Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa

LanCog Group (Language, Mind and Cognition Research Group)

Centro de Matemática, Aplicações Fundamentais e Investigação Operacional

CMAF-CIO

Hartry Field

New York University

Generalizing Fuzzy Logic for Semantic Paradoxes (and Vagueness)

20 May 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

Building C6, 2^nd floor, room 6.2.33

Abstract: Lukasiewicz continuum-valued logic has been popular in dealing with vagueness, and prominent logicians (e.g. Thoralf Skolem and C. C. Chang) have been very interested in its application to the semantic, property-theoretic and set-theoretic paradoxes. But it isn’t ultimately workable for either. This talk will sketch how to generalize it to make it work (not for set theory, because of extensionality, but for truth and properties, and also for vagueness). The resulting theory is more powerful than Kripke’s in that it treats conditionals and restricted (as well as unrestricted) quantifiers. I’ll avoid technical details, but give enough of the idea so that those technically inclined shouldn’t have much problem filling them in. There will also be a bit of discussion of why we need two kinds of conditionals.

Free Attendance

For further information, please write to c.filosofia@letras.ulisboa.pt or cmafcio@fc.ul.pt

Hartry Field

New York University

Epistemology from a “Naturalistic” (but not Reliabilist) Perspective

17 May 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: I’ll advocate an obvious-sounding approach to epistemology, that involves developing general models of possible epistemic practices and critically evaluating which of those practices are likely to do best at achieving various truth-oriented goals. Despite its obviousness, there is an apparently serious problem with this idea, a generalization of the one in Lewis’s discussion of immodest inductive methods: each practice seems bound to evaluate itself as best, in which case the “critical evaluation” cuts no ice and one just ends up with whatever practice one starts with. A lot of the paper will be a critique of the line of thought behind the apparent problem, and of a certain picture of “epistemic rules” on which it rests. Once we’ve cleared away the problem, we can see the virtues of the approach, including the fact that it avoids unproductive issues that arise from fetishizing epistemic vocabulary such as knowledge and justification. The critical evaluation in the approach is truth-oriented, but avoids the many problems of reliabilism: both its refusal to recognize any “internalist” considerations and the fact that no notion of reliability seems adequate to encompass all the different factors we want our inductive practices to satisfy. The methodology fits best with a kind of normative anti-realism, about which I hope to say a bit at the end, and which provides another respect in which the approach is “naturalistic”.

Alan Weir

University of Glasgow

Mereological Naïve Realism

10 May 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: One virtue of sense datum theories is their phenomenological accuracy: when I see, imagine, dream or hallucinate a dodecagon, there is a twelve-sided figure in my mind. At any rate, if that is plausible then intentionalist theories of mind are at a distinct disadvantage. However a vice of the sense datum theories, from a naturalistic perspective, is the great difficulty of squaring them with a physicalist ontology. In this talk I’ll sketch a metaphysical view which aims to avoid the affront to naturalism presented by sense data by validating a form of naïve realism which, I will argue, also meets the severe problem illusions and hallucinations pose for naïve or direct realism in a more satisfactory way than the alternatives. The metaphysical framework takes the form of a heterodox variant of mereology in which mereological concepts such as proper part are explicated in terms of a more complex, multigrade, constituency relation. The latter, I’ll suggest, can play the role of a fundamental explanatory tool which can encompass experience, naïvely construed, as well as other physical entities.

Elena Dragalina-Chernaya

Higher School of Economics, Moscow

Logical Hylomorphism, Internal Relations, and Analyticity

3 May 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The key concern of this paper is the placing of several approaches to internal relations, analyticity, and logicality in a framework of the distinction between substantial and dynamic models of logical hylomorphism. I’ll start with the historical roots of logical hylomorphism, i.e., the dichotomy of formal and material consequences in “Parisian” and “English” traditions in the fourteenth century logic, and from there I’ll move forwards to its counterparts in the modern logic. The first tradition (e.g., John Buridan, Albert of Saxony, Marsilius of Inghen) holds that a consequence is formal if it is invariant under all substitutions for its categorematic terms. According to the second tradition (e.g., Richard Billingham, Robert Fland, Ralph Strode, Richard Lavenham), a formal consequence is valid when the consequent is contained (formally understood) in the antecedent. Thus, the English tradition appeals to the psychologically loaded category of understanding rather than syntactic structures or semantic variations. However, it does not mean that the English Scholastics psychologized formal consequence since the formal understanding grounds formality not only on our power of understanding (intelligibility or imaginability) but also on internal relations. For Scholastics, internal relations are expressed by the eternal truths rooted in potential being. Following Luciano Floridi (2017), I suggest considering, in contrast, Kantian transcendental logic as a logic of design rather than a system of consequences with transcendental limitations grounded on potentiality. Then, I’ll discuss some problems with substantial (model-theoretical) approach to formal relations. Specifically, I’ll address Tarskian permutation invariance criterion for binary quantifiers and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s claim that binary colours (e.g., reddish green) possess formal structures. I’ll try to argue that the interactive dynamic of information processing provides a unified game-theoretical framework for dealing with binary formal relations. Finally, I’ll address the discussion on the analyticity of statements about colour relations. Wittgenstein’s approach to internal relations in his Remarks on Colour is argued for as an attempt of modelling a balance between logic and the empirical.

We are glad to announce that Isabel Ferreira, a researcher at CFUL (LanCog) and ISR is one of the editors and author of two chapters of the book Robotics and Well-Being published by the prestigious publisher Springer.

Constantine Sandis

University of Hertfordshire

If A Lion Could Speak…

11 April 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: How can we be confident that we have correctly understood someone – or that they, in turn, have understood us? Wittgenstein quipped that “if a lion could speak, we could not understand him”. The remark has attracted much attention, both friendly and hostile, over the past 65 years. This talk clarifies what Wittgenstein meant, rejecting a number of objections and misinterpretations along the way. I conclude that the remark is not really about animals but, rather, the conclusion of a far more interesting discussion concerning the nature and limits of understanding others.

Vitalij Dolgorukov

Higher School of Economics, Moscow

Irony, Deception and Lying: an Epistemic Taxonomy for Assertions

5 April 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: We aim to present a taxonomy for assertions, describing both cooperative and non-cooperative types of the speaker’s behaviour.  Our model involves the combination of 4 parameters of assertions: its relation to reality, its relation to the shared speaker’s and hearer’s doxastic attitudes, its relation to speaker’s doxastic attitudes, and the degree of a speech act indirectness. The different combinations of these parameters yield 20 types of assertions, including different forms of lying, deceiving, irony and misleading. Also, we will demonstrate that our approach can shed some light on some other issues in pragmatics: the distinction between generalized and particularized implicatures, logical properties of the common ground, an explanation for the hierarchical order of Gricean maxims and some others.

Ricardo Miguel

LANCOG, University of Lisbon

Higher Standards for the Right Labels

29 March 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The Vegan Trademark, by The Vegan Society, is used to certify that products are suitable for vegans. Despite the benefits of this vegan label, I argue that the standards of the labelling practice should be changed, since the core reason that excludes some products from having the label is not excluding other products. I begin with what veganism is, what the related labelling standards are and with a description of two cases. Then I defend that the labelling practice treats those like cases differently. I conclude by saying how the standards should be changed in agreement with veganism.

Diogo Santos

LANCOG, University of Lisbon

Amending Assessment-Sensitivity

22 March 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: According to Dummett (1978) to understand the point of truth is to understand the normative role it plays in the governing of our asserting practices. Dummett’s approach has influenced Assessment-sensitivity views (AS) (e.g. Egan, 2007; MacFarlane, 2011, 2014). AS holds that truth and, hence, the correctness of making and withdrawing assertions is assessment-sensitive. What practically distinguishes this theory from its rivals is its claim about the normative role of truth in the withdrawal of assertions. According to the view, an agent in C2 is obliged to retract an (unretracted) assertion that p made in context C1 if p is not true as originally used (in C1) and assessed from C2. Crucially, the retraction rule renders that an agent is sometimes obliged to retract an assertion that was correct for her to make. Recent experimental data (Dinges & Zakkou, Fintel & Gillies, Kneer, Knobe & Yalcin, Marques) on discourse about personal taste and epistemic modals show that AS’s retraction predictions are in conflict with ordinary speakers’ intuitions. This greatly undermines the purported empirical support for AS. The experimental findings indicate that there is no empirical support for a retraction rule for assertions and that retraction and truth come apart. In this paper I diagnose why AS’s predictions conflict with the empirical data and explain what is wrong with the theory’s depiction of the normative role of truth in the withdrawal of assertions. The diagnosis importantly relies on the claim that retraction is not the only exercitive that agents may use to withdraw the assertoric commitments undertaken by the original assertion – something that those involved in the debate have overlooked.

Raimundo Henriques

LANCOG, University of Lisbon

Architectural Functionalism and Wittgenstein

15 March 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Intuitively, the austerity of Wittgenstein’s house (1926-28) can be explained by the naïve functionalist hypothesis (NFH), according to which, for all x, if x is a constituent of the house, then x has a specific function. This hypothesis allows for an interesting connection between the house and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), but the analogy breaks down for lack of support in architectural theory. Architectural functionalism will, hence, be considered in its own terms. Three clarifications will be provided, yielding the existence of (at least) eight different theses designated by ‘functionalism’. It will be argued that atomistic functionalism—the kind suggested by the NFH—is either dependent upon the highly problematic notion of ‘structure’ or must be made subsidiary to functionalism about whole buildings (rather than parts of them)—holistic functionalism. Two objections to holistic functionalism will be presented and answered. It will be argued that, with some qualifications, this sort of functionalism is a good candidate to explain Wittgenstein’s architectural endeavors.