Engineering Conceptual Prototypes - Rachel Rudolph
Seminar
Discussion of conceptual engineering within philosophy tends to focus on changes to concepts that result in changes in their extensions. Consider, e.g., changing the concept RAPE to include marital rape. This neglects a prominent view of concepts from psychology, namely Prototype Theory. Conceptual…
Justice in Gestation and Moral Integrity: A Dilemma - Luara Ferracioli
Seminar
Political philosophers have recently turned to the topic of justice in gestation, emphasising that the uterine environment contributes to future health outcomes and talents enjoyed in adulthood. In this presentation, Luara will argue that bringing justice to bear on gestation is more…
How to theorise about social construction - Brian Epstein
Seminar
The claim that basic kinds and categories in the world are “socially constructed” is perennially debated in philosophy and social theory. Over the years, lots of categories—races, genders, sexes, morality, commodities, corporations, and many more—have been put forward as cases of social…
A Genealogical Argument for Radical Moral Encroachment - Brandon Yip
Seminar
According to radical moral encroachment, certain moral considerations encroach on epistemic norms to avoid making conflicting demands on agents. In this paper, we provide a genealogical argument for this view by focusing on the kinds of doxastic wrongs that involve forming beliefs based on…
Knowing what to do - Arc Kocurek
Seminar
Much has been written on whether practical knowledge (knowledge-how), i.e., knowledge ascriptions embedding a how-to question, reduces to propositional knowledge (knowledge-that), i.e., knowledge ascriptions embedding a that-clause. Less attention has been paid to knowledge ascriptions embedding…
Assertion Without its Constitutive Norm - Neri Marsili
Seminar
There is philosophical disagreement about which norm regulates assertion. Proponents of factive accounts argue that only true propositions are assertable, whereas proponents of non-factive accounts insist that at least some false propositions are. An alternative solution is to understand truth as…
Cognition on the Edge of Chaos: The Free Energy Principle - Inês Hipólito
Seminar
Cognition stands as one of the most formidable challenges in scientific inquiry. Living organisms exhibit behaviour teetering on the precipice of chaos. The Free Energy Principle (FEP) has been proposed as a pertinent approach to apprehending cognition. Conventional discourse on the FEP…