Abstracts
Keynotes
L. A. Paul (Yale): The Paradox of Empathy
A commitment to truth requires that you are open to receiving new evidence even if that evidence contradicts your current beliefs. You should be open to changing your mind. However, this truism gives rise to the paradox of empathy. The paradox arises with the possibility of mental corruption through transformative change, and has consequences for how we should understand tolerance, disagreement, and the ability to have an open mind. I close with a discussion of how understanding this paradox provides a new explanation for a certain kind of standoff between the believer and the skeptic with regard to religious belief.
Tim Crane (CEU): Psychologism, Behaviourism and the Connection Between Intentionality and Consciousness
In his Grundlagen (1884), Frege says that we should ‘always separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective’. I claim that Analytic philosophy of mind has ignored this advice, in its attempt to understand psychological phenomena wholly or partly in logical (or semantic) terms. In this talk, I will consider what happens if we take Frege’s advice seriously, in connection with the relationship between intentionality and consciousness. At the heart of the analytic philosophy of intentionality is what I call the propositional attitude project. I claim that the propositional attitude project, despite being widely accepted, is inadequate in its own terms — because of the phenomenon of non-propositional intentionality — and also inadequate as the basis for linking consciousness and intentionality. I conjecture that in the background to the resistance to a satisfactory intentionalist explanation of consciousness is a conception of consciousness which derives from behaviourism. If we are to understand the connection between intentionality and consciousness, we must give up both the propositional attitude project and the behaviourist conception of consciousness.
Student speakers
Sandra Lindblom (Stockholm University): The Epistemic Humility in Lady Mary Shepherd’s Theory of Causality: Exploring its Kantian Origin
In the 1827 treatise Essays on the Perception of an External Universe, Lady Mary Shepherd constructs a novel justification for our belief in the mind-independent existence of an external world on the basis of her anti-Humean account of causality. In Shepherd’s argument for the existence of a mind-independent external world is also a hitherto neglected case for an epistemic humility towards the possibility to acquire knowledge of essences. In this paper, I present an interpretation of how Shepherd uses her anti-Humean account of causality to defend a sophisticated conception of epistemic humility. In addition, I show how Shepherd’s epistemic humility constitutes an original account of our knowledge of the external world that insightfully engages with and surpasses problems faced by his epistemologically humble predecessors, Kant.
Paul Schilling (Yale): The Omnipresence of Truth
Frege noted that ‘we cannot recognize a property of a thing without at the same time finding the thought that this thing has this property to be true. So with every property of a thing is conjoined a property of thought, namely that of truth’ (‘The Thought’). I call this idea the thesis of the Omnipresence of Truth (OT). As it stands, OT is open to different interpretations and invites several questions: is truth—hence OT—primarily a feature of thoughts understood as acts (or states),or rather of thoughts understood as abstract contents? is the thought that p the same as or different from the thought that it is true that p? is the act of judging that p the same as or different from the act of judging that it is true that p ? I present an explication of OT which is rather different from Frege’s take on the idea. My account is based on the idea that truth is primarily a property of acts of judgment and assertion, conceived as token-reflexive acts which affirm their own truth. According to this picture, truth is already ‘implicit’ in the assertion that p,and made ‘explicit’ by affirming that it is true that p.
Zoe Walker (Cambridge): A Sensibility of Humour
This paper concerns the philosophy of humour. My focus is on cases where our ethical and aesthetic judgements about jokes (and humour more broadly) come apart, so that we might find a joke objectionable (sexist, racist, homophobic) yet still find it funny. I am interested in thinking about how this divergence in judgements comes about, and how we might go about resolving it.
In section I, I consider the current literature on the ethical criticism of humour. I consider three theories: the ‘attitudinal endorsement’ view, the ‘merited-response’ view, and the ‘effects-mediated responsibility’ view. I argue that the first two views do not allow for the phenomenon of judgement divergence, and that where they go wrong is in over-intellectualising the joke-hearing experience. I argue that the third view is more convincing, yet it leaves us with some unanswered questions about how to shape our aesthetic judgements about jokes, and what the responsibility of the hearer is for doing so.
In section II, I tentatively propose a new approach to the problem, that takes the idea of a ‘sense’ of humour seriously, and treats humour as a matter of taste or a sensibility that is shaped by habituation. I support this position using an analogy with erotic taste, drawing on Anne Eaton’s discussion of antiporn feminism’s neglect of the role of erotic taste in sustaining sexism. I suggest that similarly, the ethical criticism of humour has neglected the role of taste in jokes, and that paying more attention to it will shed light on how we can bring our aesthetic judgements about jokes in line with our ethical ones, and what responsibility we have to do so.
Nikhil Mahant (CEU): The Syntactic Complexity of Proper Names
The dominant semantic account of proper names – the Millian view – takes proper names to be syntactically and semantically simple. Syntactically simple, because even though many names contain multiple words (e.g., “Joseph Robinette Biden Junior”, “Westminster Abbey” etc.) the Millian view treats proper names as a single syntactic unit – a simple orthographic or phonetic tag. Semantically simple, because on the Millian view the only linguistic function of a proper name is to stand for its referent.
However, there are many definite noun phrases (NPs) in English (e.g., “The Nile” and “A Midsummer Night's Dream”) and other languages that perform the linguistic function of proper names yet are syntactically analysable into a determiner and a nominal component. This fact has seldom managed to capture the attention of semantic theorists; and on the few occasions when it has, such definite NPs are either assimilated into proper names and treated as syntactically simple (e.g., Marcus, 1961) or thought to be “hybrid” expressions which resist inclusion into the category of proper names (Rabern, 2015).
This paper argues that such definite NPs are what they seem – syntactically complex proper names. It argues that the syntactic complexity of such NPs is not merely apparent and responds to objections levelled against their assimilation into proper names. It also highlights the semantic consequences of the syntactic complexity of proper names: to accommodate syntactically complex names, the Millian view will need to make some compromises. Such compromises, however, make Millianism less attractive than the competing views that treat names syntactically as common nouns and assign them the semantic value of a predicate.
Joseph Adams (Nottingham): The Knowledge Argument and the Wishful Thinking Problem
Some philosophers, such as David Lewis and Michael Tye, have replied to the Knowledge Argument against physicalism by denying that Mary acquires propositional knowledge upon seeing red for the first time. Instead, these ‘non-propositionalist’ physicalists say, Mary merely acquires a set of abilities relating to red-experiences, or ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ of such experiences.
In this paper, I argue that these non-propositionalist replies are undermined by a problem analogous to one that has received considerable recent attention in metaethics—the Wishful-Thinking Problem for moral non-cognitivism. Cian Dorr shows that non-cognitivists—having claimed that the acceptance of a moral judgement is a desire-like mental state—are unable to explain how it can be rational to make inferences from moral judgements. For if non-cognitivism is true, then to make an inference from a moral judgement is to reason from an apparently desire-like mental state to a belief state. This kind of desire-to-belief reasoning is analogous to wishful thinking, and is irrational. But it is intuitively obvious that some inferences from moral judgements are rational.
Physicalist non-propositionalists seem similarly unable to explain how it can be rational to make inferences from phenomenal judgements. Suppose that Mary, having never seen red before, is shown a red rose, and thinks:
(P1) If that is what it is like to see red, then I have seen a red rose.
Mary later confirms that the rose was red, and, reflecting on her experience of the rose’s colour, makes this phenomenal judgement:
(P2) That is what it is like to see red.
From P1 and P2, Mary now infers:
(C) I have seen a red rose.
It is intuitively obvious that Mary’s inference of C from P1 and P2 is rational. For this reasoning seems to be a straightforward application of modus ponens.
For non-propositionalists, however, this inference seems irrational. Non-propositionalists, it seems, should deny that the content of Mary’s judgement P2 is a proposition. For if the content of this judgement were a proposition, then, contra non-propositionalism, Mary seemingly would acquire propositional knowledge about the phenomenal character of red-experiences upon making this judgement. But if the content of Mary’s judgement is not a proposition, then P2 does not constitute any propositional evidence for C. Mary does not possess any more evidence for C, in virtue of her acceptance of P2, than she possessed before coming to accept P2. And so Mary cannot rationally base her inference of C even partly on her acceptance of P2. But this charge of irrationality is implausible: Mary’s inference clearly is rational.
Just as moral non-cognitivists are unable to explain how it can be rational to make inferences from moral judgements, physicalist non-propositionalists—having denied that the contents of phenomenal judgements are propositions—seem unable to explain how it can be rational to make inferences from phenomenal judgements. To explain how such inferences can be rational, we should concede that Mary’s new phenomenal knowledge is propositional after all. What Mary gains is not merely knowledge-how, or knowledge-of, but knowledge-that.
Christopher Izgin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): A New Approach to Aristotle’s Definitions of Truth and Falsity in Metaphysics Γ.7
Aristotle famously defines truth and falsity as follows: “For to assert of what is that it is not or of what is not that it is, is false; and
(VB) To assert of what is the case that it is the case, is true.
(PB) To assert of what is F that it is F, is true.
(EB) To assert of what exists that it exists, is true.
Most interpreters opt for the veridical interpretation because it presumably covers all truths and falsities in terms of applying to all truth-evaluable Aristotelian propositions; the predicative and the existential interpretations by themselves are too narrow because they only apply to predicative and existential propositions respectively. In this paper, I shall argue that the veridical interpretation is not attractive: the veridical interpretation is hardly informative, if not viciously circular, and it fails to acknowledge the fundamental status of the technical notions of combination (σύνθεσις) and separation (διαίρεσις) which frequently figure when Aristotle characterizes truth and falsity. I shall argue for a comprehensive—a jointly predicative and existential—interpretation of Aristotle’s definitions. On this reading, we may restate the definitions as follows:
(T df) To assert of what is [F] that it is [F] or of what is not [F] that it is not [F], is true.
(F df) To assert of what is [F] that it is not [F] or of what is not [F] that it is [F], is false.
Few scholars have adopted this view, and what is still missing is an account as to how the comprehensive interpretation covers all truths and falsities. The main question I will address in my paper is the following: how, if at all, does the comprehensive interpretation cover all truths and falsities?
I will present a ‘logico-ontological’ approach to Aristotle’s definitions which relies on a fundamental structural analogy between ontological and logical combination and separation, a distinction suggested by the definitions and other passages in the Aristotelian corpus. Logical combination and separation reflect what propositions express, namely ontological combination in the case of affirmations and ontological separation in the case of denials. The ontological correlates are substrates in the case of existential propositions, and substrate-attribute composites in the case of predicative propositions. True propositions express the underlying ontological configuration in a sufficiently correct way, false propositions fail to do so.
James Evershed (St Andrews): Logical Pluralism and Normative Contradictions
This paper articulates a novel argument showing that many species of logical pluralism are inconsistent with the normativity of logic for reasoning. I begin by arguing for a `thick' conception of the normativity of logic on which logic is not only normative for the combinations of beliefs we may have, but also for the methods by which we may form them. I then develop an objection -- the normative contradiction objection -- which shows that a wide variety of logical pluralisms are inconsistent with this thick conception of logic's normativity. This is because together they entail contradictory claims about how one ought to reason whenever one ought to believe a set of propositions, P, and C follows from P on one of the pluralist's logics but not another. Accordingly, if logic is normative for reasoning, these pluralisms are untenable.
Richard Lohse (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology): (Lack of) intuitions about the convexity of distance to truth: A problem for current accuracy-first epistemology
Accuracy-first epistemology is a popular research programme dedicated to giving an epistemic justification of the Bayesian norms for credences. The general thrust is to claim that accuracy, i.e. closeness to truth, is the only fundamental epistemic value. It is then argued that satisfying the Bayesian norms is in some sense accuracy-conducive, thus, they are the correct norms for credences. Importantly, this requires justifying a particular kind of mathematical characterisation of accuracy. In this talk, I question that the current way of giving this justification can be successful. The core problem turns out to be that convexity, an apparently indispensable property of the required characterisation, is not intuitive, or even counterintuitive.
Lilith Newton (Edinburgh): Checking the Sceptic’s Privilege
In this paper, I defend epistemic contextualism from a recent objection made by Duncan Pritchard, that the view ‘privileges’ scepticism. I argue that Pritchard mischaracterises and misunderstands contextualism, and that what he demands of the contextualist – that she shows that sceptical contexts are ‘illegitimate’ – would be to privilege anti-scepticism over scepticism, where the contextualist wants to privilege neither. All it is reasonable to demand of the contextualist is that she show that, from the perspective of a non-sceptical context, there is nothing epistemically better about sceptical contexts, and nothing more correct about sceptical epistemic standards. She can do this by appealing to our purposes in attributing and denying ‘knowledge’ in non-sceptical contexts.
Rebecca Rowson (UCL): Perceptual Media and Other Minds
Accounts of how we perceive others’ emotions intuitively appeal to their expressions. As a result, it has been suggested that even if we can perceive another’s fear, such perception is indirect or mediated in a way that distinguishes it from paradigmatic cases of perception. I respond to this by drawing an analogy between expressions and another kind of perceptual intermediary that exists in the paradigmatic cases. We see and hear things through perceptual media. That is, we see through the illumination to the fox at the end of the road, and we hear it through its sound. I focus on two distinctive features of illumination and sound in our perceptual awareness: their role in perceptual constancy and their transparency. I demonstrate that in our awareness of another’s emotional state, expressions sometimes exhibit these features in a strikingly similar way. Given that paradigmatic perception is not rendered indirect in virtue of perceptual media, I argue that the same can be true for emotion perception through expressions.
Antonio Maria Cleani (Amsterdam): Permanentist Presentism and Cross-Temporal Relations
Standard Presentism (SP) is the view that i) only present objects exist, and ii) objects only have the properties they presently have. This paper explores a non-standard A-theoretic metaphysics of objects in time called Permanentist Presentism (PP), which differs from (SP) by embracing Williamson-style non-concrete objects and replacing i) with the claim that only present objects are concrete, whereas future and past objects are non-concrete. (PP) is attractive because it sidesteps the pressing objection from cross-temporal relations better than alternative versions of presentism: if the holding of a relation entails the existence of its relata and relations may connect present objects with non-present ones, then it follows that non-present objects exist after all. Standard replies to this objection, in an attempt to preserve i), tend to either deny that relations are existence-entailing in this sense, which quickly leads to Meinongianism, or else fail to ground predications of cross-temporal relations on objects such predications are about, for example by using tensed properties of the entire universe. By denying i) and cashing out the presentist intuition in terms of concreteness, (PP) avoids the objection while incurring in neither of these flaws.
I propose and defend a related objection showing (PP) fails to tame cross-temporality once and for all. I argue the holding of some relations, such as spatiotemporal relations and comparative physical quantities, require that their relata be concrete. Moreover, some such concreteness-entailing relations may hold between present and non-present objects. But then some non-present objects are concrete after all, contradicting (PP).
I consider two possible replies, based on a rejection of concreteness-entailing relations in the relevant sense. Firstly, (PP) may be paired with some way of relativising properties or their instantiation to times, and the problematic cross temporal relations may be construed as relations between time-relativised properties:
I am less massive than Dino the dinosaur because I have mass m_1 at the present time, Dino has mass m_2 at some past time, and m_1 < m_2.
Then the less-massive-than relation only entails that its relata are concrete at some time, which need not be present. But this strategy violates the subject matter constraint on grounding mentioned above and will likely not generalise to external relations. Moreover, the additional eternalist concession of time-relativised properties makes (PP) open to Lewis's temporary intrinsics problem, which (SP) could avoid without positing temporal parts. Secondly, the problematic cross-temporal relations may be construed as primitively tensed: I am less massive than Dino in the sense that I am less massive than Dino was. Then it might be that the relata of the less-massive-than relation were or will be concrete, without presently being so. However, this proposal proliferates non-symmetric relations, generating puzzles such as whether the relation _-is-as-massive-as-_-was or the relation _-was-as-massive-as-_-is grounds the claim that Dino and its future clone Rino are equally massive. Furthermore, even if there are tensed relations, linguistic evidence suggests causal, spatiotemporal, and some perceptual relations are unlikely to be tensed, meaning the strategy fails to be general enough.
Laura Fearnley (Glasgow): The Hybrid View of Moral Worth
According to a popular theory to moral worth, a right action is worthy of praise if and only if the agent performed it in response to the relevant moral reasons, that is, the reasons making it right. I’ll call this the Right Reasons Thesis (RRT). The central idea behind this doctrine is that moral worth is not about doing something right because it is right, rather it is about doing something right for the reasons which make it right. This paper has two primary ambitions. The first is to show that The Right Reasons Thesis is not as successful as contemporary discussions would appear to suggest. This is because the view fails to satisfy two important desiderata that a theory of moral worth ought to capture:1) DEGREES. A theory of moral worth ought not merely stipulate if an action is praiseworthy or blameworthy, but also the extent to which it deserves praise or blame.2) OVERDETERMINATION. A theory of moral worth ought to tell us if right actions produced from overdetermined motives have moral worth. The second ambition of this talk will be to demonstrate that RRT can satisfy the requirements when the theory is supplemented with a counterfactual framework. Supplementing RRT with a counterfactual framework entails that when assessing an action’s moral worth, we not only consider whether the agent was motivated by the right reasons in the actual world, but also whether she is responsive to moral reasons in other possible worlds. By aggregating the number of worlds the agent would respond well in we can determine how strongly she is motivated by the right-making reasons. The more worlds the agent acts well in, the stronger her responsiveness to right-making features. I argue that it is in virtue of attending to the agent’s motivational strength, that the proposal is able to satisfy the above desiderata. Let us call The Right Reason Thesis+ counterfactual framework The Hybrid View. To clarify, my aim in this paper is not to defend RRT per se, rather, my aim is to argue that if you are an advocate of RRT then you have strong reasons to adopt my Hybrid View instead. Not only does an appeal to counterfactuals provide a successful theory of moral worth by satisfying the desiderata, it does so in a way that is uniquely unified and intuitive.