More than half of Plato’s Euthydemus consists of the display of eristic, the name Socrates gives to the skill demonstrated by the two other main characters, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. The brothers’ way of arguing has often been dismissed as fallacious or trivial. However, scholars increasingly suggest that their practice of eristic reflects deeper commitments, linking them to Megaric, Eleatic, or Heraclitean thought.

This talk proposes a new approach to identifying the brothers’ philosophical commitments by focusing on the doctrine Socrates attributes to Euthydemus in the Cratylus: that “everything belongs equally to everything at the same time and always” (286d).

To support this, I first analyze historical testimonies, concluding that Euthydemus was a serious intellectual, though little is known about his doctrines. Next, I examine what the Euthydemus suggests about the brothers’ philosophical commitments and discuss the three existing main hypotheses in the research literature. Finally, I develop my own hypothesis, focusing on the ‘universal attribution doctrine,’ Euthydemus’ doctrine in the Cratylus. I argue that a commitment to this doctrine can account for the brothers’ ostensible disregard for contradiction, verbal precision, and statement qualifiers, and it also explains an otherwise obscure claim that Socrates makes in Euthydemus 303d5–e2.

In Seneca, the term veritas/verum usually appears in a context that resembles skepticism. He is nevertheless considered by the majority of scholars, especially in more recent studies, to follow Stoic sensualism on the grounds of his arguably evident Stoic materialism. Following Hachmann (2006), who pointed out that Seneca found sensory perception insufficient for moral progress, I argue that Seneca does not adopt sensualism from the stoics, even though he remains true to their materialism. Thus, I suggest that in his case, the question about his materialism should be investigated inde-pendently of the sensualism-question. My intention here is to isolate the latter, and investigate not only Seneca’s famous passages on veritas, but also the broader context. In this respect, I offer a statistical analysis and interpretation of further relevant terms and concepts. Seneca’s rare use of the term comprehensio, as well as the equivalence of the meaning between the terms opinio and scientia seem to reveal strong evidence - which haven’t yet received the attention they deserve in scholarship - for my claim.

Second-personal ethics, as developed by Stephen Darwall and others, seeks to ground morality not in abstract principles but in authoritative, intersubjective claims. Darwall draws significant influence from Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Summons Argument in his 1798 System of Ethics. As a transcendental philosopher, Fichte argues that ethics is rooted in the very structure of subjectivity, contending that a moral community with shared norms is a necessary precondition for self-consciousness. Fichte, however, gave this argument in several works and I argue that a stronger foundation for second-personal ethics lies in the 1799 version of the Summons Argument, found in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo. I reconstruct this version of the argument with an eye towards grounding second-personal moral claims.

The idea that logic is not special regarding its subject matter, epistemic justification or methods of theory choice has gained currency in recent years, usually cashed out in terms of continuity with the empirical sciences. While the label "anti-exceptionalism about logic" (AEL hereafter) is new, I intend to show how the relevant issues for this trend are part of a long story dating back most crucially to the late 19th century. Since Quine's naturalism is taken as the main inspiration for the movement, I propose a comparative and historical study focused mainly on the influences of C. I. Lewis’ conceptual pragmatism, Dewey’s anti-foundationalism, Carnap's empiricism and, as the last stop, Frege's anti-psychologism in the context of the project of a scientific philosophy. By drawing attention to the development of anti-exceptional ideas about logic, the significance of AEL as a viable alternative epistemology of logic can be properly assessed.