***************************************** The CEU Philosophy Department and the CEU Humanities Center Cordially invite you to a Public Lecture on "RADICAL DOUBTS: THE EMERGENCE OF SKEPTICISM IN MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY" By Professor DOMINIK PERLER, Department of Philosophy, Humboldt University (Berlin) Chair: GYÖRGY GERÉBY, Visiting Professor, Medieval Studies department, Central European University Wednesday, November 9th, 6:45 P.M. CEU Gellner Room Abstract Since the time of Descartes, skepticism has become one of the central problems of epistemol-ogy. But why has skepticism become such a serious problem? And why do many philosophers conceive of knowledge as a relation between an "inner" world of thoughts and an "outer" world of material objects - a relation that can always be manipulated by a powerful demon? This presentation intends to show that this type of skepticism is not a "natural" philosophical problem that inevitably arises in every context, but is rather the outcome of a certain episte-mological theory that opens up a radical gap between an inner and an outer world. This gap is not to be found in ancient skepticism, nor is it just the invention of Descartes. A number of transformations in late medieval philosophy and theology led to the creation of this gap. In particular, two theoretical shifts were responsible for the emergence of radical doubts: (a) a shift from a model that takes the human mind to be a cognitive faculty "assimilating" objects in the world and becoming somehow identical to them, to a model that conceives of it as the place of inner representations, (b) a shift from a theory that takes God to be the last guarantee for successful cognition, to a theory that presents him as an absolutely free and omnipotent being, unlimited in his power and able to intervene in every cognitive process. ~*~ Dominik Perler is Professor for Theoretical Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. Professor Perler received his Ph.D. from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He was Fellow and Lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford University in 1996-7 and Professor of Phi-losophy at the University of Basel between 1997 and 2003. He held a number of visiting po-sitions at Cornell University, UCLA (Los Angeles), the University of Göttingen and Wissen-schaftskolleg zu Berlin. His research focuses on medieval and early modern philosophy in the areas of the philosophy of mind, epistemology and ontology. Professor Perler is the author of several monographs including Der propositionale Wahrheitsbegriff im 14. Jahrhundert (de Gruyter 1992), Repräsentation bei Descartes (Klostermann 1996), Theorien der Intention-alität im Mittelalter (Klostermman 2002, also in French by Vrin 2003). He has also edited and contributed to several anthologies and published countless articles in leading journals. ~ Reception to Follow ~