Fall 2008

(All talks are on Wednesdays in 1115 Skinner Hall at 4:00 unless noted otherwise, followed by a reception in the philosophy department lounge)

March 11, 2009
Speaker: Sharon Street (New York University)
Title: "In Defense of Future Tuesday Indifference: Indeally Coherent Eccentrics and the Contingency of What Matters"

Abstract:
Is value best understood as conferred upon the world by our contingent desires and values? Or are some things valuable quite independently of our evaluative attitudes toward them? In this debate, a group of characters I call ideally coherent eccentrics are routinely called upon in support of the latter view. These characters-of which Derek Parfit's famous man with "Future Tuesday Indifference" is one-accept some bizarre or repugnant value, and their acceptance of this value is stipulated to cohere perfectly with all of their other values in combination with the non-normative facts. The intuition is then called upon that these characters are, in spite of their ideal coherence, making a mistake about what is valuable. These intuitions, in turn, are thought to lend major support to an attitude-independent conception of value. In this paper, I argue that ideally coherent eccentrics deserve a great deal more careful philosophical attention than they have so far received, and that once we give them this attention, we see that the attitude-dependent theorist's position regarding them is much more plausible than is commonly assumed. Those who favor an attitude-independent conception of value need to look elsewhere if they hope to find major support for their position.

March 25, 2009
Speaker: Richard Samuels (Ohio State Univserity)
Title: "Classical computationalism and the many problems of cognitive relevance"

Abstract:
Among the most widespread and philosophically important claims to have been made on behalf of the classical computational theory of mind - or "classicism" - is that it grounds a mechanistic account of reasoning. Nevertheless, the failure of classicism to explain various aspects of reasoning has also been amongst the most common grounds for its rejection. In this talk I consider one highly influential range of objections, which purport to show that classicism cannot ground an adequate account of reasoning because it gives rise to so-called relevance problems - roughly, problems concerning how to determine which of a range of representations is relevant to the performance of a given cognitive task.

This talk has a pair of aims. First, I distinguish and clarify a range of relevance problems, starting with McCarthy and Hayes' original frame problem. Second, I show that, when appropriately understood, it is implausible that such problems provide us with good reason to reject classicism. Some of these putative problems are ones that we need not solve; some are, for all the arguments show, no more than hard research problems; and some are problems only on a very implausible construal of classicism's core commitments. I conclude by briefly discussing a question of diagnosis: If relevance does not pose an insurmountable problem for classicism, then why have adequate classical accounts of reasoning proven so hard to come by?

April 1, 2009
Speaker: Alec Walen (Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland)

Abstract:
A robust, if not absolute, prohibition on treating people simply as a means sits at the core of common sense deontological morality. But the principle prohibiting such treatment, the "means principle" (MP), has been notoriously hard to defend. One interpretation of the MP focuses on your (the agent's) intentions when you interact with others. But intentions do not seem to carry the moral weight of the MP. The other plausible interpretation of the MP focuses on the causal role of the patient who might be harmed by your actions. But no one has yet explained why causal role should have any moral significance.

This paper has two parts. In Part I, I survey why the intentions interpretation of the MP does not work, and why the causes interpretation, as defended up to now, is so mysterious as to be question begging. I also explore Judith Jarvis Thomson's early and admittedly failed attempt to explain the MP in terms of rights. In Part II, I articulate and defend a new account of a causal interpretation of the MP. The principle I defend there, the Restricting Claims Principle, registers the moral significance of the fact that certain claims have a kind of moral externality: if they had to be respected as rights the would restrict what agents could do on behalf of other patients. Claims that impose that sort of externality, restricting claims, register as less weighty than claims that do not. The claims of those who would be used simply as a means are not restricting, and that explains why they are stronger than competing restricting claims.

April 29, 2009
Speaker: Richard Holton (MIT)
Title: "Determinism, Fatalism and Moral Motivation"

Abstract:
Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read become more likely to cheat or to go in for vindictive behaviour. One possible explanation is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism undermines their belief that they are morally responsible. I suggest a different explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I contend that one aspect of the phenomenology is our impression that maintaining a resolution requires effort- an impression well supported by a range of psychological data. Determinism can easily be interpreted as showing that such effort will be futile: in effect determinism is conflated with fatalism, in a way that is reminiscent of the Lazy argument used against the Stoics. If this interpretation is right, it explains how belief in determinism undermines moral motivation without needing to attribute sophisticated incompatibilist beliefs to subjects; it works by undermining subjects' self-efficacy. It also provides indirect support for the contention that this is one of the sources of the phenomenology of free will.

May 6, 2009
Speaker: Krister Segerberg (Uppsala University)
Title: "Three Paradoxes for Deontic Logic"

Abstract:
Although deontic logic has been around for some time, deontic logicians still discuss how best to do it. In this talk, I will offer one suggestion, and will then go on to consider whether it is enough to handle three classic "paradoxes".

May 13, 2009
Speaker: Jim Tabery (University of Utah)
Title: "Gene-Environment Interactions--From IQ Controversy to Genetic Screening"

Abstract:
The concept of gene-environment interaction, or G×E, refers to cases where different genetic groups phenotypically respond differently to the same array of environments. In a widely acclaimed study from 2002, researchers found a case of G×E for a gene controlling neuroenzymatic activity (low vs. high), exposure to childhood maltreatment, and the development of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Cases of G×E are generally characterized as evincing a genetic predisposition; for example, individuals with low neuroenzymatic activity are described as having a genetic predisposition to ASPD. I argue that the concept of a genetic predisposition fundamentally misconstrues these cases of G×E. This misconstrual will be diagnosed, and then a new concept-interactive predisposition-will be introduced. I conclude by examining how recent debates over genetic screening for individual predispositions is related to older debates about group differences between populations, drawing on lessons of the latter to inform the former.

June 10, 2009
Speaker: Carl Craver (Washington University, St. Louis)
Title: "Levels: A Field Guide"

Abstract:
Few terms are more abused than "level." There are levels of abstraction, being, complexity, description, explanation, generality, regularity, organization, size, and theory. There are Marr's levels, Dennett's levels, Lycan's homuncular levels, and Oppenheim and Putnam's hierarchical levels. To make matters worse, the personal/subpersonal distinction, the role/occupant distinction, and the function/mechanism distinction are all frequently described using the levels metaphor. But the levels metaphor is undemanding, requiring only a set of relata and a means of ranking them as higher and lower than one another. I distinguishing several senses of level common in neuroscience, and I identify one sense, levels of mechanisms, as especially important for thinking about the explanations and theories of contemporary neuroscience. I then show how confusion about interlevel relations sometimes results from failing to distinguish levels of mechanisms from levels of realization, on the one hand, and from personal and sub-personal levels on the other.