Author: cful

Luca Possati

University of Porto

Quantum Technologies and the City: Exploring the Ethical and Social Implications of the Applications of Quantum Technologies to Urban Design

7 February 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

In this presentation I intend to understand the ethical and social impact of quantum technologies (QTs) applied to urban design and in particular to the problem of infrastructure maintenance. Infrastructure maintenance has a highly ethical dimension because there is a moral duty to repair and modify structures that support social life. The ethical consequences of poor maintenance not only affect the life of a society but also have a differential impact on social groups. QTs offer very important resources to improve the maintenance of urban infrastructures. Due to their nature, these technologies can have significant ethical and social impact, both in a positive and negative sense, on the evolution of urban design. For this reason, QTs require a new approach to the ethics of technology that is more sensitive to the differences and identity of the social groups that animate the urban context. In the case of QTs, the ethics of technology must go beyond the distributive paradigm and the ideal of impartiality to instead assume an approach more centered on oppression, violence, domination, and the relationship between social identities.

Filipe Ferreira

PUC-São Paulo

The Death of Man

31 January 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

However strange it may sound initially, I claim that we are currently living the event of the death of man. By man I mean, following Michel Foucault in Les mots et les choses, a particular configuration of Western man, beginning in the end of the eighteenth century, where man appears as the principal actor of a new episteme, the modern one. It is he who I believe is today living the event of his death, even while repressing it violently, or, it seems, especially so. In this research seminar, I will try to detail how I understand this event to have come into being, in these first decades of the twenty-first century. In this sense, I propose to further develop Foucault’s ‘archeology of the human sciences’ into a new one, focused on man, which I call the ‘archeology of man’s death’. I understand, in this second archeology, the twentieth century nouveau roman (Samuel Beckett, in particular) and post-war cinema, as analyzed by Gilles Deleuze in The Time-Image, to be fertile ‘archeological sites’, replete with vestiges of the event of man’s death. My main claim is that the experience of his death is the experience of difference, from which, if man is to regain himself, it will be through his Others, in multiple becomings, becoming-woman, child, black, Arawaté, plant, in becomings where man no longer is. At least in their best versions, the human sciences are understood to play a fundamental epistemic role in the constitution of these becomings. Man’s resistance to his death will also be considered as what gives sense to, defining today, the ‘political’.

Curso Livre

Introduction to Epistemic Logic

João C. Miranda /Ricardo Santos

When:

6, 13, 20, 27 March 23, 6-8 PM

Where:

Sala Mattos Romão (C.201J) – School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Pretende-se que os estudantes desenvolvam competências de análise e avaliação de argumentos envolvendo noções epistémicas, em particular, ‘crença’ e ‘conhecimento’, aplicando os instrumentos da lógica epistémica. Pretende-se, também, que desenvolvam competências para participar em discussões filosóficas acerca de quais os axiomas adequados para uma lógica destas noções. Pretende-se, em particular, que fiquem familiarizados com a discussão acerca do axioma “Se o agente sabe que p, então o agente sabe que sabe que p” (conhecido na literatura como “princípio KK”).

The course aims at developing skills to analyse and assess arguments involving epistemic notions, in particular, ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’, aplying the tools of epistemic logic. It also aims at developing skills to participate in philosophical discussions about which axioms are fit for a logic of those notions. It aims, in particular, at getting students acquainted with the discussion around the axiom “If the agent knows that p, then the agent knows that the agent knows that p” (known in the literature as the “KK principle”).

Organização: Ricardo Santos e João C. Miranda

Programa:
1. Lógica proposicional modal
2. Lógica epistémica
2.1. Os operados B e K
2.2. Interpretação de R
2.3. Restrições sobre R
2.4. Axiomas
2.5. Lógicas epistémicas – de K a S5
3. Que lógica para ‘conhecimento’ (e ‘crença’)?
3.1. Factividade
3.2. Fecho sobre consequência
3.3. KK
3.3.1. Hintikka sobre um “conceito forte de conhecimento”
3.3.2. O exame surpresa
3.3.3. Anti-luminosidade

Duração: 8h (4 sessões de 2 horas)

Syllabus:
1. Modal propositional logic
2. Epistemic logic
2.1. The operators B and K
2.2. Interpretation of R
2.3. Restrictions on R
2.4. Axioms
2.5. Epistemic logics – from K to S5
3. Which logic for ‘knowledge’ (and ‘belief’)?
3.1. Factivity
3.2. Closure under implication
3.3. KK
3.3.1. Hintikka on a “strong concept of knowledge”
3.3.2. The surprise examination
3.3.3. Anti-luminosity

Duration: 8h (4 sessions of 2 hours)

Bibliografia /Bibliography

-Arló-Costa, Horacio, Vincent F. Hendricks, and Johan van Benthem (eds.), 2016, Readings in Formal Epistemology, Cham: Springer
International Publishing
-Ditmarsch, Hans van, Joseph Y. Halpern, Wiebe van der Hoek, and Barteld Kooi (eds.), 2015, Handbook of Epistemic Logic, London:
College Publications.
-Hintikka, Jaakko, 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of the Two Notions, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
-Stalnaker, Robert, 2006, “On Logics of Knowledge and Belief”, Philosophical Studies, 128(1): 169–199.
-Williamson, Timothy, 2000, Knowledge and Its Limits, Oxford University Press.

Custo/fee: 20€

Inscrições no secretariado do CFUL até 24/04/2023

Ângelo Milhano

University of Évora

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, whose body is this, after all?’ Don Ihde – Postphenomenology and the Body Problem in the Metaverse

6 December 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The investment of the big digital companies in the concepts of “virtual reality” and “augmented reality” seems to indicate a new course of development of the various digital technologies. Taking into account their ubiquity and the dependence we have been developing towards them, the total immersion of the human consciousness in the digital seems, in fact, to be the most natural development of the digital platforms we have available today. In the unfolding of social networks as “metaverses”, in the transition from smartphones to “neuralinks”, it is possible to understand the tendency of total incorporation of technology, the same one that has marked the whole history of technological development until our days. The technological fantasy continues to be to make technology as transparent as possible: to enjoy its capabilities while eliminating, as best as possible, its sensory limitations. The relation that the human being establishes with the body when using this kind of platforms will be the target of the debate that we intend to raise with this communication. Starting from Don Ihde’s post-phenomenology, we will try to discuss the role that the incarnated body (here body) plays in the construction of a disembodied, digital “dwelling”, like the one that is prefigured in the use of the “metaverse”. How, from it, a user may create a new perception of his body, capable of transcending the limitations that are imposed on it by culture, by biological gender, or by the physical circumstances that limit its mundane existence.

Abbed Kanoor

University of Tübingen | Collège international de philosophie (Paris)

Plaidoyer for an Intercultural Study of Cultural Ontologies

29 November 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

At a time when cultural encounters have become inevitable, intercultural experience plays an essential role in a deep understanding of cultures. However, it should be noted that in the experience of cultural encounters we are dealing with different, sedimented perceptions of the world and their ontological registers. One of the important dimensions of cultures that is neglected in the culturalist attitude is their inner life: their corresponding cultural lifeworld, their imaginary geography with symbolic cartographies, the dynamic transmission of beliefs, rituals and wisdom passed on from one generation to another; these invisible but living aspects are missing in the culturalist attitude and especially in multiculturalism. In contrast, traditionalism, which is aware of these neglected aspects and the world-constituting dimension of cultures, can easily lead to a conservative and even ideological misinterpretation of cultures. My argument is that an intercultural study of cultural ontologies can be seen as a third approach beyond multiculturalism and traditionalism; an approach that is aware of the invisible world of cultures without neglecting their inner hermeneutic dynamics and falling into a closed and static understanding of traditionalism.

Stephan Zimmermann

Praxis-CFUL/University of Bonn

Kant’s Distinction between Duties of Right and Duties of Virtue in View of the ‘Table of the Categories of Freedom’

22 November 2022, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The way Kant distinguishes between duties of right and duties of virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals makes the unity of his moral philosophy doubtful, at least as some interpreters understand it. He seems to specify the particular nature of these two types of duty in such a way that this specification is in tension with his general concept of duty in the Groundwork and the second Critique. Kant, however, uses several criteria to distinguish between duties of right and duties of virtue. I want to explore suggestions that have so far been ignored by the interpreters in order to deal with these criteria. In the second Critique, Kant maintains that the “Table of the Categories of Freedom” contains the whole plan for the future system of duties. And in this table, he includes one division of duties. In doing so, he emphasises this division above all others. My thesis is that the recourse to the “Table of the Categories of Freedom” provides a reliable benchmark for dealing with the many characteristics of the two types of duty later used in the Metaphysics of Morals: some of these characteristics can indeed be traced back to the table.

Date: November 17 and 18, 2022.

The Cogito research group (University of Glasgow) and the LanCog research group (University of Lisbon) are glad to announce the upcoming Epistemology Workshop, which will take place on November 17 and 18, 2022, at Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon.

Programme November 17 (Thursday) 2.00-3.45 – Mona Simion (University of Glasgow) 4.00-5.45 – Matt McGrath (Washington University St Louis) November 18 (Friday) 9.00-10.45 – Michel Croce & Matt Jope (University of Genoa & University of Edinburgh) 11.00-12.45 – Claire Fields (University of Stirling) 12.45-2.00 Lunch 2.00-3.45 – Domingos Faria (University of Porto) 4.00-5.45 – Chris Kelp (University of Glasgow) Location Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon, B112B Room (Library building)   Organizers Mona Simion and Domingos Faria