Louis Doulas

I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Extending New Narratives in the History of Philosophy project at McGill University.

I work primarly in the history of philosophy and epistemology. My historical research concerns the origins and development of early analytic philosophy, and explores epistemological, methodological and, more recently, metaethical themes in the work of several figures of this period (especially G.E. Moore and Susan Stebbing). In epistemology, my work has invoked the framework of Wittgensteinian “hinge epistemology” to shed light on the problem of peer disagreement, philosophical skepticism, and the issue of progress in philosophy and science.

I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. I did my MA in Philosophy at Brandeis University and my BFA in Studio Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In between those degrees, before finding my way to philosophy, I worked as an editor and writer in New York, mostly writing about art influenced by the internet. I still have active interests in art and hope to write more on the topic in the near future.

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Publications

Edited Volume

Analysis, Common Sense, and Public Philosophy: Themes from the Philosophy of Susan Stebbing (co-edited with Annalisa Coliva)

Oxford University Press (forthcoming)

This is the first volume dedicated exclusively to the philosophy of Susan Stebbing (1885–1943)—a pivotal figure in early analytic philosophy who has, until recently, been unjustly neglected. The eleven historical essays that comprise the volume explore, many for the first time, various elements of Stebbing’s prolific output.

Articles and Book Chapters

Making Sense of Stebbing and Moore on Common Sense
In A. Coliva and L. Doulas (eds.), Analysis, Common Sense, and Public Philosophy: Themes from the Philosophy of Susan Stebbing, Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
This chapter reevaluates Susan Stebbing’s and G.E. Moore’s relationship to common sense and how they understood its role in philosophical theorizing. The overarching goal is to bring some unexplored themes to light from a philosopher—Stebbing—who has been largely (and unjustly) overlooked and to reevaluate the views of a philosopher—Moore—whose common sense commitments have largely been treated as open-and-shut.
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Philosophical (and Scientific) Progress: A Hinge Account (with Annalisa Coliva)
In S. Goldberg and M. Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy, Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
Just as skepticism about our knowledge of the external world is thought to engender a kind of despair, skepticism about our philosophical knowledge, if true, engenders a despair of a similar kind. We remain optimistic. Despair, we urge, needn’t get the best of us. Philosophical knowledge is attainable. Progress is possible. But we aren’t overly optimistic either. Philosophical skepticism has its place. In this chapter, we show how philosophical knowledge and philosophical progress is possible in light of widespread disagreement in philosophy.
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Philosophical Progress, Skepticism, and Disagreement (with Annalisa Coliva)
In M. Baghramian, J. A. Carter, and R. Rowland (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Disagreement, Routledge (forthcoming)
This chapter serves as an opinionated introduction to the problem of convergence (that there is no clear convergence to the truth in philosophy) and the problem of peer disagreement (that disagreement with a peer rationally demands suspending one’s beliefs) and some of the issues they give rise to, namely, philosophical skepticism and progress in philosophy. After introducing both topics and surveying the various positions in the literature we explore the prospects of an alternative, hinge-theoretic account.
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What Philosophical Disagreement and Philosophical Skepticism Hinge On (with Annalisa Coliva)
Synthese (2022) 200: 1–14
Philosophers disagree. A lot. Pervasive disagreement is part of the territory; consensus is hard to find. Some think this should lead us to embrace philosophical skepticism: skepticism about the extent to which we can know, or justifiably believe, the philosophical views we defend and advance. Most philosophers in the literature fall into one camp or the other: philosophical skepticism or philosophical anti-skepticism. Drawing on the insights of hinge epistemology, this paper proposes another way forward, an intermediate position that appeals both to skeptical and anti-skeptical intuitions concerning the possibility and scope of philosophical knowledge. The main advantage of our account is that it’s able to recover some philosophical knowledge while also being compatible with philosophical skepticism.
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Against Philosophical Proofs Against Common Sense (with Evan Welchance)
Analysis (2021) 81: 207–215
Many philosophers think that common sense knowledge survives sophisticated philosophical proofs against it. Recently, however, Bryan Frances (2021) has advanced a philosophical proof that he thinks common sense cannot survive. Exploiting philosophical paradoxes like the Sorites, Frances attempts to show how common sense leads to paradox and therefore that common sense methodology is unstable. In this paper, we show how Frances’s proof fails and then present Frances with a dilemma.
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A Puzzle About Moorean Metaphysics

Philosophical Studies (2021) 178: 493–513
Some metaphysicians believe that existence debates are easily resolved by trivial inferences from Moorean premises. This paper considers how the introduction of negative Moorean facts—negative existentials that command Moorean certainty—complicates this picture. In particular, it shows how such facts, when combined with certain plausible metaontological principles, generate a puzzle that commits the proponents of this method to a contradiction.
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