Guest Speaker: Dr Irene Dal Poz (Warwick)

Title: 'Women in Philosophy in a Time of Crisis'

Please contact Giulia Lorenzo for details on how to join.

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

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information

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

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information

Guest Speaker: David Jenkins (Tel Aviv)

Title: 'Reasoning and Its Limits'

Reasoning and its limits

It is often argued that the extent to which it is not up to us how our reasoning unfolds undermines the natural idea that reasoning is a kind of action. I argue that the extent to which it is not up to us how our reasoning unfolds in fact fails to cast doubt on the idea that reasoning is a kind of action and instead reflects the kind of agential exercise which reasoning is. The limits to the extent to which it is up to us how our reasoning unfolds can in fact be explained via appeal to reasoning’s status as a kind of aim-directed action. This in turn paves the way for an explanation of how reasoning is a way for us to be active with respect to our attitudes.

Please contact Giulia Lorenzi for further information

Guest Speaker: Nishi Shah (Amherst College)

Title: 'John Stuart Mill's Neglected Argument for Free Speech'

Contact David Bather Woods for further information.

Guest Speaker: David Horst (Porto Alegre)

Title: Virtue, Skill and Epistemic Competence'

Abstract: Many virtue epistemologists conceive of epistemic competence on the model of skill—such as archery, playing baseball or chess­. In this paper, I argue that this is a mistake: epistemic competences and skills are crucially and relevantly different kinds of capacities. This, I suggest, undermines the popular attempt to understand epistemic normativity as a mere special case of the sort of normativity familiar from skillful action. In fact, as I argue further, epistemic competences resemble virtues, rather than skills—a claim that is based on an important, but largely overlooked, distinction between virtue and skill, one that Aristotle highlights in the Nicomachean Ethics. The upshot is that virtue epistemology should indeed be based on virtue, not on skill.

Guest Speaker: Barnaby Walker (Warwick)

Title: Knowledge and the State of Nature

In Knowledge and the State of Nature Edward Craig presents a genealogy of the concept of knowledge. In this paper I argue that no genealogy of the concept of knowledge that starts from our need for true beliefs, like Craig’s, can succeed. This is for a reason identified by Williamson in a footnote of Knowledge and its Limits: namely, that there is no reason to regard the need for true belief as being more basic than the need for knowledge. I buttress the argument of Williamson’s footnote and show that contemporary defenders of genealogy have failed to grasp its significance for the prospects of genealogy. I conclude with some thoughts about the larger idea, exemplified by Craig’s genealogy, that reflection on the position of the enquirer is crucial for gaining a philosophical understanding of knowledge.

Guest Speaker: Simon Wimmer (TU Dortmund)

Title: 'Cook Wilson's Inquiry Argument for the Indefinability of Knowledge'

Guest Speaker: Alex Geddes (Southampton)

Title: 'Suspending Judgement: A Corrective'

Rescheduled from 10 August:

Guest Speaker: Simon Wimmer (TU Dortmund)

Title: 'Cook Wilson's Inquiry Argument for the Indefinability of Knowledge'

Balloon Debate. A hot-air balloon carrying an array of philosophical folk is sinking, and needs to drop weight – who will stay and who will go? We’ll hear cases from Tom on Aristotle, Max on Zhuangzi, Andrew on Émilie du Châtelet, Stephen H on Immanuel Kant, Eileen on Jane Austen, and Daniele on Frantz Fanon.

If you would like to attend this event as a spectator, please email d.woods@warwick.ac.uk to be added to the invite. You are welcome to join for as much as you like.

Guest Speaker: John Hyman (UCL)

Title: 'Knowledge and Belief'

Getting the Most out of Your Degree

Led by David Bather Woods

Introduction: Biopolitics After Foucault

Led by Daniele Lorenzini

Guest Speaker: Eva Rafetseder (Stirling)

Title: TBC

Taking Effective Notes

Led by David Bather Woods

Biopolitics and the Corona Virus: Tim Christiaens (Ku Leuven)

Guest Speaker: Simon Wimmer (TU Dortmund)

Title: 'Lessons from Ryle?'

Understanding the Marking Criteria

Led by David Bather Woods

Guest Speaker: Michael Hardimon (UC, San Diego)

Title: 'How to Disentangle Race and Racism'

Guest Speaker: Eylem Õzaltun (Koç University)

Title: 'What is the Moral of Davidson's Carbon Copier? Towards an Anscombean Account of Practical Knowledge'

‘Pragmatics-First’ Approaches to Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language

Dorit Bar-On, University of Connecticut;

Director, Expression, Communication, and Origins of MeaningResearch Group (ECOM)

Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach to the subject. Seyfarth & Cheney (2017), for example, propose that “animal communication constitutes a rich pragmatic system” and that “the ubiquity of pragmatics, … suggest[s] that, as language evolved, semantics and syntax were built upon a foundation of sophisticated pragmatic inference”. I begin by distinguishing two different notions of pragmatics advocates of the ‘pragmatics-first’ approach have implicitly relied on (cf. Bar-On and Moore, 2018). On the first, Carnapian notion, pragmatic phenomena are those that involve context-dependent determination of the content or significance of an utterance or signal. On the second, Gricean notion, pragmatic phenomena involve reliance on speakers’ communicative intentions and their decipherment by their hearers. I use the distinction, first, to evaluate a recent formal linguistic analysis of monkey calls, due to Schlenker et al. (e.g. 2014, 2016a,b), which explains the derivation of call meanings through a form of pragmatic enrichment. And, second, I use the distinction to motivate the need for an ‘intermediary pragmatics’ that, I argue, applies only to a subset of animal communicative behaviors, and would allow us to reconceive the significance of animal communication for our understanding of the evolution of language.

Please contact Richard Moore for further information.

Top Tips for Take-Home Exams

Led by David Bather Woods

Guest Speakers: Benjamin Ferguson (Warwick) and Simon May (KCL)

Title: 'On Love'

Death in Biopolitics: Ege Selin Islekel (Fordham University)

Guest Speaker: Paul Silva (University of Cologne)

Title: 'Knowledge, Belief, and the Possession of Reasons'

Abstract. Lottery cases, cases of naked statistical evidence, fine-tuning arguments, and profiling evidence can provide a thinker with evidence that ensures a high probability in some claim p. Yet it's widely believed that p's being very probable on one's evidence is insufficient for justified belief that p and therefore also insufficient for knowing that p. Accordingly, lottery cases (etc.) are cases where justified belief and knowledge are inaccessible. This lesson seems to naturally extend to fine-tuning arguments (for theism or a multiverse) as well as profiling cases.

In this paper I provide cases where one's evidence is "statistical" in a way that parallels lottery cases (etc.) but, shockingly, our intuitions are reversed: these parallel cases are cases where high probability justifies belief and holds the promise of knowledge. Existing accounts of what goes wrong in cases of "merely statistical evidence" cannot explain the justificatory asymmetry between the parallel cases of statistical evidence. I examine two explanations. One builds on insights from Timothy Williamson. Another builds on insights from David Lewis. Lessons are drawn about the flaws and limitations of fine-tuning arguments as well as a certain class of arguments for the existence of moral encroachment on justification.