David Kalkman (ANU): Would you like Grice with that? Grades of speaker meaning and their comparative ramifications
Seminar
Would you like Grice with that? Grades of speaker meaning and their comparative ramifications. Human communication is unique. We talk about abstract entities, entities displaced in space and time, and even completely non-existent entities. Recent 'post-Gricean' explanatory accounts of…
Katie Steele (ANU): Crime, Punishment and Inadequate Evidence
Seminar
Various imagined criminal law cases provoke the intuition that there is something wanting with statistical evidence in the courtroom. The cases are extreme in that they involve “naked statistical proof”, where the proposed guilty verdict rests more or less entirely on a single statistical finding.…
Dr. Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund) Can Parfit′s Appeal to Incommensurabilities Block the Continuum Argument for the Repugnant Conclusion?
Seminar
Blocking the Continuum Argument for the Repgnant Conclusion by an appeal to incommensurabilities in value, as suggested in the last paper Parfit published during his life (Parfit 2016), is an attractive option. But incommensurabilities (‘imprecise equalities′ in Parfit′s terminology) that need to…
Prof Dr. Holger Lyre (Magdeburg): Shared structure of dynamics, computations, and mechanisms
Seminar
On shared structure of dynamics, computations and mechanisms Theoretical neuroscience deals with dynamical and computational models of cognition. Such models explain their target phenomena by providing dynamical and computational explanations. In contrast, proponents of mechanistic…
Fergus Green: ‘The problem of legal transitions: The role duties to reform unjust laws'.
Seminar
Abstract: The Problem of Legal Transitions: The Role of Duties to Reform Unjust Laws Should slave-owners have been compensated upon the abolition of slavery? Should the owners of coal-fired power stations be compensated for the effects of a new carbon tax? When governments change the law, citizens…
Professor Josiah Ober (Stanford): Rational choices in classical Greek thought
Seminar
Rational choices in classical Greek thought The paper focuses on Plato's (Republic book 2) restatement, via the thought experiment of “Gyges and the ring,” of an ancient Greek “folk theory” of practical reasoning – a coherent account of human deliberation, choice, and action that deductively…
Sidney Carls-Diamante (KLI): 'Armed with Information'
Seminar
In this talk, it is argued that the received view that self-recognition is a sophisticated cognitive capacity may not always be the case. While it is not denied that self-recognition presupposes a certain level of cognitive complexity, it is pointed out out that this notion reflects a strong…