Existence and Powers in a Dynamic World

Jonathan Tallant (University of Nottingham)

23 February 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In this talk I look to achieve two ends. The first is to offer some clarificatory and defensive remarks about what we think is required of existence in a genuinely dynamic world. In doing so, I lean on work focused on Existence Presentism, connecting that to work on powers. I suggest that this combination of literatures gives us the wherewithal to differentiate a frozen world, from a dynamic world, and in the process respond to challenges that have been raised for presentism. The talk begins with consideration of the notion of dynamism, drawing out the idea of degrees of dynamism and offering an account of what it takes to make a view more (or less) dynamic. In the second part of the talk I explore how to generate dynamism given recent arguments from Lisa Leininger.

Delusions and the Predictive Mind

Federico Bongiorno (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

16 February 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: A growing number of studies in both the scientific and the philosophical literature have drawn on a promising framework of brain function (predictive processing) to account for the formation of delusions. This framework has recently come under criticism for its putative inability to explain (i) why agents adopt implausible hypotheses like delusions over none at all, or over more plausible ones, and (ii) how exactly it is that delusions are thought of to begin with. In this talk I shall defend the framework’s explanatory power by way of showing how it can go a long way in helping disentangle these concerns.

Beyond Juxtaposition: Mixed Inferences and Anti-Collapse

Carlos Benito-Monsalvo (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

15 December 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Logical localism is a thesis within philosophy of logic according to which the correct application of logic is not topic-neutral, domain-neutral or irrespective of subject-matter. That is, logical localism is the thesis stating that different sets of logical principles, forming various alternative logic systems, are required in order to systematically account for correct reasoning in different domains. However, there is a very straightforward problem for anyone defending a localist thesis, a problem that follows from the fact that we reason across domains. This challenge is known as the problem of mixed inferences. The problem is, very roughly, the following: suppose that there are (at least) two components, within the premises or conclusion of an argument, belonging to different domains whose logics are L₁ and L₂, respectively. Then, which is the criterion of validity for the argument? The approach that I will take consists in trying to solve the problem of mixed inferences (more concretely, the version of the problem raised by Chase Wrenn) by making a finer translation of the arguments and using combination mechanisms as the criterion of validity. Among the alternative methods for combining logics, I will focus on the method of juxtaposition and show that there are some mixed inferences with the logical form of bridge principles that seem to be intuitively valid and that are not validated by juxtaposition, which constitutes an anti-collapse problem for juxtaposition. This limitation is what motivates the improvements on the methods that I propose, as a way of extending juxtaposition and allowing the emergence of the justified bridge principles in the combination mechanisms.

5^th PLM MASTERCLASS

with Elisabeth Pacherie

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

Room B 112.D

November 23 and 24, 2023

Program

Thursday, Nov 23

14h00 -15h45:  Elisabeth Pacherie (Jean Nicod)

Varieties of goal-directedness in intentional action

16h00 -17h10:  Eline Kuipers (Bochum)

 Enhancing Pacherie’s theory of intentional bodily action through a sensorimotor space

Friday, Nov 24

10h00 -11h10:  Daphne Moss (Pompeu Fabra)

Agentive phenomenology and the disappearing agent

11h20 -12h30:  Cato Benschop (Utrecht)

Disorder of agency, or disordered because of agency?

The Life Project Account of Eating Disorders

14h00 -15h10:  Miguel Núñez de Prado (Utrecht) & Manuel Almagro-Holgado (Valencia)

Mindshaping Dispositionalism to Defend Doxasticism About Delusions

15h20 -16h30:  Caroline Stankozi (Bochum)

A predecessor to goal-directed intentions: need-directed bio-intentions

Impostor Concepts and Hermeneutical Injustice

Laura Delgado (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

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

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Hermeneutical injustice, as introduced by Miranda Fricker (2007), occurs when subjects are unable to make some significant experiences intelligible to themselves and to others owing to their being hermeneutically marginalized. Hermeneutical injustice has been widely characterized by Fricker and others as arising because there is a ‘lacuna’ or a ‘gap’ in the collective hermeneutical resources such that the terms or concepts needed to make some experience intelligible and communicable are lacking. This situation constitutes an injustice because this gap or lacuna is due to the fact that these subjects are unfairly denied sufficient participation in the creation or development of concepts or other tools of social interpretation and this exclusion or limitation is caused by some identity prejudice. In this paper we highlight a species of hermeneutical injustice that arises both because there is a conceptual lacuna with regard to certain experiences in the collective interpretative resources and, importantly, also because there is a powerful authoritative concept in place that does render the experience intelligible, albeit incorrectly. We call this an ‘impostor concept’ because it takes a place where a better, more adequate concept should be, and because it deceivingly provides intelligibility to the target experiences; whereas in reality it conceals them, effectively obstructing the possibility of arriving to better interpretations. We analyse the workings of impostor concepts and argue that their use constitute cases of hermeneutical injustice. We compare this with other similar cases discussed in the literature, aiming to widening our understanding of hermeneutical injustice. (Joint work with Claudia Picazo.)

Andrea Oldofredi’s (LanCog) paper “Orthodox or dissident? The evolution of Bohm’s ontological reflections in the 1950s” was selected to be highlighted on the website of the European Physical Journal.

You can find the piece here.

The Instance Theory of Location

Fabrice Correia (University of Geneva)

10 November 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: The concept of location—of something being located at, or occupying, a place or a region—has been an important topic of philosophical investigations in the past fifteen years or so. Despite all the attention that has been paid to the concept, we still do not have a satisfactory general theory of location. By “general theory”, I mean a theory that both (i) does justice to the fact that location goes way beyond location at a spatial or temporal or spatiotemporal region and (ii) does not rule out phenomena whose possibility is a matter of substantial philosophical dispute. My aim is to put forward a general theory of location that fares better than those that have been developed so far. The key ideas of the theory are as follows: (i) there are two kinds of occupants, direct occupants and indirect occupants; (ii) every indirect occupant has at least one instance, which is a direct occupant; and (iii) indirect occupants occupy regions by having instances occupying these regions.

Conceptual Engineering in Inferentialist Terms

Metodiy Apostolov (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

27 October 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: In a recent paper Jorem and Löhr (2022) criticize Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework (2018) for not providing a good rationale for doing conceptual engineering. They go on to suggest that Inferentialist semantics as developed by Sellars (1954) and Brandom (1994) provides a good rationale for the practice, therefore conceptual engineering is in the business of improving our inferential devices. I will examine the criticism and its extent over strict representationalist theories of conceptual engineering. I will argue that even if the inferentialist take on conceptual content provides a good rationale for engaging in the practice, this does not constitute a sufficient reason to pick it over other alternatives, e.g. functionalist accounts. Finally, I will discuss some advantages of the broad inferentialist approach to conceptual engineering and use it to propose an alternative reading of a particular case of metalinguistic disputes, i.e., metalinguistic negotiation.

Testimony and Expressive Behaviour

Matthew Parrott (University of Oxford)

20 October 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: People often directly tell us about their thoughts, feelings, and desires. This common practice has led some philosophers to claim that testimony can be a fundamental way of knowing about others’ minds. In this talk, I shall argue that this claim is plausible only if we assume a certain conception of testimony, one which aligns it very closely with perception. By contrast, I shall argue that if we were to adopt a different conception of testimony, such as Richard Moran’s ‘assurance view’, then our acquiring testimonial knowledge of someone else’s mind would epistemically depend upon our having non-testimonial knowledge of their mental states. More specifically, I shall claim that this latter knowledge is based on a person’s expressive behaviours. Although one might naturally think this is either perceptual or inferential, in the final part of this talk, I develop an alternative framework for explaining how expressive behaviours ground our ordinary knowledge of others’ minds.

Can AI Help Humeans? The Laws of Nature Debate in Light of Automated Scientific Discovery

Robert Michels (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

13 October 2023, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: According to the standard Humean theory of the laws of nature, Lewis’s Best System Analysis, laws of nature have this status at least partly as the result of an optimal trade-off between scientific values such as simplicity and descriptive strength. This idea has recently come under pressure, since — as authors like Roberts and Woodward have pointed out — there might, pace what Humeans like to suggest, be no such trade-off in the way laws of nature are identified in the natural sciences. Recent developments in the field of automated scientific discovery, in particular regarding symbolic regression, promise to provide Humeans with an answer to this challenge and, as we will argue, might even allow them to in turn put pressure on rival theories of the laws of nature: Symbolic regression gives us a method for (re-)discovering laws which closely matches the Humean picture of what makes a law of nature a law of nature and in particular crucially involves a trade-off between simplicity and descriptive strength. In this paper, we discuss whether Humeans can indeed rely on symbolic regression to bolster their theory of laws of nature. (This is joint work with Niels Linnemann [University of Geneva].)