Department of Philosophy

September 8, 2022

Berislav Marušić, is a Senior Lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh

His talk is titled,

"Interpersonal Reasoning"

He writes, "Anscombe famously said, 'It is an insult and it may be an injury not to be believed.' But what is it to believe someone? My aim is to show that understanding what it is to believe someone requires a conception of a distinctive kind of interpersonal reasoning. To do so, I develop an analogy between interpersonal reasoning and an Anscombean conception of practical reasoning. Drawing on the work of Richard Moran, I suggest that the distinctive ‘form’ of interpersonal reasoning is recognition. I furthermore argue that this is to be understood as a primarily logical, rather than epistemological point. In concluding, I explain why a notion of interpersonal reasoning makes available an ethics of thought and, specifically, an account of testimonial injustice."

Please note: this talk will be held from 11 AM to 1 PM in Rabb Graduate Center Room 338.

October 21, 2022

Branden Fitelson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University.

His talk is titled,

"Assigning Probabilities to Conditionals --- Some Puzzles & Paradoxes"

He writes, "In this talk I will discuss some problems that arise when we try to assign probabilities (or degrees of confidence) to (indicative) conditional statements. Some puzzles & paradoxes (old and new) will be discussed. The advantages & disadvantages of various proposed solutions to these problems will be discussed."

Please note: this talk will be held from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Rabb Graduate Center Room 338.

November 11, 2022

Darien Pollock is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. His talk is titled,

"Street Knowledge and the Status Quo"

He writes, "Feminist scholars have longed stressed the importance of spaces of discourse where members of marginalized communities come together to deliberate issues relevant to their lived experience (Fraser, 1990). “Counter-publics,” according to these scholars, serve as a kind of “dialectical refuge” for members of oppressed groups that enable them to carve out meaningful identifies separate from the dominant norms of a wider public (Higginbotham, 1993). 

 While I agree that the counter-public framework captures a crucial feature of how members of oppressed groups relate to the mainstream norms and values of a social arrangement, in this talk, I want to offer an alternative account, what I call the “street knowledge view,” to help explain why the formation of a marginalized group depends on its members challenging the norms of particular social arrangements rather than being grounded in traditional race, gender, and class affiliations. What I hope to show is that “being at the margins” does not solely depend on an agent identifying as a member of a historically oppressed group. On my view, marginal life is motivated by persons collectively developing certain ethical resources, or principles of action, that challenge the dominant set of norms in whatever social arrangement they find themselves."

Please note: this talk will be held from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Rabb Graduate Center Room 338

February 3, 2023

Kate Nolfi is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Vermont. Her talk is titled,

Epistemic Norms: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?

She writes, "At a first approximation, conforming with epistemic norms involves properly or appropriately forming and revising one’s doxastic attitudes on the basis of and in response to one’s particular epistemic position.  But, of course, this intuitively attractive construal is little more than a starting point for theorizing. A fully developed account of epistemic norms will need to spell out which sort(s) of doxastic response to a given epistemic position are appropriate or proper and which are not. My goal here is to sketch one such account: the action-oriented account. According to the action-oriented account, epistemic norms are just norms of doxastic attitude regulation conformity which effectively equips subjects like us with doxastic attitudes that are well-suited to play particular sort of action-oriented role in the sort of mental economy that we have. I briefly contrast the resulting action-oriented epistemology with some of its most prominent contemporary competitors. And, finally, I argue that an action-oriented epistemology is especially well-positioned to fund a satisfying explanation of why it matters whether we manage to conform with epistemic norms."

Please note: this talk will be held from 3:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Rabb Graduate Center Room 338.

March 10, 2023

Tamar Schapiro is a Professor of Philosophy at MIT. Her talk is titled,

Making Sense of Kantian Constitutivism

She writes, "Christine Korsgaard and others have argued that Kant’s moral law can be understood as the constitutive principle of human agency as such. This is a very abstract claim, and one that is hard to get one’s head around. In this paper I try to gain a clearer understanding of what it could mean and how it could be true. I proceed by articulating two challenges to any version of Kantian constitutivism. I then argue that a defense against these challenges is at least possible, provided we rely on a Kantian theory of motivation that I have developed elsewhere (Feeling Like It, Oxford 2021). My hope is to show how the prospects for Kantian constitutivism depend in part upon the details of an accompanying theory of motivation."

April 28, 2023

Ned Hall is the Norman E. Vuilleumier Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. His talk is titled,

Respectful Deflationism

He writes, "There is a hasty inference that may tempt you when you’re doing metaphysics: You begin with the premise that some concept is indispensable to metaphysical inquiry (“law of nature”, “cause”, “ground”, “essence”, the list goes on), and you conclude that the concept itself picks out some kind of important metaphysical structure, about which further metaphysical theorizing is needed. And so we get various currently popular projects: investigating (say) the metaphysical nature of essence, or of the grounding relation, etc. But the inference really is hasty. For there’s another way to go: Grant that the concept in question is crucially important (thus the “respectful” in my title), but insist that we don’t need it in order to facilitate thought and communication about some distinctive, explanatorily important metaphysical structure. Rather, its value for us consists in the way it plays some crucial epistemic role, a role that can itself be characterized without reference to any such metaphysical structure (thus the “deflationism” in my title). We’ll look at an interesting case study involving the concept of law of nature, and apply the lessons learned to essence and grounding."