Programme seminar series (2016): abstracts
October 12
TITLE: Ginsborg on Meaning and Understanding
SPEAKER: Alex Miller (Otago)
ABSTRACT: In "Inside and Outside Language: Stroud’s Non-Reductionism about Meaning" (2011), "Primitive Normativity and Skepticism about Rules" (2011) and "The Normativity of Meaning" (2012), Hannah Ginsborg develops what she describes as a "partially reductionist" account of meaning. Ginsborg's account is intended as a middle-ground alternative to non-reductionism about meaning and the kind of reductive dispositionalism attacked in Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. In this paper I will attempt a critical evaluation of Ginsborg's fascinating proposal.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, October 12, Richardson GS2
October 5
TITLE: Shen Dao and the Development of Chinese Political Philosophy
SPEAKER: Eirik Lang Harris (City University of Hong Kong)
ABSTRACT: Although Shen Dao (ca. 350–275 B.C.E.) is perhaps best known, via the more famous Han Feizi, as a theorist of positional power, a close reading of the remaining fragments that bear his name indicate that he was deeply interested in the law and the Way (Dao). Previous discussions of the relationship between the law and the Way in Shen Dao’s political philosophy have focused on determining whether he was a natural law theorist or a legal positivist. Such an artificial dichotomy takes as an unstated premise that the Western debate over the law has laid out and classified legal theories according to their natural kinds - an unwarranted premise and one alien to early Chinese legal theorists.
As such, I will not focus on fitting Shen Dao into any Western mold, but rather endeavor to examine how Shen Dao himself talks about the relationship between the law and the Way. This involves coming to better understand his conception of the Way, which I argue he sees more in the light of the underlying set of natural laws that serve as the organizing principles of the universe and of human political organization. On his account, if the ruler is to be successful at implementing laws, he must recognize the restrictions that the natural world (which includes basically unchangeable human dispositions) places on what sort of laws will be effective.
This discussion of the role of law, particularly in light of human dispositions allows us to recognize that he has something to contribute to contemporary debates in political theory, from debates between situationalists and virtue theorists to discussions of the role of morality itself in political organization.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, October 5, Richardson GS2
September 28
TITLE: The brain as a model of the world
SPEAKER: Oron Shagrir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
ABSTRACT: I argue that an underlying assumption in computational approaches in cognitive and brain sciences is that the brain is a model of the world in the sense that it mirrors (or is morphic to) certain relations in the surrounding environment. I present three case-studies. One is computational work on the oculomotor system (Robinson 1989; Seung 1996; 2000). Another is David Marr's computational-level theory of edge-detection (Marr 1982). The third is a Bayesian model of causal reasoning (Tenenbaum et al. 2006). I distinguish between weak and strong modelling, and then discuss some philosophical implications of this model-of-the-world assumption, specifically to the debates about the nature of representation and computation.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 28, Richardson GS2
September 21
TITLE: Objectivism about animal well-being
SPEAKER: Andrew Moore (Otago)
ABSTRACT: This paper outlines and appraises an objective list theory of the welfare or well-being of animals. The terrain is fresh. Subjectivism is the predominant account of welfare in animal ethics, especially through the influential work of Peter Singer and Tom Regan. On the other hand, objective list theory almost always focuses on human well-being. To motivate its particular focus on 'intrinsic good' forms of objectivism about animal welfare, this paper argues that there is a significant respect in which these are better than the perfectionist or nature-development forms of objectivism more familiar in animal ethics through the work of Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Martha Nussbaum. The paper then assesses three criticisms of 'intrinsic good' objectivism about animal welfare.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 21, Richardson GS2
September 14
TITLE: Treasured Exceptions: Surprise and its Role in Science
SPEAKER: Emily Parke (Auckland)
ABSTRACT: Experiments are commonly judged superior to models and simulations, as sources of scientific knowledge. This judgment rests on ideas about experiments getting scientists “closer to the natural world” than models, in various ways. In this talk I evaluate the claim that experiments are superior sources of surprise. This claim can take a number of different forms, including (1) compared to experimenting, modelling leads to surprises only rarely, (2) surprises from experiments are more valuable, or (3) experiments can surprise us in ways that models cannot. I develop an account of different kinds of sources of surprise, and use it as a basis to critically assess those claims.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 14, Richardson GS2
September 7
TITLE: Intuition, models, and morality
SPEAKER: Robert L. Frasier (Oxford)
ABSTRACT: When testing moral theories or more restricted moral principles, we frequently use abstract models or characterisations of scenarios to simplify the test context and in an attempt to isolate the features we are testing. Moral intuitions are often employed in making judgements about theories or principles as a result of considering such models or scenarios. The use of abstract models and moral intuitions is notoriously problematic in moral theorising. In this talk, I briefly discuss some conceptions of models, some conceptions of intuitions, the problems that may arise from their use, then argue that in a limited but interesting set of types of cases their use is relatively unproblematic.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 7, Richardson GS2
August 24
TITLE: Perception, Mind-independence, and Berkeley
SPEAKER: Penelope Mackie (Nottingham)
ABSTRACT: In this paper I discuss a thesis that I call ‘The Appearance of Mind-Independence’, a thesis to the effect that, to the subject of an ordinary perceptual experience, it seems that the experience involves the awareness of a mind-independent world. Although this thesis appears to be widely accepted, I suggest that it may be challenged. Whether such a challenge can be maintained is especially relevant to the assessment of any theory, such as Berkeley’s idealism, according to which the only objects of which we are truly aware in perception are mind-dependent objects. But the issue is also of significance for the philosophy of perception more generally.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 24, Richardson GS2
August 17
TITLE: Proportionality
SPEAKER: Stephen Yablo (MIT)
ABSTRACT: Proportionality does a lot of work in philosophy. Causes should be proportional to their effects. Reasons should be proportional to what they rationalize. An argument's premises should ideally be proportional (wholly relevant) to its conclusion. Truthmakers are ideally ``discerning'' (Armstrong). But what is it for X to be proportional to Y? The usual story is that to be proportional is to be minimally sufficient; nothing less would have done. This can't be right. Minimally sufficient conditions often do not exist, and we do not always insist on them when they do exist. What then is proportionality?
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 17, Richardson GS2
August 10
TITLE: Fairness, Blame and Punishment
SPEAKER: Simon Wigley (Bilkent University)
ABSTRACT: One influential account of responsibility holds that an agent should not incur a cost, such as punishment or the denial of social assistance, if their actions were not adequately avoidable. Advocates of this doctrine combine a non-volitional account of moral appraisal (attribution of the agent’s attitudes or actions does not require that she could have chosen otherwise) with a volitional account of the assignment of costs (agent must have been presented with a reasonable chance to avoid the unwelcome consequence). Thus, an agent may be blameworthy and yet ineligible to receive a penalty or, blameworthy and yet eligible to receive social support. I argue that (1) the presence of (adequate or inadequate) alternatives is not a necessary condition for assigning costs and (2) attribution is the only relevant kind of responsibility for blame and punishment.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 10, Richardson GS2
July 27
TITLE: On A Theory of a Better Morality and A Better Theory of Morality
SPEAKER: Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill)
ABSTRACT: Normally, there is a sharp distinction between a better theory of X and a theory of a better X. That the theory of a better X is a theory according to which things are different from the way one’s (so far) best theory says they are is (normally) no reason whatsoever to think one’s (so far) best theory is wrong, just reason to wish X were different (and, if it is possible, reason to work to change X). That it would be better if all everyone were treated as equals is no reason whatsoever to think that they are; that it would be better that death came quickly, painlessly, and late in life is no reason whatsoever to think it does; that it would be better if we could fly is no reason whatsoever to think that we can ... In contrast (I maintain) when the subject matter is normative, this normally sharp distinction is elided and the difference between one’s theory of the best X (the best morality, the best standards of inference, the best rules of justification ...) and one’s (so far) best theory of X necessarily provides a reason (though perhaps not a decisive reason) to think one’s (so far) best theory is wrong. The elision plays an essential role in a range of arguments concerning morality, practical rationality, and theoretical rationality, a few of which I discuss. Yet it smacks of depending crucially and unacceptably on wishful thinking – on supposing that the fact that things would be better if only they were a certain way provides some reason to think they are that way. As a result, it invites invocation of a restricted defense of “Wouldn’t it be nice that p, therefore p” reasoning. I think that the invitation should be resisted. The elision is to be defended, I argue, not as an instance of (putatively defensible) wishful thinking but as a reflection a constraint on acceptable normative theories that is itself explained by a distinctive characteristic of normative concepts that sets them all apart from descriptive concepts.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 27, Richardson GS2
July 20
TITLE: From Moral Twin Earth to Pleasure in Eden
SPEAKER: Neil Sinhababu (National University of Singapore)
ABSTRACT: Many popular works of science fiction involve humans and aliens meeting for the first time and disagreeing with each other about moral questions. Unfortunately, the causal theory of reference renders such disagreements impossible, as Moral Twin Earth cases show. To account for the breadth of possible disagreement, I offer a new theory of moral concepts and how they represent reality. I offer a theory of representation based on empathy, according to which moral feelings like guilt, horror, and admiration represent their objects in virtue of shared phenomenal character. This version of the Edenic account of representation described by David Chalmers provides a new argument for ethical hedonism.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 20, Richardson GS2
July 13
TITLE: The collective ethics of flying
SPEAKER: Lisa Ellis (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Unconstrained and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions associated with air travel threaten everyone's well being. Encouraging efficiency gains and voluntary, individual rational responses (such as the purchase of carbon offsets) are the most common present-day responses to these problems. However, these cannot succeed due to the nature of human reason and the structure of the problem itself. Rather than throwing up our hands and despairing of the possibility of bringing our travel-related greenhouse gas emissions under control, we turn to a more promising solution—reframing the issue as a problem of collective action. Participation in the high-carbon air travel regime is a social convention; transition from social conventions requires coordination among players. Our moral duty, then, is to promote the collective actions that can reduce the wrong in question.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 13, Richardson GS2
June 1
TITLE: Collective mental time travel: Ontology and epistemology
SPEAKER: Kourken Michaelian (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Bringing research on collective memory together with research on individual future thought, Szpunar and Szpunar (2015) have proposed the concept of collective future thought. Individual memory and individual future thought are increasingly viewed as two forms of individual mental time travel, and we might similarly view collective memory and collective future thought as forms of collective mental time travel. But is collective mental time travel really analogous to individual mental time travel? And is collective mental time travel, like individual mental time travel, a source of knowledge of past and future events? The talk will argue for (qualified) affirmative answers to both questions.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, June 1, Richardson GS2
May 25
TITLE: Human obsolescence: Why strong AI is not the problem
SPEAKER: James Maclaurin (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Much philosophical effort has focused on understanding strong AI — what it would be like for a machine to have a mental life just like us. Some philosophical work and a great deal of discussion elsewhere has focused on the more speculative project of understanding the likelihood and possible consequences of machines becoming much smarter than humans. This phenomenon is variously known as Super-intelligence, The Singularity or the Intelligence Explosion. I argue that The Singularity and its variants are based on faulty assumptions about the nature of intelligence and that philosophy should instead focus on characterising the nature, risks, and benefits of the rapid growth of weak AI which we are already experiencing.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 25, Richardson GS2
May 18
TITLE: Embodied cognition, Propositions and the human mind/brain
SPEAKER: Grant Gillett (Otago -- Bioethics)
ABSTRACT: Embodied cognition theory takes seriously the neural structures that result in our sensori-motor coupling to a world of referents and action. As such it addresses some problems of intentionality. However it has certain weaknesses in accounting for propositional content in that the neural states engendered by sensori-motor adaptation are associational, intra-subjective, and prone to causal slippage in a way that makes them unsuited to norms of truth, communicability, argument and reason. Representations beg but do not answer the questions posed by a naturalistic and ontogenetically realistic construal of human cognition. Attempting to carve the mind/brain at its natural joints therefore leads to a construal of human cognition as resting on Triply Responsive Integrated Neuro-Cognitive Assemblies which provide useful and philosophically informed analyses of a number of different real cases of mental function such as implicit attitudes, delusions, hallucinations, the (quasi-)truth in metaphors, and negation.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 18, Richardson GS2
May 11
TITLE: Traditions of Tolerance: The Long-Run Persistence of Regional Variation in Attitudes towards Immigrants in England
SPEAKER: David Fielding (Otago -- Economics)
ABSTRACT: This paper builds on existing studies of the long-run persistence of geographical variation in tolerance towards other ethnicities. We find evidence for geographical variation in anti-immigrant sentiment in the 21st century that is correlated with patterns of immigrant settlement in the 12th and 13th centuries, despite the fact that modern immigrant groups are quite different from those in the Middle Ages. Cultural norms associated with the treatment of foreigners appear to be highly persistent over time. To some extent, Liberalism is an accident of birth.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 11, Richardson GS2
May 4
TITLE: The Pragmatic Conception of Truth and Practical Considerations
SPEAKER: Joseph Ulatowski (Waikato)
ABSTRACT: 'Pragmatism about truth' is the view in the debate on the nature of truth that the utility of a claim is both a necessary and sufficient condition for that claim to be true. In this paper, empirical methods have been employed to assess whether pragmatism about truth is operative in the ordinary non-philosopher's understanding of truth. The findings suggest that ordinary people generally agree with the claim that beliefs are useful in virtue of being true, but broadly reject the claim that beliefs are true in virtue of being useful. If pragmatism about truth is supposed to reflect something approaching a pre-theoretic folk concept, then it seems in light of the essential asymmetry derived from the collected experimental data that pragmatists about truth have failed to fully appreciate the complex nature of the ordinary person’s notion of truth.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 4, Richardson GS2
April 27
TITLE: Am I racist?
SPEAKER: Neil Levy (Oxford)
ABSTRACT: There is good (though still controversial) evidence that ordinary agents harbour implicit attitudes that are sometimes at odds with their explicit beliefs. Many white Americans, for instance, exhibit an implicit bias against black people. Assuming that they are sincere in professing non-racist beliefs, are they racist? There are three influential models of racism in the literature: doxastic, behavioural, and affective. I will consider whether such agents are racist, measured against the standard each provides. I will argue that given the best evidence of the nature of implicit attitudes, they should be assessed as largely though not exclusively non-racist against the doxastic and behavioural standard, while the affective standard delivers a more mixed verdict.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 27, Richardson GS2
April 20
TITLE: Are citizens culpable for what their states do?
SPEAKER: Holly Lawford-Smith (Sheffield)
ABSTRACT: Climate change is generally assumed to create a cooperation problem between states, and states have variously been accused of contributing to this problem by blocking international climate treaties, or making insufficient pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and so on. To be culpable for this, states must be capable of ongoing intentional action―must be at least agents, at most moral agents. In this talk, I'll focus on an interpretation of 'the state' that includes citizens, and ask whether this thing is a collective agent, and if so, what this implies for thinking about culpability for states' actions.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 20, Richardson GS2
April 13
TITLE: What’s Wrong with the Philosophy of Religion?
SPEAKER: Greg Dawes (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Despite some excellent work on particular topics, the philosophy of religion as a field is intellectually impoverished. It is narrow in its scope and flawed in its assumptions. What purports to be the philosophy of religion is (for the most part) nothing more than a philosophy of Christian theism. Theism, in turn, is pale reflection of how Christians actually think, a set of beliefs abstracted from a much broader set of practices. (It is as though philosophers of science were to study only molecular biology, while also ignoring what molecular biologists do.) What is to be done? One critic has suggested that the discipline focus on a thick description, comparison, and evaluation of reason-giving in the religions of the world. While this would be a good start, religions do more than offer reasons. A broader range of issues needs to be addressed.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 13, Richardson GS2
April 6
TITLE: Spinoza, Michael Della Rocca, and the Question of Idealism
SPEAKER: Michael LeBuffe (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Michael Della Rocca has proposed that Spinoza's commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) makes him an idealist in an unusual and modest sense: everything that exists must be available to thought. In other words, everything must have a reason, and that means that everything must be capable of being understood or thought.
This paper begins with an objection to the attribution of this sort of idealism to Spinoza. Spinoza offers an account of reasons at 1p11d2, perhaps the most important source for finding the PSR in the Ethics, on which finite things are distinct from their causes or reasons, as, for example, one billiard ball is external to another, which it moves. Any given finite thing is indeed available to thought, on Spinoza's metaphysics. However, the thought of a thing is identical to the thing, not external to it. So understood, a reason is not the sort of thing the understanding of which could be the thought of a finite thing. Although Spinoza does suggest both that all things are available to thought and also that all things have a reason, then, those appear to be two very different claims.
After presenting the objection, I respond to it on Della Rocca's behalf. An examination of some precedents to 1p11d2 will show that, despite appearances, Spinoza does not take the reasons or causes for finite things to be external to them. Rather, Della Rocca turns out to be right about the PSR in Spinoza: to understand the reason for a thing is after all just to understand the thing itself. So the thought of a thing does turn out to be the understanding of a reason.
The deeper understanding of this kind of idealism that emerges from the discussion shows, however, that this is a very weak kind of idealism indeed. As Della Rocca understands Spinoza--correctly, I think--reasons are the central notion of his metaphysics. This form of idealism suggests that for all things to have a reason just means that all things must be capable of being understood. Reasons, however, are not themselves thoughts. Instead they are what thought understands and, most frequently in Spinoza's accounts, they are corporeal. It is not clear that ideas are anything more for Spinoza than the grasping of reasons. If reasons are what matters to metaphysics, however, then what matters is not the grasping but what is grasped.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 6, Richardson GS2
March 16
TITLE: The Logic of Commanding and Permitting
SPEAKER: Hannah Clark-Younger (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Commands and permissions, like assertions, are speech acts that, when successful, genuinely change something about the world. Assertions can change which propositions the addressee believes; commands and permissions can change which obligations the addressee is under. Unlike static logics, dynamic logics can make sense of this change; they introduce dynamic operators whose purpose is to move from one model to another (where different things hold at each model). Commands are typically performed with the use of imperative sentences. Unlike declarative sentences, imperatives do not express propositions and are not truth-apt, so standard truth-preservation logics cannot make sense of them. I will outline static semantics for imperative logic, and then show how this logic can be used as a base upon which to build a dynamic logic of commands and permissions.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 16, Richardson GS2
March 9
TITLE: Are conspiracy theorists intellectually vicious?
SPEAKER: Charles Pigden (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Are conspiracy theorists epistemically vicious? Not necessarily, not always, and maybe not even usually. But it IS intellectually vicious to be a consistent conspiracy skeptic. The broad-band skeptic commits intellectual suicide whilst the restricted skeptic blinds herself to facts which, as an active citizen, she really needs to know. Both are vicious, though self-imposed blindness is better than epistemic suicide. As in other areas, so with conspiracy theories: the virtuous policy is to proportion belief to the evidence. The paper contains an extended critique of a recent paper by Quassim Cassam in in Aeon Magazine and of Sunstein and Vermeule's (2008) 'Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures'.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 9, Richardson GS2
March 2
TITLE: Observations on the trivial world
SPEAKER: Zach Weber (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Not everything is true, nor could it have been so. There is no world, possible or impossible, that makes everything true. Such a world would be trivial, an absurdity. While the trivial world does not exist, it is important for semantic and metaphysical theories that we be able to reason cogently about it -- if only to show that it does not exist. In this talk I will describe methods for `observing' absurd objects without falling in to incoherence, using some basic concepts from formal modal logic.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 2, Richardson GS2
February 24
TITLE: The generalized integration challenge in metaethics
SPEAKER: Francois Schroeter (Melbourne), Laura Schroeter (Melbourne)
ABSTRACT: The Generalized Integration Challenge (GIC) is the task of providing, for a given domain of discourse, a simultaneously acceptable metaphysics, epistemology and metasemantics and showing them to be so. In this paper, we focus on a metaethical position for which GIC seems particularly acute: many normative realists take normative properties to be (i) mind-independent and (ii) causally inert. The problem is that these metaphysical commitments seem to make normative knowledge impossible. We suggest that bringing metasemantics into play can help to resolve this puzzle. We propose an independently plausible metasemantic constraint on reference determination and show how it can provide a plausible response to (GIC) for this brand of normative realism.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, February 24, Richardson GS2