Amy Kind (Claremont McKenna): What Imagination Teaches
Seminar
What Imagination Teaches David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul…
Materialism, Subjectivity and Evolution: 2017 Jack Smart Lecture
Lecture
This lecture begins with a sketch of the first versions of 'Australian materialism' and then looks at how the landscape of debate changed. Godfrey-Smith will criticize some of the later developments (including versions of functionalism and representationalism) and begin to present a positive view.…
David Chalmers (NYU & ANU): The Externalist and the Structuralist Responses to Skepticism
Seminar
I will discuss two ways of responding to Cartesian arguments for global skepticism about the external world. In an earlier paper ("The Matrix as Metaphysics") I argued that Cartesian hypotheses such as the evil demon hypothesis, the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, and the Matrix hypothesis are not…
David Sobel (Syracuse): The Impotence of the Demandingness Objection
Other
My thesis is that the Demandingness Objection cannot itself provide good reason to break with Consequentialism since it must presuppose the truth of prior and independent breaks with the view. The way the Objection measures the demandingness of an ethical theory reflects rather than justifies…
David Sobel (Syracuse): The Case for Stance-Dependent Value
Seminar
The Case for Stance-Dependent Value Having a contingent favoring attitude or stance toward something, even when one has no reason to have that favoring attitude, such as a preference for Lagavulin over Talisker or flannel jammies over cotton, can give one reason to choose (and ground a well-being…
Gillian Russell: Could there be no logic?
Seminar
The spectre of logical nihilism---the view that there is no logic---has arisen recently in the literature on logical pluralism. Pluralists say that there is more than one correct logic, monists that there is only one. But could there be none at all? This paper looks at an argument…
Lisa Ellis (Otago): The collective ethics of flying
Other
Unconstrained and accelerating greenhouse gas emissions associated with air travel threaten everyone's wellbeing. Popular discourse notwithstanding, neither efficiency gains nor voluntary action (via restraint or the purchase of carbon offsets) has any prospect of having a meaningful effect on…