Joint Curiosity and Meta-Conceptualization

Ilhan Inan (Koç University)

3 May 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: I shall argue that joint curiosity is an advanced form of joint attention which has played a crucial role in the emergence of the sciences and philosophy and other feats that have shaped the modern human cultures. When two (or more) agents mutually attend to an entity of which they have little or even no knowledge, which in turn gives rise to joint awareness of ignorance coupled with joint epistemic interest, there emerges joint curiosity. Inspired by Hume’s idea that curiosity is an attention fixer and Kripke’s notion of fixing reference by description, I shall utilize my own work on curiosity to demonstrate that in the typical cases of joint curiosity, attention gets fixed upon an unknown entity which is the referent of an inostensible linguistic expression. Expanding on an idea from my recent book on truth I shall introduce the notion of meta-conceptualization, our linguistic ability to make concepts and propositions the subject-matter of higher-order judgments. After briefly discussing how this notion relates to metacognition and metarepresentation, I shall argue that our aptitude for meta-conceptualization is a precondition for us to ask questions out of curiosity and share it with others. I shall end by briefly arguing that joint curiosity being the primary motivator for joint human inquiry adds further support to Miscevic’s contention that curiosity is the basic epistemic virtue.

Theological Fatalism, Closure, and the Contingent a priori

Fabio Lampert (University of Vienna)

26 April 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: I will present new reasons for being suspicious of what I think is the best argument for theological fatalism. I will argue that by considering divine knowledge of contingent a priori truths, divine foreknowledge is not required for an argument from divine omniscience against free will. Moreover, I show that this argument can be generalized in such a way that ordinary human knowledge of contingent a priori truths also leads to an argument against free will. But if there is something wrong with this argument, there would seem to be something wrong, too, with the main argument for theological fatalism. Though there is a range of possible responses, I suggest that what is amiss in all cases is a closure principle, according to which having no choice about a truth is closed under entailment (or strict implication).

The MSCA Staff Exchanges Action PLEXUS announces the PLEXUS Summer School to be held in the University of Navarra (Pamplona – Spain) from the 10th to 14th of June 2024. The School aims to gather young researchers from around the world working on Logic and related areas, with particular interest on Substructural Logics and their applications.

Courses:

-Damián Szmuc (CONICET): «From substructural logics to parastructural logics» [Abstract]

-Elaine Pimentel (University College London) & Carlos Olarte (Université Sorbonne Paris Nord): «A tour on substructural logics and multi-modality» [Abstract]

– Claudia Nalon (Universidade de Brasília): TBA

Bursaries for PhD students & young scholars:

We offer bursaries for travel expenses and accommodation up to 800 EUR. If you are interested in applying, send a letter of interest (800 words) to plexus@unav.es (before the 10th of May) explaining your motivation to take part in the Summer School. Selected candidates will have the chance to explain their research in the Evening Pitch Talks.

The Theory of Relevance, Formal Fallacies of Relevance, and Relevant Logic

Nicholas Ferenz (Czech Academy of Science)

19 April 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Relevant logics are logics with a conditional connective that represents, in the object language, various sorts of entailment relations. These entailment or implications each necessitate restrictions on grounds of relevance. In Entailment vol. 1, Anderson and Belnap note certain (formal) fallacies of relevance that should not be theorems of any (propositional) relevant logic. The area of first-order relevant logics is comparatively underdeveloped both philosophically and mathematically. In this talk I develop an account of formal fallacies of relevance, drawing on the Sperber and Wilson’s Theory of Relevance in linguistics. In short, formulas that are formal fallacies of relevance require too much cognitive effort to establish relevance over every context with every instance of the formula. This account of formal fallacies of relevance have the advantages of (i) implying a core semantic property of relevance in propositional logics (namely the Variable Sharing Property), and (ii) divorcing the definition of relevance from that of (the) truth (values). I then turn to first-order logics, where I apply the framework to a selection of formulas and outline future goals.

The Hardness of the Practical Might

Sergio Tenenbaum (University of Toronto)

12 April 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Incommensurability is often introduced with the small improvement argument. Options A and B are shown to be incommensurable when it is neither the case that A is preferred to (or better than) B nor that B is preferred to (or better than) A, but a slightly improved version of A (A+) is still not preferred to B. Since A+ is preferred to A, but not to B, we must also conclude that it is also true that A and B are not indifferent (or equally good). Such incommensurable options seem incompatible with orthodox decision theory (and various forms of value theory) but options that obey the pattern described by this argument seem ubiquitous: my choice between lemon tarts and eclairs at my favourite pastry shop might exhibit this pattern, but so could my choice between jobs or careers. In trying to accommodate incommensurable options within various frameworks, philosophers have argued that we must preserve certain central features of the phenomenon. Among them is the supposed “hardness” of at least some incommensurable options: even if perhaps one would need to be a rather anxious gourmet to describe the choice between lemon tarts and eclairs as hard, the choice among careers could potentially be agonizing. However, it is not clear in which way choices among incommensurable options are “hard,” nor how and whether such hardness poses problems for the various accounts of incommensurable choices. To complicate matters, the deontic verdicts for choices between incommensurable options seem to be relatively straightforward: one appealing view is that in such circumstances I am rationally permitted to choose any option that is not worse than (or dispreferred to) another option. This paper aims to provide a sharper formulation of the hardness problem, to argue that various theories of incommensurability might fail to account for the hardness of some incommensurable choices, and to propose that the theory of instrumental rationality I develop in Rational Powers in Action, aided by a Kantian insight, promises to provide an adequate explanation of the hardness of choice among incommensurable options.

There Is No Such Thing as Conventionalism about Personal Identity

Eric Olson (University of Sheffield)

5 April 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: It’s often said that personal identity is ‘conventional’ in that it depends on our attitudes and practices: it’s not a fact to be discovered, but a matter for decision. There are a number of different claims about ‘personal identity’ that are said to be conventional in this way. Some are intelligible but not actually conventionalism as advertised. Some are indeed conventionalist but unintelligible. Some are intelligible and conventionalist but not very interesting. But there appears to be no genuine conventionalism about personal identity that is both intelligible and interesting.

What Context-Relative Belief Could Be Like

Roger Clarke (Queen’s University Belfast)

22 March 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Several philosophers have recently defended metaphysically context-relative views of belief. But for many of us, it’s not clear what context-relativity could be if it isn’t semantic (or more broadly, linguistic) context-relativity. In this paper, I explore the idea of context-relative metaphysics through several examples, mostly taken from high-school science.

Disputed Disputes

Pedro Abreu & Marcin Lewiński (IFILNOVA, New University of Lisbon)

15 March 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Our goal is to isolate and analyse a category of “disputed disputes”: philosophically relevant disputes which do not admit of an easy dismissal as verbal nor of straightforward recognition as factual. We offer a new set of arguments challenging the attempts of adjudicating between these two possibilities. We pay special attention to how these attempts are articulated in the recent debates over metalinguistic negotiations — worthwhile disputes about which meaning to associate with some particular expression (Plunkett & Sundell, 2013, 2023). While Plunkett and Sundell hold metalinguistic negotiations to be “ubiquitous”, some recent criticisms maintain that many such disputes should be taken at face value as standard disagreements (Ball, 2020; Schroeter et al., 2022; Koslicki & Massin, 2023). Both positions are built on the underlying assumption that there is indeed a principled and operationalizable distinction to be made between two fundamentally different kinds of disputes. We challenge this assumption. Careful attention to the conditions of the debate reveals: i) unexpected congruence between the interpretative strategies and resources deployed by the two sides in the debate, ii) circularity and indeterminacy brought about by the possibility of applying the metalinguistic negotiation interpretation to the very disputes over the nature of disputed disputes, and, iii) the proliferation of available notions of meaning and corresponding forms of disagreement and verbalness. We show how these considerations coalesce to undermine the possibility of a principled choice between the two interpretations — metalinguistic negotiation and first-order disagreement — and to cast doubts on the claim that there is really a significant choice to be made between them.

Why do Computational Templates Work Across Scientific Disciplines?

Mariana Seabra (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

8 March 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Computational methods and their subsidiary models (including both physics-driven methods that appeal to differential equations, and data-driven computational methods that allow the extraction of meaningful patterns from data sets, often without explicit appeal to laws of nature or theories) are used to perform diagnosis, characterization and prediction in systems of interest. Furthermore, these computational methods are applied successfully across scientific disciplines, that is, the same computational structures, termed computational templates, are employed to solve problems in a wide range of scientific domains, from physics to biology, neurology, economics, and so forth. In this talk I try to explain the success of computational templates across different science fields, constructing a scientifically informed version of the ‘fudging solution’ for the applicability of mathematics as it arises for computational templates. I argue that the various templates available, from differential calculus to statistical models, capture change or changing tendencies in a system of interest. Corrections performed within the various stages of model construction not only concern updates in the formal structure of computational templates, but also progressively update the ontology of interest. What is perceived as the applicability of templates to physical reality is already the result of many such corrections, in which models are tailored to the system at hand.

Combinatory Intensional Logic: Towards a Formal Theory of Meaning

Clarence Lewis Protin (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

1 March 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In this talk we give an outline of Combinatory Intensional Logic (CIL), a general framework for a formal theory of natural language meaning and reasoning, including intensional logic. What sets this approach apart is a syntax close to the logico-semantic mechanisms of natural language and being compatible with logical realism, the view that properties, relations and propositions are entities in their own right as well as furnishing the senses of linguistic expressions. CIL models, which formalize a realm of interweavings of senses, are not based on possible world semantics or set-theoretic function spaces. Truth-values and references of senses are extensions determined by states-of-affairs, an idea that goes back to the Stoics. CIL was initially inspired by Bealer’s project in Quality and Concept (1983). It was subsequently found that CIL is a good tool to address the shortcomings and gaps present in Bealer’s approach, in particular with regards to the soundness proofs and the problem of unifying intensional and modal logic. After giving an outline of CIL and the main soundness result, we discuss approaches to classical problems involving definitions, definite descriptions, proper names and other topics relevant to the formalization of natural language.