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Research Seminar in Post-Kantian European Philosophy, 2019/2020

Unless otherwise stated, Post-Kantian European Philosophy Research Group seminars take place on Tuesdays, 5:30–7:30pm in Room S0.11 (ground floor of Social Studies). All welcome. For further information, please contact tbc

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Wed 27 May, '20
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Commitment lab meeting
Contact: Matt Chennels
Fri 29 May, '20
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The Communicative Mind reading group
Contact: Richard Moore

 

Fri 29 May, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 5: Sincerity: Lying and Other Styles of Deceit
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

Wed 3 Jun, '20
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Commitment lab meeting
Contact: Matt Chennels
Wed 3 Jun, '20
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Philosophy Department Colloquium: Carrie Figdor (University of Iowa)
By Zoom

Speaker: Carrie Figdor (University of Iowa)

Title: What could cognition be, if not human cognition?
Abstract: We have long thought about cognition from an anthropocentric perspective, where human cognition is treated as the standard for full-fledged capacities throughout the biological world. This makes no evolutionary sense. I will discuss the theoretical and methodological shifts away from this perspective in comparative research — shifts that lie behind recent discoveries of advanced cognition in many non-humans — and how these changes bear on the debate between those who see human and non-human cognition as continuous (a difference in degree) vs. those who see them as discontinuous (a difference in kind).
Fri 5 Jun, '20
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The Communicative Mind reading group
Contact: Richard Moore

 

Fri 5 Jun, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 6: Accuracy: A Sense of Reality
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

Thu 11 Jun, '20
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WMA WIP Giulia Luvisotto
Fri 12 Jun, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 7: What Was Wrong with Minos?
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

Wed 17 Jun, '20
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Philosophy Department Colloquium
By Zoom

Speaker: Sameer Bajaj (Warwick)

Title: "Democratic Mandates and the Ethics of Representation."

Democratic Mandates and the Ethics of Representation

A day after the Tories achieved a decisive victory in the December 2019 British general election, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared that he had received a “huge great stonking mandate” to get Brexit done and implement his domestic policy agenda. Whether or not what Johnson received is appropriately described as huge, great, or stonking, his statement reflects a more general idea that has wide currency in conventional democratic thought—namely, that larger electoral victories give representatives greater mandates to govern. Despite its important role in the practice of democratic politics, democratic theorists have paid little attention to the questions of whether larger electoral victories actually give representatives greater mandates to govern and, if so, what the moral implications of having a greater or lesser mandate are. My aim in this essay is to answer these questions and, in doing so, lay the groundwork for a normative theory of democratic mandates. I suggest that the key to answering the questions lies in understanding the relationship between two functions of democratic votes. Votes have a metaphysical function: they authorise representatives to govern. And votes have an expressive function: they express attitudes about the representatives they authorise. I defend what I call the dependence thesis: the content, size, and moral implications of a representative’s mandate depend on the attitudes expressed by the votes that generate the mandate. I then argue that, given certain ineliminable features of large-scale democratic politics, real-world democratic representatives are rarely in a position to justifiably claim greater mandates based on the size of their electoral victories.

Fri 19 Jun, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 8: From Sincerity to Authenticity
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

Mon 22 Jun, '20
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WMA WIP Barney Walker “Knowledge and Genealogy” via Teams
Barney Walker:
“Knowledge and Genealogy”

Abstract: In a footnote of Knowledge and its Limits Williamson argues that the genealogy of the concept of knowledge that Craig develops in Knowledge and the State of Nature is inconsistent with the knowledge-first view. In this paper I develop Williamson's argument and discuss the relationship between knowledge-first epistemology and genealogy more generally. I have two main objectives. The first is to show that Williamson's footnote contains the seeds of a powerful knowledge-first objection to the possibility of understanding knowledge genealogically. The second is to suggest an alternative answer to the question, at the heart of genealogical accounts, of why human beings possess the concept of knowledge. To do this, I draw on a claim Matt Soteriou has made about the role of knowledge in conscious thinking.

Contact: Lucy Campbell

Fri 26 Jun, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 9: Truthfulness, Liberalism and Critique
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

Fri 3 Jul, '20
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Truth and Truthfulness Webinar: Chapter 10: Making Sense and Endnote: The Vocabulary of Truth - An Example
By Zoom

Text: 'Truth and Truthfulness' by Bernard Williams (2002)

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