Philosophy seminars 2009-2010
These seminars are open to all: staff, students and members of the public. However, please note that the meetings at 2pm are research seminars and assume a professional competence. The Philosophy Society meetings, at 5pm, are aimed at everyone, including beginners in philosophy and curious passers-by.
All meetings are in N212 (the Boardroom) unless otherwise stated, de Havilland Campus
Semester A
8 October
4-6pm, room to be announced
Wine and Cheese Welcome Party
15 October
John Cottingham (Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Reading; Honorary Fellow of St John's College, Oxford; Editor of Ratio; President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion)
2pm
What is Humane Philosophy and Why is it At Risk?
This paper discusses the increasing prevalence of a science-inspired model of philosophy as a series of highly technical research specialities, and asks how it came about. A brief survey of the successive phases of twentieth-century philosophy leads on to a detailed critique of two especially influential conceptions of the philosophical enterprise: ‘analysis’ on the one hand, and ‘theory tested against intuitions’ on the other. Both these, it is argued, represent philosophical dead ends. Philosophy needs to become less fragmented, and to recover some of its ancient aspirations to achieve a broad synoptic conception of the world and our place within it. We need to develop a more humane philosophy, synthetic in its methods, synoptic in its scope, culturally and historically aware in its outlook, and open to multiple resonances of meaning that come from the affective as well as the cognitive domains.
5pm
Happiness and the Meaning of Life
Abstract: The paper begins by discussing some basic preconditions for happiness that can be objectively determined, and scientifically confirmed. But beyond that, in order to be happy a human life needs, in the first place, to be one of genuine achievement, allowing for the successful development of our human talents and capacities. Second, it needs to be oriented towards the good; for a life cut off from moral sensibility cannot reach integrity and fulfilment. And thirdly, happiness requires a sense of meaning, the courage to endure, as inherently weak and dependent creatures, in the face of human fragility and apparent futility. The final section of the paper discusses the ‘radical contingency’ of which Bernard Williams spoke (the fact that our ethical outlook has a history, and could have evolved differently). It is argued that if there is no foundation for our morality except an ultimately contingent one, then our sense of meaning is undermined, since human beings have transcendent aspirations which cannot be quieted or ignored. Only by recognizing the need for a spiritual dimension in our lives can we recover a sense of meaning, without which happiness will elude us.
29 October
Paul Noordhof (Professor of Philosophy, University of York; Associate Editor of Mind)
2pm
Peception and Imagination
Abstract
5pm
Undergraduate talk: What is a counterfactual theory of causation?
Abstract
12 November
Barry C. Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck; Director of the Institute of Philosophy University of London's School of Advanced Study).
2pm
Re-Thinking the Senses
Traditionally, the senses have been seen as separate systems that put us directly in touch with the world. Higher cognition is seen as making sense of this information by constructing a model of reality. However, recent advances in neuroscience cast doubt on this modular picture of the senses. There is much cross-modal interaction in the early stages of perceptual processing, and many of things in the environment we are interested in are known to us in a multi-sensory way. We may need to see the senses and other early mechanisms as providing our initial access to people, places and things, without supposing multisensory integration combines individual senses as we commonly think of them. I shall offer an alternative way of modelling the sensory interactions that result in unified perceptual experiences
5pm
Self and Other in Philosophy of Mind and Neuroscience
Philosophers have long been puzzled about the relations between self and other: how can a mind know the content of other minds, and does knowledge of other minds play a role in knowledge of our own minds? At the same time recent neuroscience appears to assume that these philosophical problems have been solved by the discovery of a mirror neuron system used to comprehend actions, intentions and emotions. Can philosophers make use of these findings to explain how the gap between self and other is bridged? And can neuroscientists show how this basic system for mirroring one and others movements provide the basis for intersubjectivity and social cognition? The two approaches to the mind will be assessed with the aim of making progress with these questions and shaping new research topics.
26 November, Maclaurin Building, Cambridge Room (Second Floor)
Donald Gillies (Professor of Philosophy of Science and Mathematics, UCL)
2pm
Causality and Medicine: the Case of Smoking and Heart Disease Abstract: One of the main problems in establishing causality in medicine is going from a correlation to a causal claim. For example, heavy smoking is strongly correlated with lung cancer, but so is heavy drinking. There is normally held to be a causal link in the former case, but not the latter. It has been suggested that to establish that A causes B, one needs, in addition to statistical evidence, evidence for the existence of a mechanism connecting A and B. This thesis is examined in the case of the claim that smoking causes heart disease. It is shown that the correlation between smoking and heart disease was established before any plausible linking mechanism was known. Details of the history of research in atherosclerosis from 1979 to 2000 are then given, and it is shown that there is now a plausible mechanism connecting smoking and heart disease, but that, perhaps surprisingly, such a mechanism is not definitely established.
5pm
Are numbers human constructions? Abstract: The talk begins by considering the view of Brouwer that numbers are the mental constructions of individual mathematicians. Various arguments are put forward to show that, if numbers are human constructions, they must be social constructions and not individual mental constructions. However, the question is raised as to whether numbers are purely human constructions, like money, or whether they correspond to something in the non-human world of nature.
10 December
John Worrall (Professor of Philosophy of Science, LSE; President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science)
2pm
In Defence of Structural Realism - or - the “Newman objection”, what objection? Abstract: A Scientific Realist holds that our best scientific theories don’t merely save the phenomena, they capture (in an approximate way) the ‘deep structure’ of the universe (or, more accurately, she holds that it is reasonable to believe that this is what those theories do). Following Poincaré, I presented Structural Realism in my [1989] as representing ‘the best of both worlds’: as capturing the main pro-realist argument (the ‘no miracles argument’) while responding adequately to the main anti-realist argument (the argument from scientific revolutions – aka the ‘pessimistic induction’). Although it has won a good deal of attention, Structural Realism has also been subject to a number of criticisms. The most direct, and apparently deadly of these is the ‘Newman objection’. I here try to clarify exactly what this ‘objection’ does and does not amount to. I argue that, when properly understood, rather than blowing the position out of the water as many seem to believe, the ‘objection’ in fact just underlines what a sensible and modest version of Structural Realism really is.
5pm
The Incompatibility of Science and Religion Abstract: Galileo was put under house arrest by the Inquisition for defending the Copernican theory which was taken to contradict the Bible. If religious fundamentalists had their way, Darwinian theory would (at best) be taught as one theory among many with no greater claim to rational assent than the theory that God created the universe essentially as it now is in roughly 4004BC. More sophisticated thinkers hold that such direct clashes between science and religion are quite unnecessary: that one can be a religious believer without coming into the slightest conflict with science. I examine various ways in which this compatibility view has been defended. This examination shows that while religion and science can indeed avoid direct conflict, there is ineliminable conflict between religion and the general scientific approach – an approach based on the axiom that it is reasonable to believe only what evidence gives you reason to believe.
Christmas break
Semester B
4 February
Steven French (Professor of Philosophy of Science and Head of the Philosophy Department, University of Leeds; Editor-in-Chief of Metascience)
2pm
Getting Away from Governance A Structuralist Approach to Laws and Symmetries
Recent discussions between nomological realists and anti-realists have focussed on the ‘governing’ role of laws, with Mumford, in particular, raising a dilemma for the realists based on such a role (see the symposium review of Mumford (2004), by Brian Ellis, Alexander Bird, Stathis Psillos with a reply by Stephen Mumford, in Metascience 15 (2006) pp. 437-469.). In this paper I shall try to motivate and develop a structuralist account of laws that replaces governance with a form of ontological dependence. I shall also indicate how such an account can accommodate the role of symmetries in modern science and offers a new perspective on the above debate.
5pm
Between Braque and Beethoven: Theories as Representations
What kinds of things are scientific theories? Some philosophers of science have compared them to musical works: just as Beethoven’s Fifth should not be identified with the musical score on the page, so Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is not the same as the words and equations Einstein wrote down in his papers. Some have even suggested that like musical works and numbers, theories exist in some kind of ‘Platonic’ realm. Others have compared them to paintings, such as Constable’s Haywain or Braque’s Woman with Guitar. Like the Haywain, or, more contentiously, Braque’s work, theories are said to represent and a recent debate has developed around the manner in which they represent, what they represent and so on. In this talk we’ll look at these comparisons between art-works and theories to see where the similarities and differences lie and in an effort to gain a better understanding of what kinds of things theories are, or even whether they should be considered as ‘things’ at all.
18 February
Helen Beebee (Professor of Philosophy, University of Birmingham; Director of the British Philosophical Association)
2pm
Alternative Possiblities, Freedome and Blame
Discussion of the 'Principle of Alternate Possibilities' or PAP -- the principle that moral responsibility for an act requires that the agent could have done otherwise -- was originally intended, and is still generally assumed, to be highly relevant to the question of whether the agent acted freely. Recent discussion of PAP and related principles, however, has come to focus exclusively on cases of putative blameworthiness, as opposed to moral responsibility more generally. This, I argue, is bad news for incompatibilists. Recent attempts to establish that alternative possibilities are required for blameworthiness do not generalise to moral responsibility more generally, and so cannot be deployed in any argument for the claim -- upheld in some form by all incompatibilists -- that free action requires alternative possibilities.
5pm
Free Will and Neuroscience
Some neuroscientists and psychologists have recently alleged that there is good scientific evidence that we lack free will. In this session, I'll describe some of this evidence, focussing on Benjamin Libet's work in neuroscience, and we'll discuss why Libet and others think that his results undermine free will.
4 March
Roger Crisp (Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford, Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, St Anne's College, Oxford)
2pm
A Third Method in Ethics?
This paper enquires into whether virtue ethics should be seen as a 'third alternative' to traditional consequentialism and Kantian deontological ethics. An account of how best to categorize moral theories is offered.
5pm
In Defence of Pleasure
This presentation will consist in an elucidation and defence of one of the oldest views in philosophy -- that pleasure is the only good, and pain the only bad.
18 March
Richard Bradley (Professor of Philosophy, LSE)
2pm
Conditionals as Random Variables
This talk will explore the view that conditionals are proposition-valued random variables, building on earlier papers of Jeffrey and Stalnaker and McGee in which views of this kind are floated. This view, I argue, implies that there are two distinct kinds of uncertainty associated with a conditional: firstly, uncertainty about the world in which it is being evaluated and secondly uncertainty about its semantic value at that world. The dual uncertainties and the manner in which they articulate provide an explanation of both why and when Adams' Thesis holds.
5pm
Reaching a Consensus
There are broadly speaking 3 ways in which consensus can be achieved: inquiry, aggregation and deliberation. This talk will explore the connection between the second and third and in particular the view of Lehrer and Wagner that rational agents should (almost) always reach a consensus.
1 April
Jane Heal (Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge; Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge; FBA)
2pm
Judgement and Reality
The paper tries to make sense of the views advanced by Charles Travis in 'Reason's Reach' (EJP August 2007). I hope to argue that the ideas Travis pursues about the nature of conceptual judgement and of reality may show us something interesting about the logical shapes of the capacities which judgers must possess. But I shall also suggest that it is far from easy to tell whether the conclusions he proposes about reason and about the content of experience are justified.
5pm
Thinking about Other Minds
If and when do we gain knowledge of what other people think, feel or intend, and how do we do it? Some say that we do it by applying a theory about the workings of the mind. Others suggest that an important element is use of the imagination to try to see things from the other's point of view. This talk will outline and compare these two approaches.
Easter break
29 Apri, N106 de Havilland Campus
Thomas Baldwin (Professor of Philosophy, University of York; Editor of Mind)
2pm
Practices, complaints and contracts Abstract 5pm Virtues and duties
Abstract
13 Ma, MacLaurin Building, Board Room (First Floor)
Jon Williamson (Professor of Reasoning, Inference and Scientific Method, University of Kent)
2pm
Mechanisms and Causality
Abstract
5pm
Machines that Reason
In this talk I'll try to convey some of the importance of work on artificial intelligence for philosophy and vice versa. I'll distinguish two kinds of AI - psychological and logical - and focus on some interesting connections between the latter and research on reasoning in philosophy. I'll also discuss my own interest in this area: causal and probabilistic reasoning and its automation.
