Fall 2005

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

Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Francis Scott Key Building, Room 0119
Speaker: Jeff Speaks, McGill University
Title: "Explaining the Disquotational Principle"

Abstract: Questions about the relationship between mind and language, while central to an understanding of the nature of intentionality, are often obscure. I suggest that such questions be framed by asking whether necessary truths which connect mental and linguistic properties are to be explained in terms of the essence of the mental, or of the linguistic, properties. I claim that the disquotational principle, which connects the contents of the beliefs of agents with the meanings of sentences of their language, is such a necessary truth. I argue, first, that the disquotational principle is necessary, second, that its necessity requires explanation, and third, that it cannot be explained in terms of the `interdependence' of meaning and belief. Finally, I argue that it cannot be explained in terms of a theory of meaning which takes the meanings of sentences to be inherited from the beliefs with which they are correlated. I conclude by suggesting that the second direction of explanation of the necessity of the disquotational principle --- according to which its necessity is a result of the fact that social facts about public language meaning are part of the story about what it is to have a belief with a given content --- is more plausible than is usually thought.

October 26, 2005
Speaker: Michael Tye, University of Texas, Austin
Title: "Qualia Freak, R.I.P."

November 9, 2005
Speaker: Elizabeth Camp, Harvard Society of Fellows
Title: "Who Can Think Conceptual Thoughts?"

Abstract: A venerable philosophical tradition claims that only language users can possess concepts. But this makes conceptual thought out to be an implausibly rarified achievement. A more recent tradition, based in cognitive science and cognitive ethology, maintains that any creature who can systematically recombine its representational capacities thereby deploys concepts. But this makes conceptual thought implausibly widespread. I argue for a middle ground: it is sufficient for conceptual thought that one be able to systematically entertain the thoughts produced by recombining one's representational capacities, so long as one can do this apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented. This is theoretically possible, albeit empirically unlikely, in the absence of language.

November 16, 2005
Speaker: Ramon Das, Victoria University
Title: "Beneficence, Poverty, and the Weighting Problem"

Abstract: It is well known that global poverty raises especially difficult problems for any philosophical account of beneficence. On one hand, it seems clear that the urgent interests of the poor ground a requirement on the relatively affluent to help them. On the other, any individual who tries to comply with this requirement will soon be overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem. Faced with this dilemma, most philosophers have tended to assume, if not to argue, that the solution must lie somewhere in the middle: beneficence requires that the relatively affluent make some contribution to alleviating global poverty, but the requirement is limited, so that an individual who complies with it does not incur significant costs that infringe on personal projects or relationships. Call this the moderate view of the requirements of beneficence. It is striking that those who defend the moderate view rarely address in much detail what I call the weighting problem: how are the urgent interests of the global poor to be weighted against the non-urgent interests of those in a position to help? Many philosophers seem to believe that this sort of question is too complicated to yield any determinate answer, and/or that one can make rough judgments about what beneficence requires independently of how such questions of comparative value are settled. Against this, I argue in this paper that addressing the weighting problem is essential to any philosophical account of beneficence that purports to be moderate. I also briefly suggest my own solution to the problem.

November 30, 2005
Speaker: Jill North, New York University
Title: "Probability and Symmetry"

Abstract: Physicists and philosophers often rely on symmetries to determine probabilities. Symmetry or indifference principles are used to determine both the objective chances of outcomes, and the degrees of belief we should have in different possibilities obtaining. Physicists cite such a principle in justifying the probability distribution that's used in statistical mechanics. In philosophy, indifference is used for determining our priors. I argue that in neither case do symmetry considerations suffice to justify our probability assignments. Where symmetry considerations do succeed, they are not the a priori ones people take them to be. The explanation of their success is empirical; and where there is no empirical justification, I suggest, there is no justification.

December 7, 2005
Speaker: Dale Jamieson, New York University
Title: "The View from Somewhere: The Use of Thought Experiments in Moral Philosophy"

Abstract: Creating and using thought experiments is central to the practice of contemporary analytic philosophy. Thought experiments, unlike “real” experiments, are typically performed in a casual way with little concern for protocol. Often we are invited to imagine a state of affairs and then queried about our “intuitions.” Our responses are taken to be “results” or data which support some particular controversial conclusion. Such uncritical use of thought experiments is especially jarring in light of our growing knowledge about the fragility and sensitivity of human judgment. Much of this literature is well-known to philosophers, and it is often cited in philosophy of science, epistemology, and ethics. Oddly, however, philosophers seldom bring the insights of this literature to bear on their own judgments and practices. My aim in this paper is quite simple. I want to bring recent results in social psychology and the psychology of judgment to bear on the use of thought experiments in moral philosophy. Much of what I will say will be suggestive and tentative, and my aim is not to discredit or deconstruct a wide swathe of contemporary philosophy. At the same time, however, I think that the story I tell is more than a cautionary tale. Taking psychology seriously should lead us to rethink our methods in at least one area of philosophy.

December 16, 2005
Speaker: Dan Parker, University of Maryland
Title: "Reducing Entropy to Statistical Mechanics: Why it's not as easy as it seems"

Abstract: I claim that both the Boltzmann and the Gibbs entropies fail to meet some minimal requirements for a successful reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. I argue that the Boltzmann does not provide a clear way of linking the thermodynamic entropy to statistical mechanics due to the fact that the entropy is relative to a chosen description, and review some problems associated with the different Gibbs entropies. Further, both notions preclude explaining the success of thermodynamics by appealing to its putatively reducing theory. These conceptions of entropy create confusion rather than solve problems. As an alternative, I offer a subjective, information theoretic understanding of entropy.