Programme seminar series (2019): abstracts
October 9
TITLE: Locke's Sovereign
SPEAKER: Anthony Gambrell (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Against a liberal interpretative framework, I maintain John Locke does espouse a theory of sovereignty, which is not undermined by Locke’s conception of a separation of governmental powers and a right of resistance. Locke’s sovereign, however, is not a natural person but a political entity distinct from individuals, the people, and government. The political entity, I claim, is a union of original contractors. The union constitutes the sovereign power of the state, providing a political justification of political power, including the power of an absolute monarch.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, October 9, Richardson GS2
October 2
TITLE: More of a Cause
SPEAKER: Cei Maslen (Victoria U of Wellington)
ABSTRACT: When is one event “more of a cause” than another? In this talk I discuss a puzzle about causation that has had very little discussion thus far – the puzzle of degrees of causal contribution. This is the puzzle of how to compare causal contributions, or how to measure causal work. One application for this is to fairly dividing up costs when damages are caused by a number of agents. However, there seem to be a wide variety of other possible applications. In this talk I examine one approach to defining degree of causal contribution, and also look at some side questions such as whether we want to capture the notion that some events are “doubly caused”.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, October 2, Richardson GS2
September 25
TITLE: Ecumenical Expressivism and the Frege-Geach Problem
SPEAKER: Alex Miller (Otago)
ABSTRACT: In a series of recent papers (most notably "Ecumenical Expressivism: Finessing Frege", Ethics (2006)) and monograph Impassioned Belief (OUP 2014), Michael Ridge develops a view according to which moral judgements can be regarded as expressing both beliefs and desire-like attitudes, and he argues that this "Ecumenical Expressivist" view yields a relatively straightforward solution to the Frege-Geach problem that is the traditional bugbear of expressivist and non-cognitivist accounts of moral judgement. In this paper I argue that Ecumenical Expressivism does not solve the Frege-Geach Problem.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 25, Richardson GS2
September 18
TITLE: Sectoral responsibility for climate justice: How much of the global carbon budget should we spend on international air travel?
SPEAKER: Lisa Ellis (Otago)
ABSTRACT: International high-carbon air transport will consume an increasing portion of the global carbon budget; already it consumes a disproportionate share, especially on a per capita basis, since most human beings do not participate in the international air transport regime. As is well understood, the costs of adaptation to climate change fall heavily on the least well off among us, while the benefits of high-carbon air transport are confined mostly though not exclusively to the relatively well off. The present high-carbon transport regime thus represents a transfer of climate risk from the most to the least advantaged human beings. Does this state of affairs necessarily offend climate justice? Could humanity even hypothetically choose to put all its emissions eggs in the international air transport basket? If so, what principles and institutions would support such a decision? If not, how can we make decisions about the sectoral distribution of the global carbon budget in a principled way?
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 18, Richardson GS2
September 11
TITLE: Why Work?
SPEAKER: James Maclaurin (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Predictions about the future of work vary greatly — from the grim pronouncements of Rifkin’s The End of Work, to the guarded techno-optimism of Brynjolfsson and McAffee’s The Second Machine Age, to the bring-it-on attitude of Salmon’s recent New Zealand-focussed Jobs, Robots and Us. All agree that the nature, and perhaps the availability of work will change radically in coming decades. If we are to adapt successfully, we must first understand the value of work. This talk contrasts current fears about loss of work with Bertrand Russell’s famous claim that far too much work is done in the world — immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 11, Richardson GS2
September 4
TITLE: Ambition, Love, and Happiness
SPEAKER: Glen Pettigrove (Glasgow)
ABSTRACT: It is common in philosophical discussions of well-being to find reference made to romances and relationships as well as to aspirations and achievements. Nor is there anything surprising about these items featuring in such discussions. The interests of love, on the one hand, and ambition, on the other, play an important part in the stories of our lives and often feature in both our best and worst moments. Much less common, however, are systematic discussions of the relationship between love and ambition in a happy life. I shall explore this relationship, taking as my point of departure Adam Smith’s remark that ‘Love is commonly succeeded by ambition; but ambition is hardly ever succeeded by love’ (TMS I.iii.2.7).
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, September 4, Richardson GS2
August 21
TITLE: Big Data, Transparency, and Explainability
SPEAKER: Tim Dare (Auckland)
ABSTRACT: There is near consensus in the emerging field of data ethics that processes and systems must be transparent and explainable to a wide range of stakeholders. A process or system is transparent and explainable if it is possible to discover and explain how and why a system made a particular decision. Such systems are to be contrasted with those that are ‘black-boxes’, which process data in ways which cannot be understood or explained to those they effect. I will talk about why transparency and explainability have become central to data ethics, and suggest that there are reasons to question that centrality. We should be more concerned with reliability and with how automated systems compare, ethically, with alternative ways of doing the tasks which might be done by automated systems.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 21, Richardson GS2
August 14
TITLE: Peculiarity and Narrative in History
SPEAKER: Adrian Currie (Exeter)
ABSTRACT: The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution was a critical event shaping the modern world, seeing radiations in mammals, squamate lizards, snakes, birds and (maybe) dinosaurs, as well as the emergence of flowering plants (angiosperms) and their accompanying menagerie of pollinating insects. The revolution is at least in part thought to be related to the contemporaneous final breakup of Pangea into smaller continents, and the new angiosperm-insect alliance is also cited as driving radiations in other lineages. It is often thought that historical explanation is in some sense narrative explanation, or at least that history is particularly suited to narrative forms. For instance: perhaps shifting from the relatively homogenous Pangea to the more heterogeneous modern continents led to a wider variety of habitats with more haphazardly distributed taxa, thus opening the door to diversification in the mid-Cretaceous. This connection between narrative and history has led some to ask whether there is some logic or essential property to narratives, others to draw links between the literary and the historical, and others to question whether narrative structures are discovered or constructed. I have a hunch about what makes narratives powerful answers to historical questions, which emerges from a hunch I have about why history matters for knowledge. I’ll draw on recent philosophical work on contingency to construct a notion of peculiarity. I’ll suggest that narratives are particularly well suited to understanding peculiarity. Because history is often peculiar, historians often adopt narrative strategies to explain it.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 14, Richardson GS2
August 7
TITLE: Newton’s Metaphysics in Practice
SPEAKER: Kirsten Walsh (Exeter)
ABSTRACT: In his methodological statements, Newton explicitly eschewed metaphysical speculation, and yet metaphysical speculation can be found in all of his published work (and much of his unpublished work). Newton’s commentators thus face a dilemma: they can take Newton’s metaphysical speculations seriously, but this involves downplaying the sincerity of his methodological claims; or they can take his methodological claims seriously, and downplay the significance of his metaphysical speculations. In this paper, I offer a solution to the dilemma: study Newton’s metaphysics in practice. That is, focus not just on the content of the metaphysics, but on how it is discussed and developed, and what roles it plays in Newton’s work. Focusing on Newton’s optical metaphysics in practice, I demonstrate that this approach yields two important insights. Firstly, metaphysics isn’t part of the content of Newton’s optical theories, but rather provides an instrument for investigating optical phenomena. Secondly, the fundamental distinction in Newton’s optical work isn’t between physics and metaphysics, but between theories and hypotheses. Recognising these features of Newton’s work is revelatory, both of Newton’s methodology and of the way he builds his metaphysics.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, August 7, Richardson GS2
July 24
TITLE: How Predictive Brains Distinguish Appearance from Reality
SPEAKER: Malcolm Forster (Fudan; UW Madison)
ABSTRACT: The new ‘predictive’ paradigm in brain research says roughly that the brain is constantly ‘trying’ to predict new sensory inputs from a model of reality built from past experience. The problem is that sensory inputs always depend on the viewpoint from which objects are viewed. To distinguish appearance and reality, sensory systems must extract information about the intrinsic properties of the objects viewed (to achieve perceptual constancies). The goal of this talk is to explain why sensory systems have to be predictive in order to achieve this.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 24, Richardson GS2
July 17
TITLE: Science, Communication and Epistemic Paternalism
SPEAKER: Fabien Medvecky (Otago, Science Communication)
ABSTRACT: Epistemic paternalism (EP), the intentional interfering in another's knowing for their epistemic improvement, is generally viewed with suspicion, and when it is defended, the focus turns to defending EP 'in certain circumstances', while still holding the view that, all things being equal, EP is less than desirable. EP is a two-step dance. One step is a '(non-consultative) interference' move, and the other is an 'intentionality (of epistemic improvement)' move. In this paper, I will argue that the interference move of EP is much more pervasive than we might like to admit, and it is, in fact, inevitable in much of our testimonial practice. Following from that, I will make the case that therefore the intentionality move is where the work really happens for EP, and that interfering without intentionality raises serious moral questions about our testimonial practice. I will conclude that it is not EP that we ought to be suspicious about, but rather, we should be suspicious of testimonial practice that fails to consider EP. I draw on cases and examples from the scholarship and practice of science communication as a way of grounding this debate in real world practice.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 17, Richardson GS2
July 10
TITLE: Wittgenstein on Going On
SPEAKER: Hannah Ginsborg (Berkeley)
ABSTRACT: Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations feature several passages in which people are presented with examples of number sequences or other patterns, and "go on" from them in ways that lead us to say that they have grasped a rule. The most famous is at Philosophical Investigations §185, where a pupil who has been continuing the series 0,2,4,6,8... goes on after 1000 by writing "1000, 1004, 1008." I argue that these passages illustrate Wittgenstein's commitment to a primitive kind of normativity which is a precondition of, rather than presupposing, grasp of a rule. Consciousness of this kind of normativity is involved in simple prelinguistic behaviours as well as in cases requiring knowledge of language or of simple arithmetic, and we can appeal to it in order to make sense of how grasp of rules, and of the meaning of linguistic expressions, is possible. I suggest that this reading of the passages allows us to see Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations as more plausible than they might seem on competing interpretations.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, July 10, Richardson GS2
May 29
TITLE: Did Tarski Refute Frege?
SPEAKER: Karen Green (Melbourne)
ABSTRACT: Frege claimed that truth is sui generis and indefinable. Tarski provided a definition of the semantic concept of truth. Thus it would seem that Tarski refuted Frege. However, matters are not so simple. It is argued that Tarski’s definition of semantic truth presupposes a more fundamental concept, ontic truth, and this is the concept that Frege claimed to be indefinable. So Tarski did not refute Frege. The distinction between semantic and ontic truth is clarified through some historical examples, and it is argued that a number of philosophically contentious disputes, such as that between realism and Dummettian anti-realism, are not very substantive, but result from their proponents not thoroughly distinguishing between the two closely connected ways of thinking about truth.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 29, Richardson GS2
May 22
TITLE: Adaptation or pathology? A look at contemporary evolutionary accounts of human suicide
SPEAKER: Jesse Bering (Otago, Science Communication)
ABSTRACT: In this presentation, I examine whether human suicide is best conceptualized as a maladaptive (pathological) anomaly or as an evolved behavioral strategy (a psychological adaptation). The talk showcases the work of biologist Denys deCatanzaro, who in 1981 formulated the controversial idea that human suicide is adaptive. deCatanzaro argued that when one has reached a sexual dead-end as well as become a costly burden to one’s biological kin (who carry a more promising regiment of the individual’s genes), killing oneself can serve, paradoxically, to increase overall genetic success by freeing up these relatives’ reproductive opportunities. If evolution works by the cumulative long game of blind genetic replication, then suicide isn’t always a bad reproductive bet. That doesn’t make it any less tragic for those involved, of course. Other evolutionary theories of suicide are considered alongside this model, including arguments positing that most people who kill themselves don’t actually want to die, but are instead desperate to alter the social conditions under which they live. And, at least at a subconscious level, they’ve underestimated the lethality of their dangerous bluff.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 22, Richardson GS2
May 15
TITLE: Explaining Manifest Time: What Language Can't Tell Us About Time
SPEAKER: Heather Dyke (Otago)
ABSTRACT: In a recent book, What Makes Time Special? (OUP, 2018), Craig Callender presents what he takes to be the chief problem in the philosophy of time: that of reconciling manifest and scientific representations of time. Before developing his distinctive new approach, he argues that attempts to resolve this problem in the latter part of the twentieth century went seriously awry, becoming fixated, first on questions of temporal language and meaning, and then on questions of existence. I take up his attack on the linguistic approach in the philosophy of time. I examine the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and argue that, even though it has been roundly rejected, it continued to influence the linguistic style of metaphysics carried out in the philosophy of time. I appeal to considerations from linguistics and from the evolved nature of natural language to argue against the linguistic approach in the philosophy of time as a means of investigating the nature of temporal reality.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 15, Richardson GS2
May 8
TITLE: Models of the Mind: Getting Over Post-Industrial Models
SPEAKER: Grant Gillett (Otago Bioethics)
ABSTRACT: Neural network theory and complexity based analyses suggest that the post-industrial neuroscience of the 19th and 20th Centuries is up for revision in favour of a model apt for contemporary neural network theory that can usefully be linked to Aristotle and John Hughlings-Jackson and allows for autopoiesis or top-down self-formation under the shaping influences of an ongoing and directed environmental “fit”. That model underpins a type of neuroethics that is quite radical and defies some old binaries hallowed in philosophical analyses.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 8, Richardson GS2
May 1
TITLE: Spinoza: Citizen and State
SPEAKER: Mike LeBuffe (Otago)
ABSTRACT: In his Political Treatise,Spinoza repeatedly compares states to human beings. Here, I defend an interpretation of the analogy. I present a progressively more detailed account of Spinoza's views about the nature of the human beings in the Ethics and show at each step how those views inform the account of states in the Political Treatise. The most important implications of the analogy are: (1) states probably have their own interests; (2) if states have interests, their citizens nevertheless also have interests; and (3) if states have interests, those interests correlate only loosely with the interests of their citizens.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, May 1, Richardson GS2
April 17
TITLE: On Richard Routley's "Ultralogic as Universal?" program, 40 years later
SPEAKER: Zach Weber (Otago)
ABSTRACT: Richard Routley/Sylvan was an iconoclastic 20th century Australasian philosopher who was instrumental in starting major schools of: logic (especially paraconsistent and relevant logic), metaphysics (especially neo-Meinongian ontology), and ethics (especially deep ecology). "Philosophers fiddle while the world begins to burn," he wrote, arguing that we are not now thinking well about big problems -- but that we can and must do better. In the late 1970s he circulated the essay "Ultralogic as universal?" in which he presents a visionary program in non-classical logic that has exerted an important influence on research in Australasia and beyond for two generations. In this talk, looking back and going forward, I will critically re-evaluate Routley/Sylvan's project 40 years on, addressing the following questions. What are the arguments for a "universal ultralogic"? Are these arguments any good? How has the project fared? And if, as some have suggested, Ultralogic version 1.0 has failed, what are the prospects for an Ultralogic 2.0 today?
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 17, Richardson GS2
April 10
TITLE: The Autonomy of Science: Historical Reflections
SPEAKER: Greg Dawes (Otago)
ABSTRACT: One of the characteristics of modern thought is what Ernest Gellner calls 'the diplomatic immunity of cognition'. 'Greater and greater expanses of truth', he writes, have gained 'an autonomy from the social, moral and political obligations ... of society'. One aspect of this development is the autonomy of science. This paper will (a) examine what this autonomy entails by distinguishing scientific values from moral and aesthetic ones and (b) trace its roots to the philosophy of Aristotle and its role in the late medieval universities.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 10, Richardson GS2
April 3
TITLE: Freedom, Reason and a Quantifier-Shift Fallacy: Kant’s Attempt to Fend Off the Error Theory in the Groundwork
SPEAKER: Charles Pigden (Otago)
ABSTRACT: The central argument of Kant’s Groundwork can be construed as a response to a problem that arises out of the dialectic between the British sentimentalists and their rationalist opponents. The problem is that given a supposed conceptual truth about the nature of the moral facts (to which both the British rationalists the later ‘critical’ Kant subscribed) they are all menaced by the error theory unless they can show that human beings (and rational agents generally) can be motivated to do the right thing on the basis of reason alone. The thesis is that the basic moral facts, if any, would have to be both accessible to reason and necessarily (but defeasibly) motivating to any conceivable rational agent whatever, in virtue of that agent’s rationality. The problems is how to vindicate the existence of such facts against the Slavery of Reason Thesis without resorting to brute necessities. My claim is that Kant’s ingenious attempt to do so fails because of a quantifier-shift fallacy.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, April 3, Richardson GS2
March 27
TITLE: Ralph Cudworth (1617–88) on the Self and Free Will
SPEAKER: Jacqui Broad (Monash)
ABSTRACT: Thus far in the literature, there have been two interpretations of the Cambridge-Platonist Ralph Cudworth’s conception of the self. The first has been called an ‘ontological’ conception: a notion of the self as an immaterial substance or single subsistent entity, not unlike Descartes’ idea of the self as a wholly thinking thing (Thiel 1998, 2011). The second is what might be called a ‘proto-Lockean’ conception: a notion of the self as consisting in consciousness alone, or in an especially high-level of self-consciousness—a lucid reflexive self-awareness (Pécharman 2014). In this paper, I propose a new interpretation, a mid-way position between these two alternatives: a moral-theological conception of the self that includes aspects of the traditional Cartesian concept, but also anticipates the Lockean notion of a continuous chain of conscious states. To ground my reading, I draw primarily on Cudworth’s Treatise of Freewill and his several unpublished manuscripts on freedom and necessity. I argue that my interpretation has the advantage of meeting Cudworth’s necessary requirements for any human recipient of divine justice: responsibility, freedom, and personal identity. I conclude that, by approaching Cudworth in light of his key moral-theological objectives, we can uncover a conception of the self that is remarkable for its subtlety and modernity.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 27, Richardson GS2
March 13
TITLE: Spinoza's Faith
SPEAKER: Martin Lin (Rutgers)
ABSTRACT: Despite his widespread reputation as an atheist, Spinoza believed in something he called “true religion” the practice of which was important to social harmony, political stability and personal happiness. Adherence to this religion requires what Spinoza calls “faith.” Spinoza defines faith as belief that is necessary to the obedient practice of justice and loving-kindness but it has been alleged that, for Spinoza, a properly philosophical conception of God is incompatible with seeing God as a lawgiver and thus as issuing commandments that can be obeyed. Since faith is believing those things that are necessary for obedience to God, the philosopher cannot have faith. This, moreover, appears to contradict Spinoza’s claim that philosophy and theology are independent and cannot come into conflict. I argue, on the contrary, that Spinoza’s highly politicized understanding of obedience to God avoids this objection.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 13, Richardson GS2
March 6
TITLE: The Ethics of Appearance Discrimination
SPEAKER: Andrew Mason (Warwick)
ABSTRACT: People are often treated differently as a result of their appearance. But when do these differences in treatment constitute unjust discrimination? This issue is important for different reasons. First, those who are regarded as good-looking earn higher incomes on average than those who are regarded as visually unattractive. Could it be that those with good looks are the beneficiaries of unjust discrimination when appointments are made for jobs? Second, appearance norms are often gender-specific and sometimes racially-biased. As a result, discrimination on the basis of appearance, when it rewards those who comply with these norms, may involve, or reinforce the effects of, unjust sexual discrimination and racial discrimination.
In order to cast light on the issue of when appearance discrimination is unjust, I describe paradigm cases of unjust racial discrimination and argue by analogy from them. But the analogy between racial discrimination and appearance discrimination has its limits. Indeed it might seem that a crucial difference between race and appearance is that appearance is, to varying degrees, a matter of choice whereas race is a given. Although I argue that this does not make as much difference as might initially be thought, it does have a bearing on the permissibility of appearance discrimination.
TIME AND LOCATION: 11:00-12:30, March 6, Richardson GS2
March 1
TITLE: Neurointerventions and Agency
SPEAKER: Adina Roskies (Dartmouth)
ABSTRACT: Novel ways to intervene on brain function raise questions about agency and responsibility. Here, I discuss whether direct brain interventions, and in particular, deep brain stimulation, pose a threat to agency in individual cases, or to our general conceptualization of what it is to be a responsible agent. While I argue that these interventions do not constitute a global challenge to our concept of agency, they do have the potential to diminish agency in individuals. I propose that our theoretical understanding of agency and our therapeutic approaches could be improved with a more nuanced, multidimensional view of agency, and sketch out an approach for developing such a view.
TIME AND LOCATION: Please note the seminar will take place on Friday March 1, 3.30pm, in Richardson GS2 (rather than our usual session of Wednesday 11am in RGS2).