: on the relationship between Closure and Underdetermination Skepticism, 7th Annual OZSW Conference (Dutch Research School of Philosophy), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15/11/19
A Taxonomy of Skepticism: on the relationship between Closure and Underdetermination Skepticism, 10th Salzburg Conference for Young Analytic Philosophy (SOPhiA), University of Salzburg, Austria, 18/09/19
Rules, Recognition, and Community: a Hegelian Proposal for a Wittgensteinian Paradox, Workshop “Hegel and Wittgenstein – Negativity and Language”, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic, 11/06/19
Misunderstanding Closure Skepticism, 4th Belgrade Conference in Analytic Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia, 10/05/19
Misunderstanding Closure Skepticism, 2019 Filozofski Simpozij, University of Maribor, Slovenia, 07/05/19
Misunderstanding Closure Skepticism, Work in Progress Postgraduate Seminar, University of Edinburgh, Great Britain 15/03/19
Recognizing the Objectivity and Authority of Norms: Kripke, Hegel, and Davidson, OZSW Graduate Conference in Theoretical Philosophy, University of Leiden, Netherlands, 09/01/19
Epistemological Dogmatism and the Problem of the Criterion, ENFA 7, 7th Portuguese National Meeting in Analytic Philosophy, University of Lisbon, Portugal, 15/09/18
Epistemological Dogmatism and the Problem of the Criterion, 9th Salzburg Conference for Young Analytic Philosophy (SOPhiA), University of Salzburg, Austria, 12/09/18
Epistemological Dogmatism and the Problem of the Criterion, 13th SIFA (Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy) Meeting, University of Eastern Piedmont, Italy, 04/09/18
Epistemological Dogmatism and the Problem of the Criterion, Third Belgrade Conference in Analytic Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia, 05/05/18
A Fumbled Dialogue on the Possibility of Dialogue: Cavell and Kripke on Wittgenstein, Dublin Graduate Conference in Philosophy, University College Dublin, Ireland 04/05/2018 (Paper Accepted. Could not attend due to conflicting schedule)
Being Part of Nature. The Concept of Second Nature in John McDowell and its Roots in Kant and Hegel - Graduate Conference in History of Philosophy, Collegio Ghislieri, University of Pavia, Italy, 13/10/2016
La Ricezione Americana di Hegel. La Lettura Sistematica: John McDowell e Robert Brandom, Graduate Course in Theoretical Philosophy, University of Pavia, 17/05/2016
La Ricezione Americana di Hegel. La Lettura Storica: Robert Pippin e Terry Pinkard, Graduate Course in Theoretical Philosophy, University of Pavia, 12/05/2016