Claudine Tiercelin

Collège de France / Institut Jean Nicod

Are Skills Dispositions to Know?

12 May 2017, 16:00

Sala Van Gogh (Sana Executive)

Av. Conde de Valbom 56, 10º andar

Abstract: In a common attempt to lend proper significance to the concept of skill in philosophy and, possibly, to confort their own intellectualist analysis of know how in terms of propositional knowledge heavily relying on the concept of practical modes of presentation, Stanley and Williamson have recently argued that skills should be taken more into account and should be viewed, basically, as dispositions to know. Although I agree with many aspects of their analyses, think they offer rather convincing replies to some anti-intellectualist objections, and provide a better view of skills than other suggestions that have been made, e.g. in terms of competences or in viewing ‘practical modes of presentation’ as Fregean ‘practical senses’, I shall underline some difficulties in their position and suggest some ways of solving them, as far as three major issues are concerned: by paying more attention to some important logical and metaphysical difficulties related to the concept of disposition itself;  by drawing – especially if one favors an intellectualist standpoint – a more careful distinction between skills and intellectual virtues (something we learnt from both Aristotle and Ryle);  by introducing some changes not so much to our concept of know how as to our concept of propositional knowledge itself.

Fiora Salis

London School of Economics and Political Science

Of Predators and Prey, or How to Fictionally Modelling Reality

5 May 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Models represent. But how do they do it? In this paper I assess the two main fictionalist accounts of models as representations, indirect fictionalism and direct fictionalism, and develop a novel proposal, what I call simple fictionalism, by drawing on Walton’s theory of make-believe. Simple fictionalism offers an explanation of the nature of models from which several implications for an explanation of how they represent follow. The key to understanding how models represent resides in the idea that the representation relation between models and the world is a kind of indirect referential relation that is mediated by the imagination.

Christopher Belshaw

University of York

Procreative Beneficence and Procreative Asymmetry: Some Tensions

28 April 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Procreative Beneficence (PB) is the view that we should select the best of two possible children, or the best of two future populations. Procreative Asymmetry (PA) is the view that though there is an obligation not to start bad lives, there is no obligation to start good lives.

PB can seem plausible. See, for example, Savulescu and Parfit. PA similarly can seem plausible. See, for example, McMahan. But, I argue, these two views are in tension. If we should start the best of two lives, when starting either is possible, then, contra PA, we should start good lives, when that is possible. Conversely, if there isn’t an obligation to start good lives, then, contra PB, there isn’t an obligation to start the best of two lives.

Which of these views is the more secure? PB, I argue, has several flaws. PA, in contrast, can withstand various objections (concerning its squaring with intuitions, its coherence, its lack of a rationale) that are made against it. We should prefer it to PB.

Christoph Kelp (KU Leuven)

and

Mona Simion (University of Oslo)

Assertion: The Constitutive Norm View

21 April 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: According to what Williamson labels ‘the C account of assertion’, there is one and only one rule that is constitutive of assertion. This rule, the so-called ‘C Rule’, states that one must assert p only if p has property C. This paper has three aims: first, it looks at three extant arguments against the C account and argues that they fail. Second, it offers a new argument against the C-account; we argue that, in its current incarnation, the C account of assertion is incompatible with any live proposal for C in the literature. Third, we go on a rescue mission on behalf of the constitutivity claim, and we put forth a novel, function-first account, according to which the C-rule is constitutive of assertion in virtue of being constitutively associated with its epistemic function.

Free Attendance

Elia Zardini

Universidade de Lisboa

One, and Only One

7 April 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Standard non-classical (i.e. non-substructural) solutions to the semantic paradoxes of truth deny either the law of excluded middle or the law of non-contradiction; in so doing, they either reject both the truth of a paradoxical sentence and its falsity or accept both the truth of a paradoxical sentence and its falsity. In this sense, both kinds of solutions agree that paradoxical sentences are inconsistent—that such sentences cannot coherently be assigned one and only one truth value. This pattern extends from the semantic paradoxes of truth to the semantic paradoxes of reference: when faced with at least certain particularly recalcitrant paradoxes of naive reference, both kinds of solutions are forced to claim that the paradoxical singular terms in question are inconsistent—that they cannot coherently be assigned one and only one referent. I’ll argue that, contrary to what both kinds of solutions require, under plausible assumptions paradoxical singular terms can be constructed that are forced to refer to a unique object. By considering these and other more traditional paradoxes, I’ll then show how my favoured non-contractive solution to the semantic paradoxes, which generally treats paradoxical entities as consistent rather than as inconsistent, can be so deployed as to offer a unified solution to the semantic paradoxes of truth and to those of reference and definability.

Javier Cumpa

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Categories and the Question of Ontology

31 March 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Is the question of ontology a search for the categories of the world? Is structure a fundamental and indispensable category of the world? Ontological categories of structure have played a fundamental role in contemporary metaphysics. They have been recently invoked in support of realism about structure (Sider 2012), or to maintain substance-attribute ontology (Heil 2012). In both cases, the question of ontology is closely linked to uncover the fundamental ontological categories of the world, and ontological categories are said to have an indispensable role in providing us with a basic and objective understanding of the manifest and scientific images of the world. In this paper, I critically examine Ted Sider’s arguments for the fundamentality and indispensability of the ontological categories of structure, and I conclude that the ontological categories of structure are neither fundamental nor indispensable. An alternative, eliminativist approach to categories is then proposed as a way of doing ontology and understanding the question of ontology.

Sanna Hirvonen

University of Oxford

The New Error Theory

24 March 2017, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: An error theory for some particular expression holds that its semantics is truth-conditional and it is used in non-fictional assertoric judgments, but these systematically fail to be true. Most well-known cases are moral error theories, which hold that judgments like “Murder is wrong” can’t be true because the world doesn’t instantiate the property the moral expression attributes. Such error theories are normally defended for judgments which exhibit a clash between what speakers intend to talk about and which properties the world has. Let us call the view “the traditional error theory”. The debates on the semantics of knowledge claims and judgments of taste among others have brought up another way in which speakers might be in error: they might be mistaken about what certain expressions or judgments mean or what their truth- conditions are, a phenomenon known as “semantic blindness”. Let us call the view “the new error theory”. Under certain plausible assumptions judgments of taste, aesthetics, colour, morality and knowledge claims are candidates for either a traditional or new error theory. Roughly the assumptions are that those are relational phenomena but people don’t take them to be relational. We’ll presuppose this for the sake of the argument. This talk has two aims. The first is to discuss the metasemantic commitments that lead to the two kinds of error theories. The second is to argue for a particular externalist metasemantics which will tip the balance in favour of the new error theory for these expressions.

Tommazo Piazza (Università di Pavia)

May 23 and 25

14:00-16:00

Bogdan Dicher

University of Cagliari

Defending Multiple Conclusions

24 March 2017, 12:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Arguments are usually understood as having one or more premises and only one conclusion. A generalisation of this notion allows for several disjunctively connected conclusions. This is a contentious generalisation; I will argue that it is, nonetheless, justified. I set forth the thesis that multiple conclusions are epiphenomena of the logical connectives. Some connectives induce multiple-conclusion derivations. In this sense, such derivations are completely natural. Moreover, I argue that they can safely be used in the proof-theoretic semantics.

We are delighted to announce that two of our members, Diogo Santos and Ricardo Miguel, have won the Philosophy Essay Prize of Sociedade Portuguesa de Filosofia, 2016 edition.

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