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Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund): From Values to Probabilities
Tuesday 10th June
Find out more »Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard): The Value of Fallibilism
Abstract: Fallibilism is a concession to the permanent possibility of error. As a stance, it teeters between skepticism and dogmatism. 'I know but I might be wrong' seems to give assurance with one breath and take it away with the next. 'I know even though I might be wrong' seems to combine intellectual arrogance with mock modesty. I argue that…
Find out more »Bryan Roberts (LSE): On the meaning of time reversal
Abstract: Time reversal is a 20th century concept that led to major advances in the foundations of physics, as well as the philosophical analysis of the direction of time. But its meaning is far from obvious. In part this is because "reversing time" is not a transformation that anyone can operationally carry out. In this talk, I discuss the variety…
Find out more »Peter Achinstein (Johns Hopkins): Who needs proof: James Clerk Maxwell on Scientific method
Abstract: Isaac Newton famously claimed that hypotheses, i.e., unproved propositions, have no place in "experimental philosophy." James Clerk Maxwell disagreed and proposed three methods that can legitimately be employed when a scientist lacks proof for a theory, or even a theory to be proved. What are these methods, and are they legitimate?
Find out more »David Liggins (Manchester): Truth without truths
Abstract: I introduce a new account of truth, called ‘alethic nihilism’. Alethic nihilism is modelled on sceptical theories in other areas, such as the nominalist view that there are no abstract objects, and the moral nihilist view that nothing is objectively prescribed. The most striking part of alethic nihilism is its claim that nothing is true. So, according to alethic…
Find out more »Sherri Roush (KCL): Knowledge of our own Beliefs
Abstract: I argue that knowledge of our own beliefs is not required by probabilistic coherence, because, contrary to long-standing consensus, failure to be confident or accurate about one's degrees of belief need not make one vulnerable to sure loss. I discuss the implications of this, e.g., for decision-making about implicit bias.
Find out more »Heather Dyke (LSE): “On Methodology in the Metaphysics of Time”
Abstract: I examine some of the methodologies employed in recent and contemporary work in the metaphysics of time, and argue that we cannot expect them to be fruitful in helping us discover the fundamental nature of time. The strategies I focus on are: the burden-of-proof strategy, the appeal to common sense intuitions, and the appeal to the nature of ordinary…
Find out more »Jonathan Birch (LSE): “Shared Know How”
Abstract: Know how is distinguished from other epistemic states by its special role in basic intentional action. I argue that we can characterize a shared epistemic state, 'shared know how’, that plays an analogous role in basic intentional joint action. This leads to the question: how does shared know how relate to individual know how? Does the former reduce to the latter, or…
Find out more »Paulina Sliwa (Cambridge): “Responding to Wrongdoing”
Abstract: When we engage in moral criticism, it matters to us what the other party did intentionally. We blame others for their wrong actions by saying that they "did it on purpose" or that they "knew exactly what they were doing". We say that we didn't mean to harm, didn't intend to offend, or didn't know which consequences our action…
Find out more »Cecile Fabre (Oxford): “Third-Party Economic Sanctions”
Abstract: Economic sanctions have become a staple of foreign policy. The relatively scant philosophical literature on the topic tends to focus on three questions, and tackles one kind of cases. It focuses on the question of whether just war theory provides a useful normative framework for assessing the morality of sanctions; whether sanctions are effective; and whether the harms which…
Find out more »Susanne Burri (LSE): “How Death is Bad for the Person Who Dies”
Abstract: It is uncontroversial that a person's death can be a terrible misfortune for other people. To lose someone you love can be an immensely painful and disruptive experience. But is there also a sense in which death can be bad for the person who dies? Most people intuitively think so. In the philosophical literature, the currently most favoured explanation of…
Find out more »Jan Sprenger (Tilburg): “Two Impossibility Results for Popperian Corroboration”
According to influential accounts of scientific method, e.g., critical rationalism, scientific knowledge grows by repeatedly testing our best hypotheses. But despite the popularity of hypothesis tests in scientific inference, especially in statistics, their philosophical foundations are shaky…
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Find out more »Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech & LSE): “The Statistical Replication Crisis: Paradoxes and Scapegoats”
Mounting failures of replication in the social and biological sciences give a practical spin to statistical foundations in the form of the question: How can we attain reliability when Big Data methods make illicit cherry-picking and significance seeking so easy? … #PopperSeminar
Find out more »Niko Kolodny (Berkeley): “The Problem of the Political” (CANCELLED)
It is widely thought that some relation or treatment, distinctive of “the political” bears a special burden of justification. For instance, "the state" may “coerce" only to prevent "harm to others", or only if it has a “public” justification. If there is anything to this thought, I suggest, it has less to do with liberty and more to do with equality than is often acknowledged. #PopperSeminar
Find out more »Cailin O’Connor (UC Irvine): “Games and Kinds”
In response to those who argue for "property cluster" views of natural kinds, Cailin O'Connor will use evolutionary models of sim-maxgames to assess the claim that linguistic terms will appropriately track sets of objects that cluster in property spaces.
Find out more »Miklós Rédei (LSE): “Properties of Bayesian learning based on conditional expectation as a conditioning device”
This talk investigates the general properties of general Bayesian learning, where "general Bayesian learning'' means inferring a probability measure from another that is regarded as (uncertain) evidence, and where the inference is conditionalizing the evidence using the conditional expectation determined by a reference probability measure representing the background subjective degrees of belief (prior) of a Bayesian Agent performing the inference.
Find out more »Justin Sytsma (Victoria University of Wellington): “Are religious philosophers less analytic?”
Some researchers in philosophy of religion have charged that the sub-discipline exhibits a number of features of poor health, prominently including that "partisanship is so entrenched that most philosophers of religion, instead of being alarmed by it, just take it for granted". But while these studies indicate that there is a correlation between religious belief and judgments about natural theological arguments, they do not establish that causation runs from belief to judgment as has been claimed. In this paper I offer an alternative explanation, suggesting that thinking style is a plausible common cause.
Find out more »Campbell Brown (LSE): “Priority vs. Equality: What’s the Difference?”
Prioritarianism is often considered a preferable alternative to egalitarianism. However, seeing exactly what distinguishes these two views can be difficult. Prioritarianism says it is better to benefit the worse off (other things being equal). Egalitarianism says it is better to reduce inequality (other things being equal). But by benefiting the worse off we narrow the gap between them and the better off, thereby reducing inequality. The two views thus seem to go hand in hand. So what's the difference? Parfit illustrates this with an analogy. People at lower altitudes can breath more easily than those at higher altitudes, but the ease with which a person breathes depends only on her own altitude, not that of anyone else. Similarly, on prioritarianism, benefiting people at lower levels of well-being matters more than benefiting those at higher levels, but the extent to which benefiting a person matters depends only on her own well-being level, not that of anyone else. Egalitarianism disagrees: benefiting a person at a given level matters more when others are at a higher level; that is, when doing so has the effect of reducing inequality. One aim of this paper is to spell out the analogy more precisely. I argue that one natural way of doing this commits the prioritarian to a view about the betterness of uncertain prospects or lotteries, a view sometimes called 'ex post prioritarianism'. This view faces significant objections. It violates 'ex ante' versions of two plausible principles, the Pigou-Dalton Principle and the Pareto Principle. A second aim is to consider some responses to these objections.
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