Programme seminar series (2024): abstracts
May 15
TITLE: Probability, Causality, and the Dog Bite Example
SPEAKER: Malcolm R Forster (UW-Madison)
Causes are no longer required to determine their effects, just increase their probability (under some conditions). Subjective probabilities (degrees of belief or credences) do not seem relevant here, so we need a theory of objective probability (chance). I discuss the approach of Hopf (1935) based on Poincaré’s seminal discussion of games of chance (1913). Hopf’s examples are structurally similar to the famous Dog Bite Example, which was introduced in philosophy (McDermott 1995) as (an alleged) counterexample to the transitivity of causation. The similarity may help explain the connection between probability and causation.TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, May 15, in St David F.
May 1: hosted by the Bioethics Centre and the Philosophy Programme
TITLE: The line-drawing problem is your problem too
SPEAKER: John Matthewson (Massey)
There is a well-known “line-drawing” problem for accounts of disease that are based on biological dysfunction. Such accounts are generally expected to deliver binary results: disease is absent, or it is present. However, most biological attributes come in degrees. In turn, this seems to require that we classify particular values of these attributes as functional or dysfunctional. For example, the threshold for type 2 diabetes is defined according to specific levels of HbA1c or blood glucose, even though it is clear that glucose metabolism can be more or less impaired, rather than simply impaired or not. Given this, we might suspect that such dividing lines merely reflect our interests, rather than any established biological facts or principles.The best response here may be to just acknowledge that disease definitions can rely on socially-determined criteria. Diagnostic rules have to be applied in practical settings, after all. I'm not entirely sure things are this simple, but in any case it appears that there is a separate, more fundamental line-drawing problem for these accounts of disease. If we take the biological basis of function seriously, it turns out that functions themselves may come in degrees. This leads to a line-drawing problem that can’t be set aside so easily, as it determines whether a given trait is even a candidate for dysfunction or pathology in the first place
TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, May 1, in St David F.
April 24
TITLE: Is Science Western? Yes and No
SPEAKER: Greg Dawes (Otago Philosophy)
Is Science Western? More precisely, "yes" on one level and "no" on another. Following Srđan Lelas, I argue that the practice of any science happens on four levels: the operational, the phenomenal, the theoretical, and the metatheoretical. Against those who argue that the operational level is already laden with theory, I argue that the operational level has a partial autonomy (and even a certain priority). I then argue that the operational level of science employs refined versions of epistemic practices found in all societies. It is at the theoretical and metatheoretical levels that the sciences bear the marks of their particular history, in particular of their origins in early modern Europe.TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, April 24, in St David F.
April 17
TITLE: The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume and Adam Smith
SPEAKER: Dennis Rasmussen (Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Political Philosophy Program, Syracuse)
David Hume is widely regarded as the most important philosopher ever to write in English, but during his lifetime he was attacked as “the Great Infidel” for his skeptical religious views and deemed unfit to teach the young. In contrast, Adam Smith was a revered professor of moral philosophy, and is now often hailed as the founding father of capitalism. Remarkably, the two were best friends for most of their adult lives. Dennis Rasmussen will talk about his book, The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought, which tells the fascinating story of the friendship between these towering Enlightenment thinkers.TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, April 17, in St David F.
April 10
TITLE: The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Spinoza's Ethics
SPEAKER: Michael LeBuffe (Baier Chair of Early Modern Philosophy, Otago)
Spinoza's version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) concerns existence and non-existence. While subject of the Ethics, an account that begins with God before proceeding to accounts of mind, the affects, human bondage, and its mitigation, may seem very broad, it is not unrestricted: it concerns existence. The axioms of Ethics 1, therefore, need concern existence only, and they are restricted in this way. While the coherence of central commitments of the Ethics requires that the PSR be consistent with the axioms of Ethics 1, then, the PSR is not identical with or implied by any of them. It is better understood to be a principle that, together with what Spinoza takes to be self-evident truths about existence, grounds the axioms. That is, Spinoza takes the PSR to be a reason for accepting the axioms. Outside its few explicit uses, the PSR influences the argument of the Ethics through them.TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, April 10, in St David F.
March 20
TITLE: Semantic Processing And Mental Logic
SPEAKER: Drew Khlentzos (Linguistics, Macquarie University)
The idea that human cognitive resources include a mental logic is given little credence in Psychology these days. The consensus is that sixty years of research on human reasoning has shown the Mental Logic (ML) hypothesis to be highly unlikely. Thus, the Mental Model theory of Johnson-Laird denies logic any role in reasoning, and according to one authority, the ‘New Paradigm’ in psychology of reasoning “rejects classical logic as the rulebook for good inference, replacing it with normative rules for probabilistic thinking”. Philosophers have also joined in. Discussing epistemological conceptions of analyticity, Timothy Williamson avers that: “There is little sign of anything modular that contains formal rules to subserve conscious deduction, whether conceived as part of a language module or as part of a reasoning module”.Yet this is not the picture that emerges from language acquisition studies. Absent a logic processor in the brain, young children would be unable to semantically process the logically complex sentences they manifestly can process ... flawlessly. Beginning with a class of expressions known as Negative Polarity Items, I present empirical evidence supporting this claim. I then turn to sceptical philosophical arguments [due to McGee, Gibbard, Johnson-Laird, Williamson] that could be used to undermine the ML hypothesis.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, March 20, in St David F.
March 13
TITLE: Big Data, Free Riding, and Fair Play
SPEAKER: Jan Mihal (Law, Otago)
Does the principle of fair play – one of the most popular and promising means of accounting for political obligation and a duty to obey the law – also generate a duty to share personal data with big data systems? In (overly) simple terms, the principle of fair play holds that when an individual benefits from a collective practice, they have a duty to contribute to that practice. To forgo contributing would be to free ride and free riding is wrong. It follows that, where a collective practice of providing data to a big data system exists and benefits x, x has a duty to likewise provide data. If x forgoes contributing data, x free rides and free riding is wrong.I discuss a variety of questions that arise in fleshing out this argument, including around what counts as a collective practice, what counts as a (sufficient) benefit, and whether consent or acceptance have any role to play here. These discussions raise unexpected possibilities, including the existence of (quasi-)political obligations owed to private corporations (if they facilitate a collective practice of sufficient benefit) and a refocus away from privacy and transparency to other concerns in the regulation of big data industries.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, March 13, in St David F.
March 6
TITLE: Rethinking the computer
SPEAKER: Fernando Cano-Jorge (postdoctoral fellow, Otago Philosophy)
Logicians in the 30s, like Church and Turing, proposed the first mathematical models of computation. Their ideas were immediately adopted and actual computing machines were developed. The technology used in digital computers heavily relies on the principles of classical logic. In particular, the electronic circuits which perform all the operations of a computer are governed by bivalent, truth-functional operations performed by logic gates. Though technology has advanced enormously ever since, the computers we use every day still follow classical logic when processing information. However, non-classical logics have bloomed in the past decades, so one may ask whether computers can work with a non-classical logic. In this talk I introduce a way to implement non-classical logic gates and circuits. This is done by following the principles of Dunn semantics, which can be used to present several non-classical logics. I suggest that by abandoning classical logic we can reexplore the nature and limits of computation.TIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, March 6, in St David F.
February 28
TITLE: Can Truth Subvert the Inference-Barriers? A Reply to Mark Nelson
SPEAKER: Charles Pigden (Otago Philosophy)
I rescue No-Ought-From-Is from Prior’s counterexamples by reformulating it as the thesis that you can’t get a non-vacuous Ought from an Is. This is an instance of the inference-barrier thesis that in a logical valid argument you can’t get anything non-vacuous out that you have not put in – a thesis I claim to have proved. But (replies Nelson) my proof presupposes that we are working in a language that does not include the truth-predicate. Once we help ourselves to truth (so he claims) we can construct logically valid arguments from non-moral premises to moral conclusions. I reply that his counterexamples to No-Non-Vacuous-Ought-From-Is are materially but not logically valid. Taking my cue from Ramsey and Buridan I develop a formal theory of truth that relies on the notion of representing that. It then becomes clear that ‘ought’ must be used as well as mentioned in the premises if Nelson is to derive his moral conclusion with the aid of logic alone. You can’t use truth to break down the barrier between non-X premises and substantively X-conclusionsTIME AND LOCATION: 11am–12.30pm, Wednesday, February 28, in Burns 4.