Daniel Nolan (ANU): Some Gaps in Gibbard's Expressivism
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Alan Gibbard in his 1990 book suggests a tempting route for developing a systematic treatment of language for expressivists and non-factualists. Developing that suggestion leads to some difficult choice points for the expressivist. I will focus on a few of these challenges: two challenges about…
Martin Davies (Oxford): Cognitive theories of delusion.
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Cognitive theories of delusion Martin Davies Faculty of Philosophy and Department of Experimental Psychology University of Oxford A dominant cognitive theory of delusion is the two-factor theory developed by Coltheart and colleagues (e.g. Coltheart, 2007, 2010; Coltheart et al., 2011). The…
Wolfgang Schwarz (ANU): The (pragmatic) power of unspecificity
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Sometimes, if we say something unspecific, what we say is taken to imply several more specific things. For example, 'you're allowed to take electrical items in your hand luggage' suggests that you're allowed to take computers, cameras, and hand dryers (but perhaps not tasers). Similarly, 'she might…
Brian Talbot (University of Colorado, Boulder): The normativity and universalizability of epistemic prescriptions
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Abstract: This paper discusses two questions about epistemic prescriptions. First, are all beliefs governed by epistemic prescriptions, or are there some to which these prescriptions do not apply? Second, when faced with a conflict between what the epistemic norms dictate and what…
Adrian Currie (ANU): Explanatory Evidence in Narratives
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Historical scientists appear to work under conditions of evidential scarcity: the traces of important past events are frequently lost to deep time. This leads some philosophers and scientists to a kind of epistemic skepticism about historical science. I explore three ways that relations between…