Dr. Brian Ribeiro
UC Foundation Assistant Professor
232B Holt Hall
(423)425-4338
Email
Dr. Brian Ribeiro did his undergraduate work at Mississippi College where he received a B.S. in psychology in 1996. He then did his graduate work in philosophy at Vanderbilt University (M.A. 1999 and Ph.D. 2001). His dissertation, “Skepticism and Human Values,” continues to set the pace for his current research which, speaking broadly, investigates the nature and significance of radical skepticism (in both its ancient and modern forms). He has published on various aspects of the power and majesty of skepticism.
Ribeiro has won awards for both his teaching (2001 Franklin J. Matchette Award for Excellence in Teaching, while teaching at Vanderbilt) and his research (2004 APA Rockefeller Prize, for his paper “Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument”). He is currently focusing on Hume’s philosophy, along with certain issues in what might be called epistemic psychology, most especially the set of questions related to the sense(s) in which we are—or are not—able to “take skepticism seriously” and be changed or transformed by skeptical insights.
Publications
- “A Theory-Sketch for a Distance Theory of Humor,” Think, forthcoming.
- “How Often Do We (Philosophy Professors) Commit the Straw Man Fallacy?”, Teaching Philosophy, forthcoming.
- “Hume’s Standard of Taste and the de gustibus Sceptic,” British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2007): 16-28.
- “Must the Radical Skeptic Be Intellectually Akratic?”, Facta Philosophica 8 (2006): 207-219.
- “Clarke and Stroud on the Plane-Spotters,” Southwest Philosophy Review 22 (2006): 25-32.
- “Skeptical Parasitism and the Continuity Argument,” Metaphilosophy 35 (2004): 714-732.
- “Is Pyrrhonism Psychologically Possible?”, Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 319-331.
- “Cartesian Skepticism and the Epistemic Priority Thesis,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 40 (2002): 573-586.
- “Epistemological Skepticism(s) and Rational Self-Control,” The Monist 85 (2002): 468-477.
