Guest Speaker: Michael Hardimon (UC, San Diego)

Title: 'How to Disentangle Race and Racism'

Guest Speaker: Anton Ford (Chicago)

Title: 'The Objectification of Agency'

Guest Speaker: Miriam Schoenfield (Austin, Texas)

Title: 'Can Bayesianism Accommodate Higher Order Defeat?'

Guest Speaker: Andy Hamilton (Durham)

Title: 'Art for Art's Sake: Aestheticising Engaged Art and Philistinism'

Guest Speaker: Jessica Keiser (Leeds)

Title: 'The All Lives Matter' Response: QUD-Shifting as Epistemic Injustice'

Guest Speaker: Christopher Janaway (Southampton)

Title: 'Different Kinds of Willing in Schopenhauer'

Guest Speaker: Paulina Sliwa (Cambridge)

Title: "Hermeneutical Advice”

Sometimes we rely on moral testimony to decide what to do. But we also rely on moral testimony for guidance on what to make of a moral situation: how to make sense of it. Such moral testimony has the power to change both hearts and minds; it can affect not just what its recipient knows but also how she feels about her situation. My aim in this paper is to develop an account of this kind of moral testimony – hermeneutical advice – and draw out its implications for the ethics and epistemology of moral testimony, as well as about the nature of moral expertise.

Guest Speaker: Robert Stern (Sheffield)

Title: "How is human freedom compatible with the authority of the Good?’ Murdoch on moral agency, freedom, and imagination"

This paper deals with the issue of choice and agency in moral action. On the one hand, it seems that the moral agent should use their practical reason to determine what it is right for them to do, and act accordingly; on the other hand, this seems to leave little room for choice in their action, where choice is often said to be a marker of freedom and how the will is exercised. In response to this difficulty, Ruth Chang has argued recently that reasons themselves need to be seen as being created through an act of will. Looking at the work of Iris Murdoch, it is argued that this response is problematic. At the same time, it is also argued that Murdoch can provide a fruitful way of dealing with this problem through her account of imagination, which gives a role to the agent not in choice, but in uncovering the reasons that should guide their actions.

Guest Speaker: M.M. McCabe (KCL)

Title: "Who Knows?"

Platonic epistemology is traditionally dominated by his metaphysics of forms; but in this respect it is in some tension with his account of the value and significance of being the knowing subject: his account of epistemic virtue. I explore his reflections on how we become epistemically virtuous to explain his singular account of knowledge and understanding.

Guest Speaker: Sandra Shapshay (CUNY)

Title: 'Schopenhauer on the Moral Perception'

NB: Note the later start time of 4.15pm for this seminar.

Guest Speaker: Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh)

Title: 'The Fine Structure of Autonomy and Recognition'

Guest Speaker: Kristin Andrews (York/Toronto)

Title: 'Do Animals Have the Mark of the Moral'?

Guest Speaker: Nadine Elzien (Warwick)

Title: 'Time Travel and Failed Assassinations: From Baby Suzy to Fidel Castro'

Speaker: Michael Kremer (Chicago)

Title: 'The Development of Ryle's Conception of Logic'

Abstract: Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that has come under pressure from intellectualists like Jason Stanley, who claim that knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that. Stanley argues that Ryle’s famous regress argument for the distinction shows that Ryle conceives of propositional knowledge as “behaviorally inert,” and that appreciating this shows that Ryle’s regress argument is impotent against “reasonable intellectualism.” However Ryle characterizes knowledge as dispositional in character in The Concept of Mind. This seems to support Stephen Hetherington’s “practicalist” view that knowledge-that is a form of knowledge-how, and puts into question whether Ryle can really rely on the regress argument for his distinction. In this essay I address such questions as: how is the regress argument connected to his distinction? what conception of knowledge-that is implied? does the regress argument survive if we do not think of knowledge-that as involving acts of acknowledging-that, of contemplating propositions and judging them to be true? I approach these questions through examining the development of Ryle’s thinking about knowledge, from his life-long insistence that knowledge and belief are generically distinct, through his early rejection of a dispositional conception of knowledge and belief, his later development of the distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that, including a dispositional characterization of knowledge-how, and his introduction of a distinction among dispositions between capacities and tendencies, with knowledge (both -how and -that) on the capacity side and belief on the tendency side. I argue that his initial formulations of the regress argument and the knowledge-how/knowledge-that distinction come from an earlier stage of his thought before he had drawn the capacity/tendency distinction and located knowledge as a capacity. As a result, his formulation of the regress argument even in The Concept of Mind sits poorly with his view of knowledge and belief there. I conclude by discussing whether the regress argument can be reformulated in a way that fits Ryle’s conception of knowledge as a capacity, and meets Stanley’s objections. Along the way I discuss Ryle’s relationship to a number of other historical figures, including Cook Wilson, Prichard, MacDonald, Ayer, and Vendler, as well as the contemporary philosophers Stanley and Hyman.

Speaker: Professor Mona Simion (Glasgow)

Talk: 'Resistance to Evidence and the Normativity of Inquiry'

Abstract: This talk looks at a puzzle affecting views that take epistemic norms to be zetetic norms - i.e. norms of inquiry: since garden variety epistemic norms and straightforward norms of inquiry often come in conflict, and since it is implausible, for any given normative domain, that it should be such that it is peppered with internal normative conflict, it cannot be that epistemic norms are inquiry norms. I look at three ways to escape the puzzle, I argue that they don't work, and put forth my own account. On this view, one is only the subject of epistemic normativity proper insofar as one is in a position to know. As such, I argue, normative conflicts do not arise in situations in which one is not in a position to know that p in virtue of inquiring into whether q.

Speaker: Dirk Meyer (Oxford)

 Talk: The Dialectics Rule: Chinese Philosophy As Seen From *Mìng xùn

 Abstract: This paper looks at the way a philosophical argument is developed in a recently obtained, fourth century manuscript text from the Tsinghua collection of Chǔ Warring States texts, titled *Mìng xùn. The text has a close counterpart in the received tradition (Yì Zhōushū), which classes it as an utterance in the tradition of Shū (Documents), one of the core classics. I analyse the strategies with which meaning is produced in *Mìng xùn and suggest that the text is articulated in a dialectic manner in which the philosophical premise seeks to test itself continuously to avoid becoming doctrine, and thus philosophically void. My choice of a Shū 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.

Guest Speaker: Rachael Wiseman (Liverpool)

Title: TBC

The first Colloquium will take place at 4:15-6:00pm, Wednesday 12 October in S0.17. The meeting will be in-person, with an online option for those who can't be on campus Note the slightly adjusted start time of 4.15pm for the first Colloquium.

 Speakers: Susana Monsó (UNED) & Eze Paez (Pompeu Fabra)

 Talk: Why death still harms animals who only half get it: Ethical implications of the minimal concept of death (w/ Eze Paez)

 Abstract: In a series of recent works (Monsó 2021; 2022; Monsó & Osuna-Mascaró 2021), I have defended the idea that the concept of death is not circumscribed to the human species, but rather that many animals can understand death, at least to some extent. The core of my argument is the idea that the ‘minimal concept of death’ (‘MCoD’) requires little cognitive complexity and that the cognition required for it is fairly common in the animal kingdom. However, the MCoD refers to the capacity that an animal has to understand what has happened when another has died, but does not indicate that the animal has any notion of her own personal mortality. As such, it is not immediately obvious what ethical implications follow from it. Indeed, accounts of the prudential badness of death that make it dependent on an individual’s concept of death hinge on the ethical importance of having an awareness of one’s own future death (e.g., Cigman 1981; Belshaw 2012, 2015; Rollin 2015), so the presence of an MCoD in animals might not alter the extent to which death is thought to directly harm animals.

In this talk (developed together with Eze Paez), I will show that, contrary to this first impression, the deintellectualised account of the concept of death that I have defended does modify how we ought to think about the badness of death for animals, even in those cases in which animals do not develop a notion of death as something that will inevitably befall them. I will develop this argument in three steps. First, I will summarise my theory regarding the distribution of the MCoD in nature. Second, I will give an overview of different accounts of the badness of death and how they relate to individuals’ understanding of death. Lastly, I will show how the truth of my analysis would entail that, even on the most stringent and demanding accounts, death harms many more animals than is often presupposed.

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.

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.

Guest Speaker: Robert Simpson (UCL)

Speaker: Robert Simpson (UCL)

Talk: The Chilling Effect and the Heating Effect

 Abstract: Chilling Effects occur when a restriction on speech deters lawful speech, because of people’s uncertainty about the risks of incurring costs related to the restriction. I propose that, contrary to an orthodox account of this phenomenon, individual-level deterrence of speech sometimes intensifies discourse, at the group-level, rather than suppressing or subduing it. The deterrence of lawful speech may, somewhat counterintuitively, trigger a Heating Effect. This hypothesis offers us a promising (partial) explanation of the relentlessness of public debate on topics for which there is, simultaneously, evidence of people self-censoring, for fear of running afoul of speech restrictions. It also helps to identify and rectify two shortcomings in existing theoretical accounts of the Chilling Effect – in how they (i) explain the relation between individual- and group-level discursive phenomena, and (ii) characterize the distinctive objectionability of inadvertent speech deterrence.

Speaker: Ian James Kidd (Nottingham)

Talk: Philosophical Misanthropy

Abstract: This paper rejects the standard model of misanthropy as hatred of humankind and offers an alternative. I propose that misanthropy be understood as a negative, critical verdict on the collective moral condition and performance of humankind. The misanthrope sees humankind as suffused with a variety of failings that are entrenched and ubiquitous. Such a verdict can be expressed - emotionally, and practically - in a range of stances, of which four are prominent across the Western, Indian, and Chinese traditions. I describe this pluralistic conception of misanthropy, explain these four misanthropic stances, and conclude by noting a predicament in which certain misanthropes can find themselves.

Best,

Andrew

Guest Speaker: Giulia Martina’s (University of Tübingen)

Title: “Smelling Things”, which was co-written with Matt Nudds.

Giulia is a former Warwick PhD student and currently a post-doc at the University of Tübingen. She recently had a very nice paper on smell accepted in Mind and Language (https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12440).

Guest Speaker: Matt Boyle (Chicago)

Guest Speaker: Joseph Schear (Oxford)

Guest Speaker: Ursula Coope (Oxford)

Abstract

All of Aristotle’s ethical writings allocate a central place to theoretical philosophical thinking (theōria). Noting the differences both in detail and in spirit, scholars have speculated about the treatises’ relative composition and Aristotle’s philosophical development more generally. However, any kind of judgement about the relationship between these texts requires an account of the place and role of theōria in each text taken on its own.

Setting aside the well-known account of the Nicomachean Ethics, I provide such an account for the Protrepticus, the Eudemian Ethics, and the Magna Moralia by considering two questions: 1) What is theōria? And 2) What role does theōria play in the ethical theory of each of these treatises? I argue that the treatises agree broadly on what theōria is. It belongs to theoretical philosophy and has to do with knowledge of causes, nature, and truth. The EE and the MM do not say much about the nature of theōria; the Protrepticus proves to be more informative because it aims at putting the contemplative way of life on the map — in contrast to a more practical approach, associated with Isocrates.

Of the three texts, the Protrepticus has most to say about the nature of theōria. It presents theōria as the contemplation of nature and truth, understood as knowledge of causes. I shall argue that this knowledge is purely theoretical, despite the argument in ch. 10 that theōria provides the greatest benefit for human beings. The other two treatises, operating with a similar conception of theōria, also maintain a firm distinction between practical and theoretical knowledge. However, both argue, in different ways, that we cannot fully understand practical virtue without considering theōria because the former is for the sake of the latter. In the course of explaining how each of the treatises subordinates practical to theoretical wisdom, I shall argue that the EE widens the remit of theoretical thinking to include some aspects of politics, whereas the MM operates with a less developed account that does not stress the importance of knowledge of causes.

Dear Colleagues,

You are warmly invited to the first Departmental Colloquium of Term 2, which will take place at 4pm, Wednesday 17 January, Room S0.18.

Speaker: James Staziker (KCL)

False measures in the science and philosophy of consciousness

According to a widespread contemporary view of the mind, consciousness plays less of a role than was traditionally assumed: much of perception, decision and action occurs independently of our conscious experiences. I will criticise one central line of scientific support for this view, which measures consciousness by a subject’s capacity to identify and discriminate their experiences and actions. This style of measurement underestimates consciousness, and is not justified even if we grant that, necessarily, subjects are aware of their own conscious experiences. In search of a better measure, I look to philosophical accounts of the first-order, demonstrative thoughts most immediately related to conscious perception and action. But here we find the same problem: our best philosophical account individuates these thoughts by subjects’ capacity to discriminate their experiences. I trace the problem to broadly Fregean criteria for individuating thoughts, propose a related solution, and discuss implications for the science of consciousness.

Their next colloquium will take place on 28 February with Kate Kirkpatrick on ’The Myth of Recognition in The Second Sex’.

I hope to see you on Wednesday!

Best,

Andrew