Friday, May 5, 11:00—13:00 (Lisbon time)

Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon

The University of Lisbon

Location: Matos Romão Room

Camillo Fiore

(The University of Buenos Aires)

Title:

Recapture Results Revindicated

Abstract:

A well-known objection to non-classical logics is that they are too weak; in particular, they cannot prove a number of important mathematical results. A promising strategy to answer the objection consists in proving so-called recapture results, which show that classical logic can be used in mathematics and other unproblematic contexts. However, the strategy has recently come under fire. First, typical recapture results are formulated in a purely logical language and do not generalize nicely to languages containing the kind of vocabulary that usually motivates non-classical theories. Second, proofs of recapture results typically employ classical principles that are not valid in the targeted non-classical system; hence, non-classical theorists do not seem entitled to those results. In this talk, I analyze these problems and provide solutions on behalf of the non-classical camp. As for the first problem, I provide a novel recapture result, which generalizes nicely to non-logical languages. As for the second problem, I argue that it relies on an ambiguity and that, once the ambiguity is removed, the objection is dissolved.

(This is joint work with Lucas Rosenblatt.)

Musical Works, Nested Types and Modal Claims

Nemesio García-Carril Puy (Complutense University of Madrid)

5 May 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Guy Rohrbaugh and Allan Hazlett have provided an argument against the thesis that musical works are types. In short, they assume that, according to our modal talk and intuitions, musical works are modally flexible entities; since types are modally inflexible entities, musical works are not types. I argue that the argument fails, and that the type/token theorist can preserve the truth of our modal claims and intuitions even if types are modally inflexible entities. I focus on the premise that musical works are modally flexible entities. A deeper analysis of musical practice will show that this premise is not true: our modal claims do not imply that musical works could have had different intrinsic but, instead, extrinsic properties. Finally, I show how the nested types theory may offer a satisfactory explanation of this fact and that it captures the truth of our modal talk about musical works.

The Puzzle of Defective and Permissible Inquiry

Michele Palmira (Complutense University of Madrid)

28 April 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: On the one hand, it seems that there’s something epistemically off with inquiring into questions which don’t have true answers – call this verdict Defective Questioning. On the other hand, however, there are scenarios in which we are epistemically permitted to inquire into questions which have no true answers – call this verdict Permissible Questioning.  In the first part of the paper I present data in favour of both verdicts and show that they give rise to a puzzle: how is it that inquiries into questions which don’t have true answers can both be defective and permissible from an epistemic point of view? In the second part of the paper I explore some solutions to the puzzle, arguing that the most promising way to approach it rests on the distinction between evaluative and prescriptive norms of inquiry.

LanCog Logic Seminar Series

Friday, 21 April, 10AM-12PM

FLUL room B.112E (Library wing) and online (zoom link: https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/97196260396?pwd=Tlp4Q0xPd3FWWncvOGFXMVZ1dzRZdz09, password: 284363)

Aybüke Özgün

University of Amsterdam

Uncertainty about Evidence

We develop a logical framework for reasoning about knowledge and evidence in which the agent may be uncertain about how to interpret their evidence. Rather than representing an evidential state as a fixed subset of the state space, our models allow the set of possible worlds that a piece of evidence corresponds to to vary from one possible world to another, and therefore itself be the subject of uncertainty. Such structures can be viewed as (epistemically motivated) generalizations of topological spaces. In this context, there arises a natural distinction between what is actually entailed by the evidence and what the agent knows is entailed by the evidence—with the latter, in general, being much weaker. We provide a sound and complete axiomatization of the corresponding bi-modal logic of knowledge and evidence entailment, and investigate some natural extensions of this core system, including the addition of a belief modality and its interaction with evidence interpretation and entailment, and the addition of a “knowability” modality interpreted via a (generalized) interior operator.

(joint work with Adam Bjorndahl)

Moral Credit, Skill, and Virtue

David Horst (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul)

21 April 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to this question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, piano playing, or archery, creditworthy moral success is a matter of getting things right by way of manifesting a relevant skill. My main aim in this talk is to bring out an important structural difference between moral creditworthiness and creditworthiness in sports, arts, and craft, undermining attempts to use examples of the latter as a model for understanding the former.

Goethe’s Theory of Colour and the Philosophy of Science

Oliver Passon (University of Wuppertal)

14 April 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Surprisingly, the famous German poet and writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) considered his scientific work as more important than his literary work. However, neither his contemporaries nor posterity shared this view and especially his criticism of Newton led to Goethe’s discredit. In this lecture, I argue that Goethe’s contributions deserve to be reassessed from both a scientific and philosophical perspective.

Cognitive Synonymy: a Dead Parrot?

Francesco Berto (University of St Andrews)

(joint work with Levin Hornischer, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)

31 March 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Sentences φ and ψ are cognitive synonyms for one when they play the same role in one’s cognitive life: what one understands given either, one does, given the other; what one concludes (deductively, abductively, inductively, etc.) supposing either, one does, supposing the other; one would revise one’s beliefs in the same way after learning either; etc. The notion is pervasive in linguistic and philosophical semantics, cogpsi, and AI – but elusive: it’s bound to be hyperintensional, but excessive fine-graining, e.g., by indiscriminate use of ‘open’ impossible worlds, would trivialize it and there are independent reasons for some coarse-graining. It should be sensitive to subject matters and conceptual limitations, but this stands in the way of a natural algebra: even non-distributive or non-modular lattices won’t do. Besides, a cognitively adequate individuation of content may be intransitive due to ‘dead parrot’ series (yeah the Monty Python are involved!): sequences φ1, …, φn where adjacent φi,φj are cognitive synonyms for one while φ1 and φn are not. But finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won’t do and an impossibility result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn’t satisfy a minimal compositionality principle. Sed contra, there are reasons for transitivity, too (from substitutivity salva veritate, non-mononotonicity, and uniformity principles). In spite of this mess, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this whole jumble of desiderata, thereby giving evidence that the notion is coherent. We then re-assess dead parrot cases in its light.

A Problem for Greco’s Anti-Reductionism

Nuno Venturinha (IFILNOVA, New University of Lisbon)

24 March 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In his most recent work, culminating in The Transmission of Knowledge, John Greco adopts a new epistemological perspective, arguing that knowledge transmission cannot be viewed as reducible to knowledge generation. The purpose of Greco’s “anti-reductionist theory of knowledge transmission” is not simply to specify that there are two irreducible “ways of coming to know”. Rather, Greco sets out to formulate a unified virtue-theoretic account of generative and transmissive knowledge. But while his framework convincingly addresses the individualism objection often levelled against virtue epistemology, it problematically incorporates a third kind of knowledge, that of “common knowledge” or “hinge knowledge”, which shares the property of irreducibility with generated and transmitted knowledge. In this paper, I will discuss the all-pervasive and inescapable nature of hinge commitments, raising difficulties for the anti-reductionism that characterizes Greco’s “unified epistemology of generated, transmitted, and hinge knowledge”. If the latter is to be understood in terms of procedural knowledge or “tacit knowledge that is constitutive of cognitive virtue”, as Greco suggests, then it seems hard to escape the conclusion that both generated and transmitted knowledge are ultimately reducible to hinge knowledge.

Graded Properties

Claudio Calosi (University of Geneva) & Robert Michels (LanCog, University of Lisbon)

17 March 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The idea that properties can be had partly or to a certain degree is controversial, but also has a considerable pedigree among philosophers and scientists who either embrace or at least hint at an ontology of graded properties. In this paper, we first aim to show that metaphysical sense can be made of this idea by proposing a partial taxonomy of metaphysical accounts of graded properties, focusing on three particular approaches: one which explicates having a property to a degree in terms of having a property with an in-built degree, another based on the idea that instantiation admits of degrees, and a third which derives the degree to which properties are had from the aspects of multi-dimensional properties. Our second aim is to demonstrate that the choice between these account can make a substantial metaphysical difference by way of a number of case studies.

The Centre of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon invites to submit abstracts for contributed talks to be presented at the international conference Open Topics in Philosophy of Physics. The conference will take place from Monday 12 to Wednesday 14 of June 2023 and will discuss a variety of open topics in the foundations, philosophy and metaphysics of physics, with a special focus on quantum mechanics, philosophy of space-time and statistical mechanics.

Invited speakers: Craig Callender (San Diego), Elena Castellani (Florence), Mario Hubert (American University of Cairo), Emilia Margoni (Florence & Geneva), Andrea Oldofredi (Lisbon), Patricia Palacios (Salzburg), Bryan Roberts (LSE), Giovanni Valente (Polytechnic University of Milan), Alastair Wilson (Birmingham), David Yates (Lisbon).

Call for abstracts

Submissions of proposals for contributed talks should address a relevant topic within the foundations, philosophy or metaphysics of physics, broadly conceived. Examples of topics which are of interest for the conference are (but not limited to) the following:

• Foundations and philosophy of quantum mechanics
• Metaphysics of quantum mechanics
• Interpretation and open problems in quantum field theory
• Thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
• Time’s arrow and the nature of time in physics
• Philosophy of space-time (general relativity, quantum gravity)

Submissions from PhD students, early postdocs and young researchers are especially welcome. Each contributed talk will be allocated a slot of 30 minutes, including discussion.

Submission procedure

Abstracts of maximum 600 words (including bibliography) should be submitted through the following submission link

• The deadline for submitting the abstracts is April 10th, 2023.
• The notification of acceptance for the selected contributed talks will be communicated by April 30th, 2023.

For any information or further queries about the conference, please contact the organizer (Davide Romano) at the following email address: davide.romano@edu.ulisboa.pt

Updated information about the conference can be found at the following conference website.
PhilEvents webpage