Guest Speaker: Giorgia Brucato (CEU)

The speaker is Tobias Keiling - join us to celebrate Tobias’ inaugural talk at Warwick!

Talk: Gadamer on Openness as Epistemic Virtue

Abstract: This paper presents the discussion of open-mindedness in recent virtue epistemology to argue that it can be supplemented by a hermeneutical model. After introducing basic distinctions, I sketch the account of open-mindedness found in the work of Jason Baehr (2011) and Wayne Riggs (2010, 2015). I then zoom in on two problems in the recent debate: how to determine when open-mindedness is epistemically beneficial and how to construe its epistemic value. While Adam Carter and Emma Gordon (2014) argue that these problems are insurmountable for Baehr and Riggs, I outline the idea that their account can be modified in such a way as to avoid these problems. Specifically, Gadamer’s discussion of the structure of prejudice and the importance of openness for understanding in Truth and Method (1960) can be developed as an alternative hermeneutical model for understanding open-mindedness. The key idea is that the circular structure Carter and Gordon find at work in Baehr’s attempt to define open-mindedness represents a version of the hermeneutical circle rather than an infinite regress.

The Colloquium will be in-person, with an online option for those who can't be on campus. Please contact Andrew Cooper to receive the Link.

Speaker: Dirk Meyer (Oxford)

Talk: Dialectics in Chinese Philosophy As Seen From *Mìng xùn

Abstract: In this paper I shall look at the structure of dialectical argument in early China by reference to a recently obtained, fourth century manuscript text, titled *Mìng xùn. The text has a close counterpart in the received text Yì Zhōushū (Leftover Documents of Zhou). It is therefore generally understood as belonging the tradition of Shū (Documents), one of the core foundational classics of early China. I analyse the strategies bysq which meaning is produced in *Mìng xùn and suggest that the text develops the argument in a dialectic manner. In it, the philosophical premise seeks to test itself continuously to avoid becoming doctrine, and thus philosophically void. My choice of a Shū (Documents) text as an example of philosophically relevant meaning construction in early China challenges current methodology, which anachronistically considers zǐ-type literature (the Masters) as a disciplinary equivalent to Philosophy in ancient Greece. I argue that since philosophically relevant activities are a non-disciplinary praxis in early China, the articulations of this praxis are also not genre specific but found across the foundational literary texts of China.

Emily Bassett leading on Horgan and Timmons “Gripped by Authority”

This week’s speaker will be Johan Heemskerk (PhD)

Title: is "Gloss or Theory? A Worry for Science Based Theories of Content".

 Abstract:

Many philosophers working on mental content pursue a particular methodology. This involves consulting cognitive science literature and attempting to extract a naturalistic theory of mental content. Such a theory should allow us to specify, for any given representation, how its content is determined. There is a sense, as Tyler Burge puts it, that cognitive science has discovered "without being fully aware of its own accomplishment" (Burge, 2010) an implicit theory of content determination. It is the job of the philosopher to make the implicit theory explicit, maybe with some details filled in. In this paper I attempt to motivate a worry for the philosopher inclined to follow such a methodology. Using an argument from Frances Egan, I raise the concern that cognitive scientists do not have an implicit theory of content. Rather, they assign content based on purely heuristic concerns, for instance a concern for communicating the theory to the reader. Content would then be a "gloss", without theoretical underpinnings. I do not attempt to answer this concern, but I do explore some ways we might begin to respond.

3.00pm  Writing MA or MPhil essays (Tom Crowther)

3.45  Writing a research proposal for a PhD/scholarship application (Johannes Roessler)

4.15 Tea/coffee

4.30 Writing an MPhil or PhD thesis (Johannes Roessler)

5.15 end/Dirty Duck

Speaker: Bruna Picas-I-Prats (PhD)

Title: Title: Architectonic Systematics and Cartographic Systematics: Kant and Hegel on Meta-systematic Accounts

Thursday 10 November 2022

5pm in S2.77 and on MS Teams

Abstract:

There is an open discussion on whether there is a concern for systematicity in Kantian philosophy and whether Kant intended to build up a system of philosophy. There is an approach in this discussion that highlights that two different possibilities for systematic organization can be found in the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV). On the one hand, an architectonic notion of ordination (AS) corresponds to the notion of systems developed in the Architectonic of Pure Reason. In it, by system, Kant understands the unity of the manifold cognitions under one idea. The type of relationship that the idea provides is a linkage of articulatio, in the function of which each part hangs together in an inner mutual bearing. The metaphor that Kant deploys to illustrate this notion is an analogy of a living organism, whose growth and development do not depend on adding parts according to quantitative criteria, but with a view to improving the functions of its parts in relation to the whole (See, KrV, A832/B61). On the other hand, a cartographic notion of system (CS) can also be found in the First Critique, represented by the image of a map, the function of which is to order a diversity of places and regions of space to allow us to orient ourselves in them. Hence, CS is formed by a horizontal juxtaposition of parts which allows qualitatively differentiated zones (seas, continents, islands, etc.) to be gathered, and at the same time the “heterogeneity” with respect to their possible foundation to be maintained. Taking these two notions of system into account, the aim here is to try to state that they both coexist in Hegel’s systematicity and that this coexistence is structured by dialectical progression and speculative awareness. 

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Guest Speaker: Chris Fraser (University of Toronto)

Title: The Xunzian Critique of Legalism and its Contemporary Significance

Guest Speaker: Paula Casal (UPF)

Guest Speaker: Maudemarie Clark (University of California, Riverside)

Title: 'Does Nietzsche Overcome The Birth of Tragedy's Nihilistic View of Tragedy in His Later Work?'

Abstract: Our topic is the relationship between the account of tragedy we find in Nietzsche’s first book and his later view of that artistic genre. Aaron Ridley has argued powerfully that Nietzsche’s later view does not overcome the problems that afflict his earlier account. We agree completely with Ridley and we [Clark] have previously argued that Nietzsche’s original account of tragedy is a failure, that it fails to do what he was attempting to do. But we will argue contra Ridley that Nietzsche does overcome his early (and nihilistic) view of tragedy in his later work. The plan is to explain what we take to be the aim of The Birth of Tragedy and why we take it to be a failure. We will then look at Ridley’s argument for reading Nietzsche’s later view of tragedy in Twilight of the Idols as exhibiting the same failure, and explain our reasons for rejecting that account. These reasons will then lead us, indeed force us, to say something about Nietzsche’s later view of art more generally. 

 The session will be held online.

Oscar North-Concar leading, paper TBD

Speaker: Toby Tricks (MPhil)

Title: Modelling the Mind: A Fictionalist Reading of Nietzsche’s Drive Psychology

 Abstract:

Nietzche’s account of the drives is increasingly being recognised as central to his philosophical psychology; it is a problem, then, that it appears confused. A particularly prominent issue concerns Nietzsche’s characterisation of how the drives interact with one another: he often uses agential language which many take to commit him to the homunculus fallacy. I argue that this view is mistaken, because Nietzsche’s agential characterisations of the drives are fictions: as they aren’t meant to be true, he is able to sidestep fallacious homuncularism. We might worry that if many of the claims in Nietzsche’s drive psychology are fictional, then it can’t teach us much. That need not be the case, however: drawing on Catherine Elgin’s work in the epistemology of science, I argue that despite being fictional, Nietzsche’s account of the drives can still provide epistemic value and facilitate genuine cognitive achievement, in just the same way that scientific models do despite being idealised and distorted representations of reality. Acknowledging the fictional nature of much of Nietzsche’s drive talk I’ll further argue has an added bonus: it allows us to more fully appreciate the subtlety and power of his account of human psychology.

Saturday, 19. November

10:00-10:25 Welcome coffee

10:25-10:30 Short Introduction

10:30-11:45 First Session

Asia Chatchaya Sakchatchawan (UCL): Towards a Wrong Face Theory of Shame

Response by Thomas Crowther

15 min Coffee Break

12:00-13:15 Second Session

Lucas Chebib (UCL): Guilt as a Shame Shaped Thing

Response by Johannes Roessler

1 h Lunch

14:15-15:30 Third Session (Keynote)

Lucy O’Brien (UCL): An Introspective Argument for Others’ Minds

Response by Emily Bassett

15 min Coffee Break

15:45-17:00 Fourth Session

Simone Nota (Trinity College Dublin): Overcoming the Absolute: A Dialectical Critique of the Absolute Conception

Response by Naomi Eilan

17:00-18:00 Reception

18:30 Dinner at Radcliffe

Sunday, 20. November

09:30-10:45 First Session

Christopher Joseph An (Edinburgh): Rational Animals? Mammalian Social Play, Second-personal Knowledge, and the Evolution of Normative Guidance

Response by Richard Moore

5 min Short Break

10:50-11:30 Q&A with Mind co-editors Lucy O’Brien and Adrian Moore on submitting papers to journals

15 min Coffee Break

11:45-13:00 Second Session (Keynote)

Adrian Moore (Oxford): Armchair Knowledge: Some Kantian Reflections

Response by Ben Houlton

1 h Lunch

14:00-15:15 Third Session

Zijian Zhu (Oxford): The Modality and Temporality of Anscombean Practical Knowledge

Response by Lucy Campbell

15 min Coffee Break

15:30-16:45 Fourth Session

Oushinar Nath (UCL): Wisdom and KK Failure

Response by Barney Walker

End of the conference

Guest Speaker: Zofia Stemplowska (Oxford)

Guest Speaker: Béatrice Longuenesse (NYU)

Talk: 'Conflicting logics of the mind: Lessons from Kant and Freud.’

Professor Longuenesse is visiting the Department while giving the Isaiah Berlin lectures in Oxford. Her talk at Warwick will be the first lecture from the series.

TBC

Guest Speaker: Helen Frowe (Stockholm)

Guest Speaker: Charlotte Knowles (University of Groningen)

Title: 'How to Dress Like a Feminist: Towards a Relational Account of Complicity'

Sara Gorea leading, paper TBD

Speaker: Maria Zanella (second-year PhD student)

 Title: Is visualising imagining seeing?

 Abstract: 

Is visualising imagining seeing? Mike Martin thinks so, Bernard Williams thinks not. In ‘The Transparency of Experience’, Martin criticizes Williams’ argument, but his criticism is based on a misreading of Williams’ ‘Imagination and the Self’, as I shall show. The dispute between Martin and Williams is about whether imagining seeing something is necessary in order to imagine what it would look like were it to be seen from a point of view. I, like Williams, think that it is not; I shall present my reasons for thinking so and my reasons for thinking that the extant arguments for the necessity are weak.

Guest Speaker: Jonathan Parry (LSE)

Speaker: Achim Wamssler (PhD)

Title: Arbitrariness, Freedom of the will and Contingency in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Everyone Welcome!

 Abstract: In the Elements of the Philosophy of Right Hegel discusses the concept of arbitrariness (freedom of choice) as part of his more general endeavour to develop a conception of will and freedom. In several passages he speaks of arbitrariness as being contingent. Being interested in Hegel’s concept of contingency I like to address the following points. (1) What exactly is arbitrariness for Hegel and how does this concept depict his understanding of the debate about free will and freedom of choice? (2) Hegel’s criticism of the concept of arbitrariness and of the debate concerning the possibility of freedom of choice. (3) His affirmation of certain points of the conception. (4) And finally, I like to address the question, in which way, for Hegel, arbitrariness is related to contingency.

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Guest Speaker: Sarah Flavel (Bath Spa University)

Title: Daoism and Strategic Thinking

Guest Speaker: Anca Gheaus (LEU)

This week's PG WiP seminar will be led by Giulia Lorenzi (PhD).

Title: "Understanding Musical Virtuosity to Understand the Perception of Music"

Everyone welcome!

 Abstract:

In the realm of auditory perception, philosophers have considered the perception of music as a distinctive case, differentiating it from the perception of noises and everyday life sounds. In order to explain the uniqueness of perceiving music, Scruton (1997) has proposed what he called the acousmatic view, namely the idea that when we experience sounds in the musical context we do so divorcing them from their sources and circumstances of production. This clearly contrasts with the standard view of perception as the source of information about the external world which should characterise, in Scruton’s account, the perception of ordinary sounds. Hamilton (2007, 2009), however, has proposed that both the acousmatic and the non-acousmatic experience of music are aesthetically relevant, constructing as a consequence a two-fold theory which embraces both.  

In order to argue for an account that could combine both acousmatic and non-acousmatic experience tough, Hamilton has the burden of proving how the non-acousmatic experience (the one implying thoughts and awareness of the origins of sounds) can be relevant in the musical context. In order to do that, he presents four objects to Scruton’s account which consider the acousmatic experience as the only essential way to engage with musical sounds. 

In this talk, I am going to focus on Hamilton’s objection on the perception of virtuosity with the intention to support and strength is idea that a non-acousmatic experience of music is both possible and relevant for aesthetic appreciation. In order to do so, I am going to look to accounts of virtuosity present in the literature, sketch a new possible way to go and show how the nature of this aesthetic phenomenon in itself, however understood, requires a non-acousmatic experience in order to be perceived as this phenomenon.