Juhani Yli-Vakkuri

Bielefeld University

Modals and Conditionals are Ambiguous

27 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Following Angelika Kratzer’s classic work on modals and conditionals, the consensus in natural language semantics is that modals and conditionals (which are often thought to be a kind of modal) are indexical – in the sense that their contents depend on context – but not ambiguous. I argue that the consensus is mistaken: modals and conditionals are both indexical and ambiguous. That the difference between objective (or circumstantial) and epistemic interpretations of these expressions is not a matter of indexicality can be seen by studying the ways in which they interact with other indexicals. I reconstruct the view that modals and conditionals are only indexical using standard two-dimensional semantics for indexicals, and I show that it cannot handle the modal/indexical interaction. I then give an alternative (three-dimensional) semantics that treats modals and indexicals on their objective and epistemic readings as pairs of (indexical) homonyms, and I show that it can handle the interaction.

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

University of Groningen

The Beauty(?) of Mathematical Proofs

20 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Mathematicians often use aesthetic vocabulary to describe mathematical proofs: they can be beautiful, elegant, ugly, etc. In recent years, philosophers of mathematics have begun to ask themselves what these descriptions in fact mean: should we take them literally, as tracking truly aesthetic properties of mathematical proofs, or are these terms being used as proxy for non-aesthetic properties? Starting from the (largely dialogical) idea that one of the main functions of mathematical proofs is to explain and convince, I argue that most of the properties typically associated with beautiful proofs are ultimately epistemic properties. There is however an ‘aesthetic’ residue that is not to be immediately reduced to the epistemic import of proofs, namely the surprising effect that a proof may have. I argue that this aspect is rather to be understood as eliciting an affective response in the proof’s recipient, which in turn plays an important role in a proof’s persuasive effect.

Catarina Dutilh Novaes

University of Groningen

The Social Epistemology of Argumentation

16 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Humans are famously a highly social species, and without collaboration with conspecifics a human being stands no chance to survive. At the same time, we compete with one another for resources at multiple levels. This combination of interdependence and competition means that exchange of information and of epistemic resources more generally among humans becomes a complex affair, involving both trust and vigilance. In my talk, I discuss the role of argumentation in the circulation and production of epistemic resources, relying on insights from social exchange theory, social epistemology, and argumentation theory.

João Pinheiro

Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa

The True-Fit Thesis and its Prime Corollary

13 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: According to interactivism, autonomous systems are those that maintain a non-stationary stability outside of thermodynamic equilibrium in virtue of interactions with their environment, and normativity emerges as a measure of the systems’ ability to preserve their autonomy, such that only those interactions that maintain autonomy are said to be functional. Interactivists think that this constitutes the basic framework in which one can state a minimalist theory of representation. Because the conditions under which interactions are deemed functional are in the future of the interaction once initiated, functional interactions are those that rightfully anticipate the conditions under which autonomy is maintained. In this talk I will offer a formulation and defence of a complement to this theory which I have called the True-Fit Thesis, one that reads as follows: a true-fit is an internal and extrinsic relation between true contents and the truth conditions qua success conditions of these contents bearers’ interactions. From TFT, I will then derive a corollary called Milvian Bridge (after Griffiths & Wilkins 2014), of which a possible reading is that there is positive natural selection only for truth-tropic cognitive mechanisms in virtue of their ability to preserve biosystems’ autonomy.

Dan López de Sa

University of Barcelona

Significant Verbal Disputes and So-Called “Metalinguistic Negotiations”

06 October 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Some disputes are verbal—in metaphysics (and philosophy) as well as elsewhere. That the disputes are verbal is often taken to express a certain form of skepticism about metaphysics (or perhaps about philosophy more generally): the domains in question are defective, one hears, in that the disputes are “merely” verbal, as opposed to involving substantial questions. This is misguided. Some philosophers, including notably David Chalmers (2011), David Plunket (2015), and Amie Thomasson (2017), have recently emphasized how many disputes are, although verbal, not “merely verbal” but actually quite significant. Both Plunket and Thomasson contend that some, perhaps many, disputes in metaphysics (and philosophy) are to be seen as so-called “metalinguistic negotiations”. Whether there exist cases of metalinguistic negotiation—in general, let alone in metaphysics (and philosophy)—is, however, interesting in itself but controversial. A controversy one can avoid when the purpose is vindicating the significance of (some) verbal disputes.

Diogo Santos

LANCOG Universidade de Lisboa

Evaluating metalinguistic negotiation

29 September 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The phenomenon of persistent disagreement has been at the forefront of the debate between philosophers of language on the semantics of evaluative predicates. Metalinguistic negotiation largely limits the scope of the objection from lost disagreement against contextualist views. Sundell (2016) argues that aesthetic adjectives are not semantically evaluative and that their meaning is in some way relative to a standard. Data in Liao, McNally, and Meskin (2016) apparently undermine Sundell’s view, by showing that aesthetic adjectives behave as absolute gradable adjectives – specifically, with respect to the comparison class not being contextually determined. This signals that the standard of comparison is semantically encoded and not contextually triggered. If so, then there is reason to think that aesthetic adjectives’ meaning is in some way relative to a standard. This paper rehearses what Sundell can say to account for the linguistic data. Nonetheless, it concludes – following Marques (2017) – that metalinguistic negotiation does not accommodate the puzzle from persistent disagreement and, thus, that Sundell (2016) has not shown that there is no independent motivation to endorse the thesis that aesthetic adjectives are semantically evaluative and relative to a standard.

Tommaso Piazza

Università di Pavia

How to Defeat a Seeming

25 July 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In this talk I draw a distinction between the direct and indirect contribution of a mental state to the epistemic justification of a subject’s beliefs. In terms of this distinction, I describe a puzzle surrounding the conditions on which S’s direct justification for believing P originating from S’s seeming that P is undercut. On the one hand the direct justification from the seeming seems to be undercut exactly when the indirect justification from the seeming is. On the other hand, however, the general characterization of the distinction between the direct and indirect contribution of a mental state to the justification of a belief motivates the expectation that what undercuts the indirect justification originating from it should not have the power to also undercut the direct justification. This leaves unexplained why, when S acquires an undercutting defeater of the indirect justification, S is apparently left with no justification for believing P. I explore three solutions to this puzzle. The first solution eliminates the puzzle by simply conjecturing that S’s seeming that P only supplies indirect justification for believing P. The second solution eliminates the puzzle by conjecturing that S’s indirect justification replaces S’s direct justification from the seeming. The third one, which I defend, rest on a principle distilled by N. Silins, and conjectures that an undercutting defeater of S’s indirect justification from the seeming affects S’s direct justification from the seeming by rebutting one presupposition of it.

Agnaldo Cuoco Portugal

Universidade de Brasília

Disagreement on Belief in God

and Bayesian Conditions for Convergence

25 July 2017, 11:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The Existence of God (1979, 2004) by Richard Swinburne is one of the most influential books in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Among its many virtues, it proposes to frame the traditional arguments of natural theology (teleological, cosmological, the problem of evil, etc.) in an inductive probabilistic form. This way, each argument does not aim to lead to a necessary deductive conclusion about the existence of God, but only to increase or decrease its probability, following an epistemic interpretation of Bayes’s theorem as a formal reasoning tool. The proposal of the seminar is to discuss an alternative way to use the theorem as a structure for interpreting the disagreement involved in the discussion about the justification of theism. In this proposal, I will suggest both a theory of probability and an assessment of the priors assigned to theism by the main parties involved, which are different from the ones employed by Swinburne. As a result, another manner of conceiving the rationality of the belief in God will be put forward in this disagreement scenario.

Free Attendance

Disputatio has been classified Q2 in Scimago Journal Rank for the third consecutive year. It has also been promoted to A2 in Qualis.

Ned Markosian

University of Massachusetts – Amherst

First Lecture

The Dynamic Theory of Time and Time Travel to the Past

24 July 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Second Lecture

The Open Future

26 July 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Free Attendance