Category: Talks SOPhiA

Stavros Ioannidis & Stathis Psillos National and Kapodistrian University of Athens In our (2022) book Mechanisms in Science: Method or Metaphysics?, we argued that mechanisms in science are causal pathways that produce the phenomena. We have offered this general characterisation of mechanism as one that, in contrast to more well-known alternative accounts, is primarily a…

David Lanius University of Salzburg The classical notion of bullshit requires that speakers make an assertion, are indifferent to its truth and seek to conceal their indifference. In this talk I examine “bald-faced bullshit,” a form of bullshit characterized by the speaker’s unconcealed indifference to the truth, which is, as I argue, a prevalent rhetorical…

Ophelia Deroy Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich How do we know when to trust what we see, hear, or feel? Many philosophers say that if our senses work reliably, that’s enough to justify our beliefs. But this raises an immediate question: how can we know when our senses are reliable? This talk explores a new answer.…

DeGruyter Session You’ve completed your dissertation—congratulations! Now what? Many early-career scholars wonder how (or whether) to publish their dissertation. But here’s the catch: most dissertations aren’t ready-made books, and many academic publishers don’t accept them as they are. In this session, Christoph Schirmer from De Gruyter Brill will explore how to transform your dissertation into…

A Graduate Workshop on Conspiracy Theories Organisation: Veronika Lassl, Piet Fritz Pankratz, Irmena Tsankova, Eric Wallace (WFAP – Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy) Schedule 15:50 – 16:30 Melina Tsapos (Lund University) 16:30 – 16:45 Break 16:45 – 17:25 Keith Harris (University of Vienna) 17:25 – 17:40 Break 17:40 – 18:20 Julia Duetz (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)…

Tobias Lipinski University of Bonn The current discourse surrounding platform-based Social Network Sites (SNS) is marked by a striking duality: on the one hand, it is highly fragmented; on the other, it increasingly serves as an indicator of crisis. SNS today appear as manifestations of a “polluted media landscape” (Phillips & Milner, 2021), where hate…

Patrick J. Winther-Larsen University of St Andrews In this two-part paper, I discuss the subject of public blame, i.e., instances of verbal blame that are expressed in the presence of an audience. This includes cases where the wrongdoer is blamed in front of an audience or where the blamer addresses an audience in their absence.…

Sarah Köglsperger University of Fribourg Attitudes and emotions are commonly taken not to be under our direct voluntary control. Thus, it also seems impossible for there to be obligations to have certain attitudes and emotions since the inability to voluntarily control them seems to violate the “ought implies can” principle. Call this the Control Problem.…

Gideon Noß University of Bonn “Semantic paradoxes like Curry’s paradox arise in every language with sufficient expressive power to be able to express self-referential sentences and contain a naive truth predicate. They question our beliefs about rationality and valid reasoning, as they seem to lead from acceptable premises to unacceptable conclusions with otherwise acceptable reasoning.…

Yannis Anagnostoudis KU Leuven I explore the application of metaphysical naturalness, as conceptualized by David Lewis, to natural law theory, arguing that this framework can resolve longstanding issues within the field. I posit that while natural law is grounded in moral properties, it is not “”perfectly natural”” in the same way as fundamental physical properties…