Content Determination for Conceptual Engineers
Timothy Sundell (University of Kentucky)

19 March 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+0) | Online, via Zoom

Abstract: What do we engineer when we engage in conceptual engineering? Concepts, presumably. Or meanings, perhaps. But of course nobody agrees on what concepts—or meanings—are. The closest thing to a consensus (and it is not a consensus) is that that there are various conceptions of content deserving of these titles in different theoretical contexts. Despite the variety of available metasemantic options, one striking feature of the conceptual engineering literature is that some of its most frequently cited authors are committed content-externalists. This is striking because of a certain awkwardness between, on the one hand, the project of evaluating and modifying our representational devices, and, on the other, the idea that the content of those representations is out of our control and perhaps even unknowable to us. In this talk, I briefly canvas some examples where this tension displays itself. I try to render that tension a bit more precise, expressing it in the form of a handful of actual arguments. I suggest, in turn, that those arguments fail—that in fact externalism itself presents no particular obstacle to the project of conceptual engineering. And I attempt to motivate, instead, a different perspective on the whole dialectic: that while externalism may not be a problem for conceptual engineering, conceptual engineering might well be a problem for externalism.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/lancog/registration/

We invite those interested in take part in the Reading Group on Multipropositionalism, jointly organized by Claudia Picazo (University of Granada) and Laura Delgado (LanCog – University of Lisbon). Our first meeting would be on April 15th at 12pm CET, and thereafter we will meet on alternate Thursdays for about 6 sessions in total – see tentative schedule and readings below. The group will be held online.

If you are interested in joining us, or have any other question, or suggestion, please send us an email (claudia.picazo@gmail.com, or laqueveque@edu.ulisboa.pt).

Tentative Schedule

15.04.21 Ciecierski, Tadeusz (2009). ‘The Multiple-Proposition Approach Reconsidered’. Logique Et Analyse 52 (208):423-440.

29.04.21 Buchanan, Ray (2010). ‘A puzzle about meaning and communication’. Noûs 44 (2):340-371.

13.05.21 Bowker, Mark (2019). ‘Saying a bundle: meaning, intention, and underdetermination’. Synthese 196 (10):4229-4252.

27.05.21 TBA

10.06.21 TBA

24.06.21 TBA

Possible Readings

. Clapp, Lenny & Lavalle Terrón, Armando (2019). ‘Multipropositionalism and Necessary a Posteriori identity Statements’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (4):902-934.

. Corazza, Eros (2012). ‘Same‐Saying, Pluri‐Propositionalism, and Implicatures’. Mind and Language 27 (5):546-569.

. Dorr, Cian & Hawthorne, John (2014). ‘Semantic Plasticity and Speech Reports’. Philosophical Review 123 (3):281-338.

. Grzankowski, Alex & Buchanan, Ray (forthcoming). ‘Content Pluralism’. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

. Hodgson, Thomas (2018). ‘Meaning underdetermines what is said, therefore utterances express many propositions’. Dialectica 72 (2):165-189.

. Murday, Brendan (2014). ‘Definite Descriptions and Semantic Pluralism’. Philosophical Papers 43 (2):255-284.

. Sullivan, Arthur (2013). ‘Multiple propositions, contextual variability, and the semantics/pragmatics interface’. Synthese 190 (14):2773-2800.

. Viebahn, Emanuel (2019). Semantic Pluralism (chapter 4). Frankfurt, Germany: Klostermann.

Emma Ingala

Complutense University of Madrid

Beyond the False Dichotomy between the Symbolic and the Material

16 March 2021, 18h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Online seminar (Zoom link here)

Abstract

In the past two decades, philosophy and the humanities in general have witnessed the rise of a number of approaches that call for a return to matter, bodies, facts, or objects, arguing that these have been dismissed or at least radically downplayed by modern and contemporary Western thought. New materialisms, object-oriented ontology, and speculative realism, amongst others, have accused philosophy of somatophobia, of disregarding matter and biology, and of privileging the subject and the human in our understanding of the world. According to this perspective, it is the burgeoning of poststructuralist theories in the second half of the past century and the beginning of the new millennium that has fostered and consolidated this neglect by reducing everything to a social or cultural construction. On this telling, the imaginary and symbolic dimensions of our lives –how our identities, our relations, and our world or reality are shaped and conditioned by the images and symbolic frameworks through which we apprehend them– have been foregrounded to the detriment of the biological, material, or objective dimensions that are actually fundamental. Although returning to these fundamental dimensions seems particularly timely in order to combat the popularity of post-truth and alternative facts –which, for example, deny the reality of climate change– as well as with the irruption of our bodies and biology in the public scene during the Covid pandemic, my contention is that this re-affirmation of the materiality of existence does not require that we belittle its symbolic and imaginary aspects; on the contrary, these dimensions must be understood to be intertwined and inseparable. Basing the analysis on a false dichotomy between the symbolic and the material risks overlooking the way(s) in which the material is itself always symbolically presented to us and the extent to which this presentation can be translated into inequalities, exclusions, and violence that do not respond to anything exclusively material. Correcting this requires, so I will argue, that we recognize and explore the potentiality inherent in the symbolic and the imaginary to maintain that it is only through this potentiality that facts, matter, bodies, and the truth can be reclaimed and reengaged with.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10701-021-00426-z

Rational Polarization
Kevin Dorst (University of Pittsburgh)

12 March 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+0) | Online, via Zoom

Abstract: Predictable polarization is everywhere.  When we make decisions about what college to attend, or what books to read, or which friends to hang out with, we can usually predict—not with certainty, but with confidence—that doing so will move our opinions in a particular direction.  Could this process be (epistemically) rational?  A collection of results establish that it can be if and only if the evidence we get is ambiguous, in the sense that it’s rational to be unsure how to react to it.  Thus it’s theoretically possible that a rational sensitivity to ambiguous evidence is what drives predictable polarization. What I want to argue here is that it’s also empirically plausible.  I’ll first report the results of a simple experiment illustrating how this can work.  I’ll then turn to two empirical phenomena that play a substantial role in real-world polarization: confirmation bias and enclave deliberation.  I’ll argue that both processes give rise to particular profiles of evidential ambiguity, and then use simulations to show that such profiles lead to predictable polarization—even amongst people whose goal is to form accurate beliefs.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/lancog/registration/

Tânia Aparecida Kuhnen

Federal University of Western Bahia

Movimentos sociais de mulheres do Sul Global: apontamentos para um ecofeminismo latino-americano

9 March 2021, 18h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Online seminar (Zoom link here)

Resumo

Ao se levar em conta que os ecofeminismos têm por base a conjunção entre teoria e prática, busca-se apresentar reflexões em torno da proposta de um ecofeminismo latino-americano que parta da experiência de mulheres do Sul Global. Toma-se como ponto de partida os documentos (Plataforma Política, Cadernos 1 a 6) do movimento abrangente de mulheres brasileiras do campo denominado de “Marcha das Margaridas”. A literatura ecofeminista auxilia a perceber que a intersecção entre questões de gênero e ambientais é central no fazer e pensar das mulheres que integram a Marcha das Margaridas. Tal movimento constrói caminhos alternativos para a colonização da vida, por meio da resistência ao agronegócio e às monoculturas destinadas à produção de commodities. Essas mulheres vão além de um modelo de mercado de desenvolvimento sustentável, ainda pautada por práticas coloniais, e atuam na preservação socioambiental pelas práticas de cuidado, agroecológicas e de sustentação das formas de vida humanas e não humanas, bem como por meio da defesa da autonomia e da diversidade da vida das mulheres no campo.

The threshold of belief and the value of punishment
Julien Dutant (King’s College London)

05 March 2021, 16:00 | Online, via Zoom

Abstract: This paper explores a tension between two putative norms for rational reactions (i.e. reactive attitudes like blame or anger and retributive actions like punishing). The first (Reactive Risk Management) says that how it is rational to react to an (apparent) deed depends on how confident it is rational to be that the deed was done. The second (Reasoned Reactions) says that it is rational to react to an (apparent) deed if, and only if, it is rational to believe that it was done. The two conflict in the context of the Fallibilist idea that rational belief does not require certainty. A well-known source of conflict between them is the problem of ‘naked statistical evidence’ (Buchak 2014). However, one can make the norms compatible even in naked statistical evidence cases by rejecting ordinary intuitions (Laudan 2012, Papineau 2019), or by claiming that reactions have epistemically-sensitive values: namely, that they have no positive value if not done on the basis of knowledge (Littlejohn 2018). This paper considers a separate source of conflict between the two norms: the problem of single-case threshold variance. When one is facing a choice over a range of potential reactions, the level of confidence that rationalizes one reaction appropriate to a deed may differ from that of another reaction appropriate to that deed. This entails that one of the two norms fails. The problem affects even the views that reconcile the two norms with naked statistical evidence. The problem would be avoided if a certain hypothesis, which I call the “Blackstone invariance hypothesi”, was true. Unfortunately, I don’t see much prospect for the hypothesis to hold. I conclude with some challenges to meet if we instead give up one of the three ideas that generate the problem.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/lancog/registration/

Consuming Fake News: Can We Do Any Better?
Michel Croce (Dublin/LanCog) & Tommaso Piazza (Pavia/LanCog)

26 February 2021, 16:00 | Online, via Zoom

Abstract: Extant remedies to the online proliferation of fake news range from promoting a reform of individual epistemic conduct to implementing systemic interventions. This paper defends educational approaches from the charge of being motivated by an excessively strict appraisal of the doxastic conduct of social media users. In particular, we address two versions of this charge, according to which the epistemic conduct of social media users is not criticisable because virtuous (Rini 2017) or because fully excused (Millar 2019). For both authors, we should not target individual behaviors but concentrate on reforming institutions and the architecture of online informational environments. We resist both contentions. Contra Rini, we claim that most fake news is beyond the range of application of the virtue of epistemic partisanship. Contra Millar, we argue that most social media users have some control over their informational diet and, for this reason, can be requested to amend their doxastic conduct

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://cful.letras.ulisboa.pt/lancog/registration/