John Hawthorne (USC, ACU): Counterpart Theory and Counterfactuals
Seminar
Abstract: In 1968 David Lewis famously provided a translation scheme from the language of quantified modal logic into the language of counterpart theory. His other main contribution to the logic and semantics of modality is his celebrated 1973 semantics for counterfactual conditionals. It is…
David Danks (Carnegie Mellon): “Ubiquity of goal-relativity"
Seminar
Abstract: Goals are widely recognized to play a key role in decision making, but are often thought to have (or should have) little impact on our epistemic, scientific, and ethical practices. At best, goals might mildly constrain the content deemed to be…
Liz Jackson (ANU): Epistemic Paternalism, Epistemic Permissivism, and Standpoint Epistemology
Seminar
Epistemic paternalism is the practice of inferring with someone’s inquiry, without their consent, for their own epistemic good. In this talk, I explore the relationship between epistemic paternalism and two other epistemological theses: epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology. I argue…
Carrie Figdor (Iowa): “Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Psychology"
Seminar
Psychology began as the part of philosophy concerning the soul. Scientific psychology is still struggling to abandon this historical legacy. I will discuss the ways in which psychology remains unjustifiably anthropocentric, and how and why it is finally undergoing the conceptual revolution needed…
Erik J. Olsson (Lund): "Google and the Wisdom of Crowds: Condorcet-style Theorems for the World Wide Web"
Seminar
Search engines like Google play a huge role in society as sources of information. Determining what information we find online they influence and shape our view of the world. And yet, strangely enough, philosophers (including epistemologists) have had very little to say on the epistemological and…
Jennifer Carr (UCSD): Should you believe the truth?
Seminar
Abstract: It's often treated as a truism that we objectively epistemically ought to believe, or have maximal credence in, the truth. This claim is open to several interpretations. I explore a variety of prima facie plausible deontic semantics for the claim, and argue that each generates profoundly…