Subject: Music

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

Guest Speaker: Alan Millar (Stirling)

Title: 'Detached Factual Knowledge'

Programme

10.00am - Welcome

10.10am-11.10am - Quassim Cassam (Warwick): 'Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis'

11.10-11.20 - Break

11.20-12.20 - Bill Brewer (KCL): 'The Metaphysics of Perception and the Place of Consciousness in the Natural World'

12.20-12.30 - Break

12.30-1.30 - Adrian Moore (Oxford) 'The Possibility of Absolute Representations'

1.30-2.30 - LUNCH

2.30-3.30 - Matthew Soteriou (KCL): 'The First Person Perspective'

3.30-3.40 - Break

3.40-4.40 - M.G.F Martin (Oxford/Berkeley): Title TBC

Please contact Maria Corrado for further information.

Writing a Thesis Statement

Led by David Bather Woods

Guest Speaker: Tom Sorrell

Title: 'The Ethics of COVID-19 Surveillance'

Guest Speaker: Anton Ford (Chicago)

Title: 'The Objectification of Agency'

Guest Speaker: Rachel Dudley (CEU)

Title; 'The Pragmatics of Knowing'

Abstract:

 "Children’s understanding of propositional attitude reports (and their understanding of others’ minds) has played a central role in the study of cognitive development for several decades. Over the years, an orthodox perspective emerged whereby children fail to understand attitude reports, with sources of difficulty being syntactic, semantic or even conceptual in nature. This orthodoxy has also been ported over into other fields such as epistemology and philosophy of mind. However, a wave of findings from new methods and analyses has cast this orthodoxy into doubt. These new findings suggest that even infants have a greater understanding of mental state concepts than we once suspected, and that the apparent difficulties in later childhood stem from pragmatic sources. Resolving the conflict between these new findings and the orthodox perspective is critical to understanding the development of children’s minds and their language faculties, but the debate is far from settled.

In this talk, I’ll discuss my research on children’s understanding of the attitude verbs "know" and "think" and how it relates to the broader conflict. While both verbs can be used to describe beliefs, there are subtle differences between them. As a factive verb, "know" only felicitously describes true beliefs about propositions which we take for granted. In contrast, the non-factive "think" can describe false beliefs or beliefs which we do not take for granted. Using a combination of behavioral methods and corpus analyses, I investigate how children come to master this subtle contrast. Results from this line of research highlight the importance of pragmatic cues to the language acquisition process, particularly from the different kinds of discourse moves that adults make in everyday conversation (e.g., I think it's time for bed, Do you know where my keys are?). Results also suggest that we are sensitive to related pragmatic factors even much later in development. Ultimately, this supports a broader picture where older children’s errors with attitude reports are pragmatic performance errors and not deeper conceptual or semantic errors, highlighting the need for more research on the interplay between semantic and pragmatic development in early development."

Subject: Contemporary Visual Art

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

Editing and Drafting Your Work

Led by David Bather Woods

Guest Speaker: Miguel de Beistegui (Warwick)

Title: 'Stupidity and Racism'

Biopolitics and the Changing Use of Statistics: Laurence Barry (Hebrew University, Jerusalem)

Guest Speaker: Johannes Roessler (Warwick)

Title: 'Perceptual Self-Knowledge and Doxastic Self-Determination'

Abstract. According to a widely held view of the nature of belief (which I label the Activity thesis, AT), beliefs belong to the ‘active side’ of the human mind. In this paper I explore a challenge to AT. I argue that reflection on the distinctive immediacy of perceptual knowledge, as we ordinarily understand it, puts pressure on an assumption informing AT, viz. that reasons for belief can always coherently be treated as a basis for ‘making up one’s mind’. Our best reasons for perceptual beliefs, I suggest, manifestly entail that we hold the belief they support, and so imply that our minds are already made up. (For example, one's best reason for believing that p may be 'I can see that p'.) I do not mean to suggest that perceptual beliefs should therefore be classified as belonging to the 'passive side' of the human mind. Rather, I think we should question the exhaustiveness (and perhaps usefulness) of the active vs passive distinction, as it has been employed in the philosophy of mind.

Guest Speaker: Angie Hobbs (Sheffield)

Title: 'Is Ancient Greek Philosophy Any Use in a Pandemic'

Managing Your Workload and Getting "Stuff" Done over Christmas!

Guest Speaker: Miriam Schoenfield (Austin, Texas)

Title: 'Can Bayesianism Accommodate Higher Order Defeat?'

Guest Speaker: Leda Berio (HHU, Düsseldorf)

Title: "Talking about Thinking: Language Acquisition and False Belief Reasoning"

Subject: Literature

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

This event is an information session geared towards undergraduates who may be interested in further study, or just curious to learn more. Please contact Dr Thomas Crowther for further information.

The Film Club will be discussing the short documentary 30% (Women and Politics in Sierra Leone) and exploring the themes of gender and social collaboration. To be added to the dedicated mailing list and MS Team group and receive further information, please send an email to Sailee (organiser) via sailee.khurjekar@warwick.ac.uk.

Guest Speaker: Guy Longworth (Warwick)

Title: 'Unsettling Questions'

Abstract: "Should we expect someone who knows by seeing to be in a position positively to settle the questions “How do you know?” “Why do you think so?” or “Are you sure?"? I begin to address that large question by defending the following claims. We should not expect someone who knows by seeing that p to be in a position to know how they know that p (§2). However, we should expect someone who knows by seeing that p to have sufficient reasons for thinking that p, but—in light of the first claim—we should not expect their seeing what they do to figure amongst their reasons. A further issue that will figure in the background to the discussion here concerns how, if at all, sensory awareness of things can furnish one with reasons for thinking things so (§3). Despite the fact that one who knows by seeing need not know how they know and need not have amongst their reasons that they see what they do, still their seeing what they do can play an important role in establishing surety (§4)."

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information.

Guest Speaker: Kristina Musholt (Leipzig)

'Biopolitics and Deconstruction'

Guest Speaker: Naomi Waltham-Smith (Warwick)

Guest Speaker: Andy Hamilton (Durham)

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

We will be discussing the documentary film Paris Is Burning and the themes of drag and sexuality in America. To be added to the dedicated mailing list and MS Team group and receive further information, please send an email to Sailee (organiser) via sailee.khurjekar@warwick.ac.uk.

Guest Speaker: Edward Harcourt (Oxford)

You are warmly invited to our next Philosophy Balloon Debate. What is a balloon debate, you ask? Some philosophical folk are trapped on a sinking hot air balloon. To stay afloat, they need to drop weight. Staff and students from Philosophy will answer questions to determine who stays and who goes. Featuring:

Barney Walker on David Hume

David James on Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Guy Longworth on Gottlob Frege

Diarmuid Costello on Marcel Duchamp (WILD CARD)

Jae Hetterley on Edith Stein (PGR)

Toby Tremlett on Simone de Beauvoir (UG)

This is a Philosophy community event co-organised with PhilSoc. Everyone is welcome – UGs, PGTs, PGRs, and all staff. Please contact David Bather Woods for further information.

'Transgressive Resistance and Biopolitics'

Guest Speaker: Guilel Treiber (KU Leuven)

Guest Speaker: Jessica Keiser (Leeds)

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

Guest Speaker: Richard Moore (Warwick