Francesco Biagi

CIAUD-ULisboa

Henri Lefebvre: “Teoria” e “Praxis” para a Renovação do Marxismo

11 June 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Henri Lefebvre (Hagetmau 1901 – Navarrenx 1991) foi um filósofo e sociólogo marxista que viveu intensamente todo o “breve século XX”. A Revolução Russa irrompeu quando o autor tinha quase dezoito anos, e ele morreu aos 90 anos, dois anos após a queda do Muro de Berlim e alguns meses antes da implosão da União Soviética. A receção portuguesa e internacional de Lefebvre tem sido inadequada e parcial, esquecendo-se frequentemente que o autor é um dos expoentes mais brilhantes, ainda que periféricos, do marxismo francês do século XX. De facto, Lefebvre inaugurou um novo tipo de filosofia, seguindo os passos de Marx e Engels, capaz de se desenvolver simultaneamente no plano teórico e prático: o marxismo deve ser uma “teoria” que ajude a compreender e a transformar a “práxis”. Esta é a perspetiva que lhe permite compreender e analisar as transformações da sociedade, desde a questão espacial, passando pela vida quotidiana, até uma teoria geral da política que abarca toda a análise da modernidade capitalista. A questão rural e a questão urbana tornam-se o “laboratório social” privilegiado para observar as evoluções do capitalismo e dar um novo impulso à tradição marxista, contra a ortodoxia dogmática propagada pelo estalinismo. Se, por um lado, Lefebvre contribuiu para revitalizar os instrumentos de investigação da crítica marxiana, por outro lado, a amplitude dos seus interesses não permitiu um reconhecimento adequado da sua contribuição original em comparação com outras figuras como Jean-Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser ou Guy Debord. A minha intervenção, após apresentar a biografia intelectual do autor, centrar-se-á em explicar como os estudos rurais e urbanos de Lefebvre são o instrumento através do qual o autor revitaliza e dá um novo significado ao pensamento marxista.

The Mathematical Context of Frege’s Early Notion of Function

Joan Bertran San-Millán (Centre of Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon)

7 June 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: Tappenden (1995) and Wilson (1992) describe the rich mathematical and historical setting of Frege’s Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884). They point to the connections between Plücker and Clebsch’s understanding of functions – in the context of the duality principle in projective geometry – and Frege’s functional approach. However, I think more should be said about Frege’s early conception of function, developed by Frege in Begriffsschrift (1879). In this talk, I first provide new textual evidence to Tappenden and Wilson’s claim that substantial sources of influence on Frege’s early notion of function can be found in Clebsch and Plücker’s works. I then argue that the concept of function developed in Begriffsschrift is instrumental in Frege’s early mathematical project; shapes the syntax, quantification and calculus of the logical system; and should be distinguished from Frege’s later notion of function.

Arvi Särkelä

ETH Zürich

Life behind a Glass: Alienation and Disclosure in Wittgenstein and Pessoa

4 June 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Wittgenstein once quipped that philosophy should be written like poetry. Does he himself follow this imperative? Given that he describes his aim in philosophy as “show[ing] the fly a way out of the fly-bottle” (PI, §309), that is, as a method of “showing” rather than “saying” (TLP, 4.1212), one may hypothesize that he perhaps did. When Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations recounts the experience of captivity in the fly-bottle, he sometimes dissociates by writing about “the author of the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus.” Now, the author of TLP is obviously the same empirical and juridical person as the author of PI, Ludwig Wittgenstein, born on 26 April 1889, in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire. But if we, at least for the sake of experiment, take this person’s quip about writing philosophy like poetry seriously, then the author writing the PI and “the author of the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus” can be read as different characters. The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who was born only one year before Wittgenstein, explored intensely this poetic method of self-othering. During his brief life, he produced more than seventy such poetic characters. To emphasize the authorial status of these characters, their independent intellectual life and unique perspective, he did not call them pseudonyms but heteronyms. One of the most famous of these heteronyms is Álvaro de Campos. He was born one year after Wittgenstein. Like Wittgenstein, he studied engineering in Great Britain and wanted to become a philosopher. Unlike Wittgenstein he failed, and instead, mirroring Wittgenstein’s quip, tried to write poetry like philosophy.

In the poem “Tabacaria” (The Tobacconist’s Shop, 1928), Pessoa stages Campos behind a window looking across a Lisbon street at the Tobacconist’s on the opposite side. Like “the author of the Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus,” Campos experiences an existential captivity behind a glass: a state of seeing everything with “absolute clarity” yet unable to get at life, to touch, smell, manipulate the things. Towards the end of the poem, he says to himself, in a language reminiscent of the turn Wittgenstein would take one year after Tabacaria, that “metaphysics is a consequence of feeling sick.” This talk will be devoted to a comparative reading of the poetic method of heteronym and the poetic topos of a life behind a glass in Pessoa’s Tabacaria and Wittgenstein’s PI. The hypothesis is that Wittgenstein and Pessoa use similar yet different poetic methods that, however, appear as philosophically significant. And they do this in an attempt to alienate themselves in order to alienate the reader from an alienating form of life.

Merely Verbal Disputes in Philosophy: Addressing Their Defectiveness with (More) Metalinguistic Awareness?

Delia Belleri (LanCog, Centre of Philosophy, University of Lisbon)

31 May 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: In recent years, increasingly more authors have argued that certain philosophical debates are, or can be reasonably interpreted as being, merely verbal disputes. If this phenomenon is real, one might suspect that philosophers are not very good at identifying the meaning(s) of the words on which their disputes are based. To borrow a concept from psycholinguistics, philosophers may lack an appropriate kind of “metalinguistic awareness”. Would increasing the philosophers’ metalinguistic awareness prevent, or help one to diagnose more quickly, such defective linguistic exchanges? This paper advances some hypotheses on how metalinguistic awareness in philosophical disputes may be lost, how one might train oneself to raise it, and how it may be enhanced in practice. The conclusion will, however, be a pessimism of sorts: it is deeply unclear whether more metalinguistic awareness could be of any help in preventing or diagnosing merely verbal disputes in philosophy.

Dirk Quadflieg

Leipzig University

Social Totality and Immanent Critique

28 May 2023, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

For various reasons, the concept of social totality appears to be outdated today. On the one hand, many social theories have convincingly demonstrated that modern Western societies have differentiated themselves into numerous more or less autonomous subsystems that cannot be subsumed under a single law of reproduction such as that of the economy. On the other hand, the concept of totality nowadays is so strongly associated with totalitarianism that it seems to be normatively overdetermined as a sociological description. Speaking of a social totality is therefore often equated with the assertion that the society under consideration is governed in a totalitarian manner. Despite these plausible objections, I would like to argue that a critical social theory should not only insist on a certain concept of social totality, but must inevitably do so. The main reason for this lies in the widely shared assumption that, especially under postcolonial conditions, we cannot analyze the societies we are living in other than immanently, because any universal norm that could serve as a transcending standard can rightly be questioned as historically and geographically particular. Starting from more general reflections on what immanent critique means, the paper goes back to Hegel to show how the concept of immanence is connected with that of reality as totality. Against this background, I would like to argue that Marx’s Grundrisse could provide us with a version of social totality that does not amount to economic reductionism, but rather allows to understand social totality as a historically highly ambivalent achievement of bourgeois society making both possible: a revolution of society as a whole and a total delusion, as Adorno claimed.

Can Conversational AIs Testify?

Domingos Faria (Universidade do Porto)

24 May 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: We learn new things, we acquire knowledge, based on the “say-so” of conversational AIs (such as ChatGPT). How should we understand these attributions of knowledge? Can it be understood as testimonial knowledge? The orthodox view, as defended by Coady (1992), Lackey (2008), Tollefsen (2009), Goldberg (2012), and Pagin (2016), is that conversational AIs cannot be considered testimonial sources, but at most instrumental sources of knowledge (in a similar way to the knowledge we obtain when we consult a thermometer). The main argument for this orthodox view can be summarized as follows: An entity S can testify that p only if S believes that p, S has the intention to deliver testimony that p, S is a responsible epistemic agent for transmitting that p, S is object of trust, and S is able to assert that p. But conversational AIs cannot believe that p, nor intend to testify that p, nor are they responsible epistemic agents who transmit that p, nor are they objects of trust, nor are they able to assert that p. Therefore, conversational AIs cannot testify that p. In this paper, I intend to show that this argument is not sound, since there are plausible reasons to reject both premises. Furthermore, by developing the framework conceived by Tyler Burge (1998), it is possible to argue that some instruments can testify, as is the case with conversational AIs.

Consciousness and the Significance of Middle-Sized Things

Timothy O’Connor (Indiana University)

23 May 2024, 14:30 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: Many physicalists suppose that middle-sized things of many kinds are real in an ontologically significant way that, e.g., mere aggregates are not. They have that status by being ‘weakly emergent’: emergent because they exhibit forms of behavior not characteristic of entities of which they are composed, while only weakly so because their existence and powers asymmetrically wholly depend on those composing entities. Ontological reductionists and nihilists charge that weak emergents (if such there be) are not ontologically significant because they do not make a fundamental difference to the way the world is or unfolds. I will argue that this charge is plausibly true in a world lacking strongly emergent conscious minds, but not otherwise. Weakly emergent entities enjoy a more robust ontological status by virtue of being objects of conscious practical and theoretical thought and action. Furthermore, the range of objects attaining such significance in a minded world depends on the kinds of minds in it: merely animal, human, and/or divine.

Alexander Neumann

University of Paris 8

Pegasus at the Beach. The Association of Empirical Research and Critical Concepts

21 May 2024, 17h00 (Lisbon Summer Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

I intend to discuss the situation of the Frankfurt Critical Theory today, one century after the foundation of the famous Institute, in 1923. In particular, I would like to examine the dialectical relationship between experiences and concepts (such as empirical research and conceptual findings) which defines the very meaning of Critical Theory. Various concepts have emerged from this process, such as : unreglemetierte Erfahrung, Kulturindustrie, Gegenöffentlichkeit (unregulated experiences, Culture Industry, the oppositional public sphere). This kind of approach – connecting experiences and concepts under the leitmotiv Arbeit am Begriff – might be resumed througout the title: “Pegasus at the beach. The association of empirical research and critical concepts”.

Aboutness and Scientific Modelling

Quentin Ruyant (Complutense University of Madrid)

17 May 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: According to the semantic conception of scientific theories, theories should be identified with families of models, each typically conceived of as a “possible world if the theory is true”. A “mapping” hypothesis relates these models to real-world phenomena. Although it purports to be closer to scientific practice than its predecessor the syntactic view, the semantic view is still idealistic: firstly, the mapping hypothesis is typically thought to be independent from contexts and model users, which is at odds with most analyses of scientific representation, and secondly, actual theoretical models are typically intensional and represent bounded situations instead of representing complete extensional worlds. All this has already been noted by various authors, but no well worked-out alternative to the semantic conception has been proposed so far. In order to move forward, I examine how the hyper-intensional notion of “aboutness”, used in philosophy of language and philosophical logic to capture intentionality and relevance, could be transposed to scientific modeling, so as to flesh out a pragmatic conception of scientific theories that would qualify for being a viable alternative to the semantic conception.

Suspending Judgement about Rationality

Thomas Raleigh (University of Luxembourgh)

10 May 2024, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

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

Abstract: Can it ever be rational to suspend judgement about the rationality of one of your own doxastic attitudes? There has been much recent discussion of the following kinds of straightforwardly akratic combinations of attitudes: believing p & believing I am not justified in believing that p, or, believing p & believing that I ought not believe that p. Some theorists have argued that such combinations are always necessarily irrational. Others have argued that they need not always be irrational. In this talk I focus on a different kind of combination of attitudes: believing that p and suspending judgement whether I am justified in believing that p, or, believing that p and suspending judgement whether I am permitted to believe that p. Huemer (2010), Smithies (2019) and Tal (2022) have all argued that these latter combinations must also always be irrational. I show what is wrong with these arguments and show how there can be cases where such combinations are indeed rational.