Spring Session 2014
Richard Woodward (University of Hamburg)
April 14 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Ontological Parsimony
Abstract: It is familiar that ontology matters to theory choice: more parsimonious theories should be preferred to less parsimonious ones. But as David Lewis pointed out, this Ockhamist principle can be understood in two ways, depending on whether parsimony is understood in quantitative or qualitative terms. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative parsimony is then used by Lewis to argue that his own theory of reality is in fact more parsimonious than one might suspect. Whether Lewis's argument is cogent remains a vexed question in the extant literature, and I shall argue that that once qualitative parsimony is properly understood, Lewis should concede that his defence fails and that his own theory is as qualitatively unparsimonious as any consistent theory could be.
Filippo Santoni De Sio (Technische Universiteit, Delft)
April 28 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Action, responsibility, culpability: lessons from Parks somnambulism
Abstract: In 1987 a man named Kenneth Parks was acquitted for the killing of his mother-in-law and the serious injury to his father-in-law, as it was proved that even if the killing and the injury had been done by him, he did them in a state of somnambulism. In this paper we address the question of Parks’ moral culpability, and we draw some general implications for the philosophy of action and the theory of responsibility. Even if it is almost unanimously held that Parks should not be held culpable for what he did, we think that it is an open and interesting philosophical question why it is the case that he is not culpable. We argue that the thesis of Parks non-culpability is compatible with at least two different accounts of Parks’ story, that we dub respectively the involuntariness account and the lack of basic responsibility account. We claim that only one of these justifications is correct, namely the lack of basic responsibility account. The first goal of this paper is to present the two accounts, to argue against the involuntariness account, and to argue for the lack of basic responsibility account. We think, however, that the contrast between the two justifications for Parks’ non-culpability reflects a more general contrast between two different approaches to the theory of action and responsibility. On the one hand, the involuntariness account arguably reflects a more coarse-grained theory of human action, and a simpler view of responsibility. On the other hand, the lack of basic responsibility account allows for a more fine-grained theory of action, and a more complex view of the varieties of responsibility. Hence, another important goal of the paper is to present these two different pairs of approaches to human action and responsibility, and to argue for the latter, that is for a more fine-grained theory of action and a more complex view of responsibility.
The conference will be in English
La partecipazione all’incontro è fortemente consigliata consigliata agli allievi della Scuola di Dottorato in Filosofia e Scienze dell’Uomo.
Andrea Iacona (University of Torino)
May 5 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Vagueness and Quantification
Abstract: This paper addresses the question of what it is for a quantifier expression to be vague. In the first part of the paper, a distinction will be drawn between two senses in which a quantifier expression may be said to be vague: one is intensional, the other is extensional. As it will be shown, a plausible account of this distinction is obtained by combining a standard assumption about the meaning of quantifier expressions with a precisificational account of vagueness. In the second part, it will be suggested that there is a coherent understanding of logical form according to which both kinds of vagueness can be represented at the level of logical form. The interesting and controversial conclusion that emerges from such representation that neither of intensional vagueness nor extensional vagueness requires a revision of classical logic.
The conference will be in English
La partecipazione all’incontro è fortemente consigliata consigliata agli allievi della Scuola di Dottorato in Filosofia e Scienze dell’Uomo.
Sven Rosenkranz (ICREA - Universitat de Barcelona)
May 19 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Nothing To Come - On A Dynamic Metaphysics of Time
(Talk based on joint work with Fabrice Correia, Université de Neuchâtel.)
Abstract: The Growing Block Theory of time, or GBT for short, conceives of temporal reality as being in a constant accumulative process of becoming: always things come to exist that did not exist before, while never anything ceases to exist. It is also an essential ingredient of GBT that always, there is an edge of becoming – a last moment preceding no other. We owe the idea of temporal reality as a growing block to C. D. Broad who, in his Scientific Thought (1923), provides us with a first characterisation of GBT. Broad’s characterisation has two shortcomings: it presupposes an ontology of exclusively instantaneous things in time, and it proves to lack the resources to adequately respond to the sceptical challenge that, for all we know, the edge of becoming is located, not in our present, but in the future – a challenge a statement of which we find in Bourne (2002), Braddon-Michtell (2004) and Merricks (2006). The difficulty to respond to the sceptical challenge is further aggravated by recent worries, expressed by Williamson in his 2013 Modal Logic as Metaphysics, that the notion of presentness, at work in both Broad’s version of GBT and standard formulations of presentism, proves too elusive to be theoretically illuminating. The aim is to come up with a clean and simple version of GBT that accommodates an ontology of non-instantaneous things in time, does not draw on any presentness-predicate in addition to familiar tense-logical and quantificational resources, and yet still proves strong enough to answer the sceptical challenge in a constructive way. Pursuit of this aim can thus be seen as an attempt to improve upon the characterisation, and defence, of GBT that we gave in earlier work (Correia and Rosenkranz 2013).
Alfredo Tomasetta (University of Bergamo)
May 26 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Mereological nihilism and the self
Abstract: Merelogical nihilists say that there only exist simple things, things without proper parts. And if mereological nihilism is true, then, probably I – and you – do not exist. Consider:
(N)
1) If I exist, then there is something, me, which has proper parts;
2) there are no such things (merelogical nihilism is true), so
3) I do not exist.
(Dorr-Rosen 2002; Sider 2013; Van Inwagen 1990). But how (N)’s conclusion could be true? Certainly my thoughts exist, and if they do, so do I: cogito ergo sum. So, granted the plausibility of premise 1), premise 2) – that is mereological nihilism – must be false. Against this cartesian critique to mereological nihilism, Dorr and Rosen (2002) have an answer. ‘Your’ thoughts do exist, but you do not: the activities of thought are carried out jointly by partless things; unless this idea cannot be showed to be incoherent, they say, (N) may well be a sound argument and nihilism is not refuted. Let us grant that from the somewhat vague idea that thougths are collectively performed by a plurality of simples one could not draw any contradiction – at least not in an obvious way. But conceding the prima facie consistency of this proposal is not to say that, as it stands, it is a convincing one. How exactly, metaphysically speaking, do the simples perform collectively the acts of thought? What exactly are, in this perspective, the acts of thought themselves? Rosen and Dorr do not offer clear answers to questions like these and, indeed, they do not even attempt to give one. In order to advance the debate, I consider three different ways to understand the nature of collective acts of thoughts and show them wanting.
References
Dorr-Rosen (2002) “Composition as Fiction”, in Gale (ed.) The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 151-174.
Sider (2013), “Against Parthood”, in Bennett-Zimmerman (eds.) Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, volume 8, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 237-293.
Van Inwagen (1990) Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Carola Barbero (University of Torino)
June 9 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Immoralism and Aestheticism
Abstract: Should the immorality of literature influence its aesthetic value? What is the relation between immorality (in fiction) and immorality tout court? Should literature impart moral lessons to readers? Actually, if one of literature’s duties were to educate or to impart knowledge, then it wouldn’t be a minor detail that of having the possibility to derive from it moral (instead of immoral) lessons (Nussbaum 1990). This paper calls into question the idea that this is really the central and fundamental function of literary works, i.e. that there is a relation between ethical value and literary value of a work. We will defend here (together with Posner 1997 and 1998, Kieran 2003) an immoralist position according to which literature can survive its moral faults, growing often precisely on accounting of them. In order to support this position for a sharp distinction between ethics and aesthetics it is enough to think to the classics, full of moral atrocities – murders, human and animal sacrifices, slavery, gratuitous violence, torture – and then far from moral edification, whose greatness of value is undisputed. So, since the world of literature is moral anarchy, it seems reasonable to presume that literature’s value resides somewhere else. We need recognize a genuine literary value of works according to which literature need to be considered an autonomous and non-cognitive discourse, detached from moral or other interests, and following its own methods and rules. This is not to deny that literature may also have an instrumental value, but simply to underline that moral edification shouldn’t be seen as one of its essential characteristics. Our interest should be in the intrinsic value of literature qua literature, and literature does not fail as literature when it prescribes an immoral response or when it tells immoral stories, but when its formal or structural features are not good or do not work. The work might be shocking or dangerous but not a literary failure in the way that a tragedy fails if it is not tragic or a horror fails if it is not horrific. We should therefore distinguish between a basic aesthetic or literary level – where ethics could be as much ignored as psychology, anatomy and politics are – and a higher level – where the connections between art and reality are considered as fundamental. At the aesthetic level readers are supposed to suspend those conventions holding in the real world. The opposition here is between formalism and moralism: according to formalism the preservation of literary value rests on the containment of literature as an autonomous and non cognitive discourse, according to moralism literary texts have ethical and cognitive values and effects in the world.
Rosanna Keefe (University of Sheffield)
June 16 MON — 12.30-14.30
Aula 435 — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Validity, normativity and degrees of belief
Abstract: The assessment of an argument as valid appears to have normative import in relation to how we should reason. Suppose we reject or question the standard definition of validity as necessary preservation of truth. Can we illuminate or characterise what it is for an argument to be valid by appealing to the distinctive normative role of valid arguments? And might such considerations help us in choosing between alternative logics, or at least in understanding what should guide such choices? I will ask how to characterise the normative role of validity, in particular when we consider that many of our beliefs are merely partial (in the sense we have some level of uncertainty in them). I will focus in particular on two principles that Hartry Field advocates and ask whether they can be used in characterisation of validity and/or to help illuminate choices between different logics that people might advocate or employ. I will argue that Field’s principles are not fit for this job and no alternative principles can retain the required neutrality either. The normative situation is derivative, complex and can vary with context; it cannot provide the key to understanding validity.
Giulia Felappi (King's College, London)
June 23 MON — 12.30-14.30
Sala Riunioni — Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Identity, 'that'-clauses and the allegedly face-value account
Abstract:
Complement clauses introduced by a ‘that’, which typically occur in sentences like
Olga believes that Cicero is smart
Olga’s reason is that Cicero is smart
It is true that Cicero is smart
It is possible that Cicero is smart
The proposition that Cicero is smart is true,
are usually called ‘that’-clauses. It is no exaggeration to say that for the past two thousand years or so we mostly all took for granted that ‘that’-clauses are singular terms. The traditional theory is also taken to be the face-value theory, i.e. the theory supposed to be in accordance with how things intuitively look.
In this paper, I will deal with what I take to be the strongest reason to reject the face-value theory, which is the datum that ‘that’-clauses simply do not behave like singular terms in identity statements. I will start by briefly discussing different strategies to resist the face-value theory that have been put forward in the literature and show why they do not seem either good or conclusive. Then I will present the stronger case of identity statements and what I will call the argument from identity to the effect that ‘that’-clauses are not singular terms. I will show that none of the possible attempts at resisting the argument seems promising. Still, the outcome will not be that the face-value theory is definitely false. The general conclusion will be that the theory does not have the special status of the face-value theory.