Week 4, Friday 17 May, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Professors Flippo Ferrari and Sebastiano Moruzzi (University of Bologna)
Week 6, Friday 31 May, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
David Papineau (CUNY): ‘Against Norms of Knowledge’
Intuitive support for norms of knowledge (governing assertion, belief and action) comes largely from lottery-like cases in which high confidence is causally unconnected with the facts at issue. I shall argue against knowledge norms precisely because of what they advise in such cases. Where they make a difference, they lead us astray. (I shall also consider the role knowledge plays in our emotional engagement with the world, and show that this too lends no support to knowledge norms.)
Week 7, Monday 3 June, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Debate – Paul Boghossian vs. Tim Williamson: ‘Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology’
Week 8, Friday 14 June, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Max Baker-Hytch (Oxford)
Hilary Term 2024
Week 3, Friday 2 February, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Professor Thomas Kroedel (University of Hamburg): ‘Epistemic Obligations’
When we look at particular cases, it seems plausible that we are sometimes obligated to have certain beliefs. Can we say anything more systematic about these obligations? It would be nice if we could formulate sufficient conditions for being obligated to believe. In the talk, I discuss what seem to be the best candidates for such conditions and argue that they fail, because the structure of what is invoked in the conditions is at odds with the structure of obligation.
Week 7, Friday 1 March, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Carlo Rovelli (Rotman Institute of Philosophy): ‘Neither Presentism nor Eternalism’
Modern physics shows that the intuitive notion of a global “present time” is at odds with experience. A worldview of reality now existing in the present (“Presentism”) is therefore not compatible with current knowledge. Several philosophers (starting with Putnam) and some physicists have argued that this implies a “block” view of spacetime, where change is illusory (“Eternalism”). I argue that positing the alternative between Presentism and Eternalism is misunderstanding modern physics, which provides a worldview far from either of these alternatives. I use this textbook case to show that conceptual clarity must follow, not preceed, knowledge, because new knowledge sometimes require a serious conceptual reframing.
(The presentation will be based on (but expanded upon) the two papers CR, “Neither Presentism nor Eternalism”, Foundations of Physics, 49(12), 1325-1335. arXiv:1910.02474, and CR, “The Old Fisherman’s Mistake”, Metaphilosophy 53 (2022) 567-746, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/18837.)
Week 8, Friday 8 March, 3-5pm | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
TBC
TBC
Michaelmas Term 2023
See below for our events this term in Michaelmas 2023. This term, our events will take place on Fridays in Weeks 1, 5 and 8 at the Oxford Faculty of Philosophy building (Lecture room, Radcliffe Humanities) from 3:00pm to 5:00 pm. We look forward to seeing you there!
Week 1, Friday 13 October, 3-5pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Eleanor Knox: ‘Functionalism Fit for Physics’
Functionalist reasoning is increasingly popular in the philosophy of physics. Where authors are clear on their form of functionalism, they often appeal to functionalism in the tradition of David Lewis. Such functionalism involves establishing the functional role of some term in a higher-level theory in the service of finding realizers of the functional role in a lower-level theory. Its aim is ultimately reduction. This talk, based on joint work with David Wallace, will suggest that this kind of functionalism is a poor fit for physics. The philosophy of physics is better served by a form of functionalism that is not explicitly reductive, and has more in common with the philosophy of Dennett than of Lewis.
Professor Knox will be dining with the Jowett Society and other members of the Philosophy Faculty after the talk and we would be delighted if you would join us. Please send Imogen a message at imogen.rivers@philosophy.ox.ac.uk by Friday 8 October to guarantee your spot.
Week 8, Friday 1 December, 3-5pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Tom Sterkenburg: ‘Epistemology and theory of machine learning’
We’ve had a busy academic year 2022-2023. See below for some of our recent events!
Trinity Term 2023
Week 7, Friday 9 June, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
L A Paul: ‘Value by Acquaintance’
L.A. Paul is the Millstone Family Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University. Her research explores questions about the nature of the self, preference change, subjective value, temporal experience, philosophical methodology, causation, time, perception, mereology, constitution, and essence.
Abstract: I argue, first, that we should recognize the importance of knowing how to value, second, that we can frame knowing how to value in intellectualist terms, and third, that an intellectualist treatment of knowing how to value, viewed through a computational lens, can be leveraged to develop new perspectives on topics in practical reasoning and decision making.
Week 6, Friday 2 June, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Patricia Blanchette: ‘Conceptual Analysis in Logic and Mathematics’
This talk investigates the connection between conceptual analysis and foundational work in mathematics, with particular reference to the history of geometry. We’ll explore the rise of modern logic at the turn of the 20th century, and what appears to be a diminished role of conceptual analysis once modern formal languages take center stage.
Week 5, Friday 26 May, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Marc Lange: ‘Inference to the Best Explanation and the Confirmation of Mathematical Conjectures by Mathematical Evidence’
Non-deductive arguments for unproved mathematical hypotheses play crucial roles in mathematics. Some of these arguments operate by “inference to the best explanation” (IBE). To justify this interpretation, I will elaborate IBE in science and explanation in mathematics. I will then put these together to argue that sometimes mathematicians justly use IBE in confirming the truth of mathematical conjectures. I will give some examples of this reasoning from mathematical history and practice, give a Bayesian account of how IBE works, and briefly examine the concepts of mathematical coincidence and natural mathematical properties and kinds.
Week 4, Friday 19 May, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Ernest Sosa (Rutgers): ‘Dawning Light Epistemology and Its Implications for Methodology and Internalism’
Week 3, Friday 12 May, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Isaac Wilhelm (The National University of Singapore): ‘Centering Perfect Naturalness’
I argue that the semantic values of some indexical expressions—such as `I’, `here’, and `now’—are perfectly natural. The main argument appeals to facts about reference in worlds featuring many duplicate copies of agents. Versions of this argument also appeal to principles of contemporary cosmology, and to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Week 2, Friday 5 May, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Markus Schrenk: ‘Special Science Laws and The Problematic Properties of Better Best Systems’
The Better Best System Account (BBSA) of the laws of nature is a modifcation of the Lewisian Best Systems Account (BSA), but unlike the BSA that relys on perfectly natural predicates/properties for its system formulation, the BBSA can successfully be executed for any arbitrary but fixed set of predicates/properties. This affords the possibility to launch system analyses separately for each of the special sciences.
However, unnoticed challenges arise: What are the boundaries between the different sets of properties that demarcate the sciences (if there are any)? Also, the BBSA is in danger of depicting the whole of sciences as a patchwork of unrelated, maybe even contradictory systems. Is there a unity or a hierarchy to be found after all? The latter issues concern the interrelations across separate best systems and their properties. Relating to scientific progress, there are internal issues as well: as a science develops it hosts different sets of properties. System analyses for different property sets, however, might well be incommensurable. How can the BBSA account for this?
This talk aims to offer tentative solutions to these challenges but it remains critical.
Week 1, Friday 28 April, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Orly Shenker: ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: Functionalism is Dualism’
During the second half of the 20th century it appeared as if we no longer need to face the dilemma between materialism and dualism: varieties of so-called Non-Reductive Physicalism (NRP) promised a third option, and became the dominant view in the philosophy of mind, as well as in understanding the role and nature of the special sciences. Most popular among the varieties of NRP are varieties of functionalism, and among those the most popular view is computational functionalism, which is the basis for scientific research programs like computational neuroscience. However, this whole line of thinking is misguided: two major problems lurk at the foundations of NRP, and their analysis shows that the availability of a third option was an illusion, since it is an incoherent view: to remain coherent we need to decide between reductive physicalism (such as the recently developed theory called Flat Physicalism) and (any form of) non-reductive dualism (I don’t discuss idealism and varieties of double-aspect theories). In this talk, I will discuss mainly one of the two major problems with NRP, namely, that of multiple realizability, and if time permits will comment also on the second major problem, that of multiple computations.
Hilary Term 2023
Week 8, Friday 10 March, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Inkeri Koskinen: ‘Unifying the notion of objectivity’
Several philosophers of science have recently attempted to bring some unity to the notion of scientific objectivity. These attempts typically start from the observation that there seem to be several distinct meanings of objectivity, but continue by arguing that these meanings have more in common than has yet been recognised. I will compare and contrast these attempts, focusing on two aspects. First, the attempts to capture the different meanings of objectivity within one account can be divided in three: positive accounts which refer to some advantageous elements that the things we call objective share (e.g. Zahle 2020), negative accounts that name harmful elements that are missing from what we call objective (e.g. Koskinen 2020), and contextual accounts where the meaning of objectivity stems from the context (e.g. Montuschi 2020; Cartwright et al. 2022). Second, while some of the proposed accounts are attempts to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for objectivity (e.g. Hoyningen-Huene 2023), most aim at something else (e.g. Wilholt 2022). In the light of my analysis of this ongoing discussion, I will defend a view of what this “something else” should be.
Week 6, Friday 24 February, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Jan Hertrich-Woleński: ‘How to Define Logic’
Logic is defined in various ways. For instance, Petrus Hispanus a medieval logician said that dialectica (that is, logic) est art artium et scientia scientiarum ad omnium aliarum scientiarum methodorum principia viam habent (logic is the art of all arts and science of sciences, which provides methods for all other sciences). This definition indirectly implies that logic is fundamental and universal. The paper concerns logic in its formal or mathematical understanding. Logic and its properties are analyzed via metalogical devices, particularly – the concept of consequence operation. More specifically, logic (as a logical system) is defined as the set of consequences of the empty set. This approach corresponds to the idea that theorems of logic are universally true (true in all models or possible worlds).
Week 5, Friday 17 February, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Benjamin Schnieder: ‘Because’
The connective ‘because’ is standardly used to give explanations of wordly facts. Anna says ‘The Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg,’ and thereby causally explains the occurrence of an event in terms of another. But there is another, non-standard use of ‘because’ in which it seems to have an epistemic point instead of a wordly one. The talk will put this use under scrutiny.
Week 4, Friday 10 February, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Ben Page: ‘Thinking about Divine Timelessness, presentism, and some objections’
Are multiple non-temporally related presentist timelines possible? Do only some forms of presentism allow for this? Should we think no forms do? Speaking to these and other related questions, as well as bringing out the oddities of such a view, are what I will discuss in this talk. For those more theologically minded, these questions will also be relevant as to whether a timeless God, traditionally conceived, is compatible with presentism, as this is just a special case of the broader question asked. Due to this, I also hope to show how thinking about multiple non-temporally related presentist timelines can help answer an objection based on omniscience against divine timelessness and then, if time, briefly think about whether there could possibly be causal connections between these timelines.
Week 3, Friday 3 February, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Tushar Menon: ‘Inferential Scientific Realism‘
A key scientific realist commitment is that scientific expressions, in some sense, correspond to entities or structures out there in the world. This commitment often follows from trying to cash out the suggestion that our best scientific theories make claims that are (at least approximately) true. Here, truth is understood correspondence-theoretically, and correspondence is understood in terms of a relation of representation (usually reference/denotation) between scientific terms and entities or structures in the world. The way this works is that we first understand the meanings of scientific terms, then compose those terms to construct and adjudicate truth-apt claims, and on that basis, assess the quality of particular scientific inferences; on this `representationalist’ view, representation grounds meanings and inference.
One problem with standard scientific realism, as structural realists have argued, is that the semantic machinery of `truth’ and `reference’ is ill-suited to the representational demands of modern mathematised physics. The modern structural realist suggestion, then, is to seek more appropriate semantic machinery. But even the most sophisticated versions of structural realism operate within a representationalist approach. And that, I argue, is really where the trouble originates.
So in this talk, following the Sellars-Brandom tradition, I argue that the semantic order of explanation should be reversed: a scientific expression gets its meaning via the scientific inferences in which it is caught up. I demonstrate that one can adapt and generalise to theories of physics Brandom’s expressivist-inferentialist machinery, in order to get a better handle on how expressions in such theories get their meaning; here inference grounds meaning and representation. The inferentialist analysis of scientific representation that I offer allows me to develop a view on which scientific inferences implicit within specific practices determine bespoke semantic machinery that, under some circumstances, captures and justifies the scientific realist impulse.
Week 2, Friday 27 January, 3:30-5.30pm
Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities
Aaron Cotnoir (University of St Andrews): ‘Unity and Carving: the Case of Networks’
Mereological thinking is typically guided by two different metaphors: building vs. carving. The building picture treats wholes as constructed from fundamental bits; the carving treats wholes as the result of carving some interconnected space. Contemporary metaphysics has been dominated by the building metaphor, but I’ll put forward some considerations in favour of the carving picture, and connect it to central notions of naturalness and unity. The main aim of the talk is to investigate how to carve up relational networks in natural ways. Our test case is the space of powers — a network of manifestation/triggering connections that can be modelled graph-theoretically along the lines of Bird (2007) and Tugby (2013). I’ll show how to identify principles governing ‘carving’ the web into groups of closely connected powers, such that one group can naturally be called ‘part’ of another group, and explore the resulting mereology.
Week 1, Friday 20 January, 3:30-5.30pm
Daniel Bonevac (University of Texas): ‘Aquinas’ Third Way’
Aquinas’s third way of demonstrating God’s existence has received little scholarly respect in the past few decades. The consensus seems to be that it commits logical fallacies and assumes an implausible metaphysical principle of plenitude. But those objections stem from a temporal interpretation of Aquinas’s language which, though reasonable in most contexts, conflicts with his overall pattern of using that language. I take seriously his description of the third way as modal—the way from possibility and necessity—and show that the argument so construed is valid, resting on an actualist conception of ontological dependence and independence.
Michaelmas 2022
For the Michaelmas Term 2022, meetings will take place either on Microsoft Teams or in the Lecture Room in the building of the Faculty of Philosophy on Fridays from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm. We appreciate your understanding that the Society will adapt following the University and Department guidelines.
Week 4
The Jowett Society
Michael Strevens (NYU) — Grasp and Scientific Understanding
Online Event
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82996849808?pwd=Tm5wbzhsSjVlM0dUSENBazhFS1IxUT09
Meeting ID: 829 9684 9808
Passcode: 086013
Week 5
The Jowett Society
Donald Hoffman (UC Irvine) — Conscious Agents, Decorated Permutations, and the Construction of Spacetime
Online Event — Exceptionally starting at 4:30
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82790454813?pwd=MGt2NlM5K251WDlEWDRQSFFhZ1N4Zz09
Meeting ID: 827 9045 4813
Passcode: 271300
Week 6
The Jowett Society
Ard Louis (Oxford) — Why the world is simple
In-Person Event
Week 8
The Jowett Society
Sam Carter (ACU) — Forthcoming
In-Person Event
The Jowett Society 