Category: Talks SOPhiA

Alfonso Romero Zuniga Universität Tübingen This talk critically examines the ontological distinction between events and processes, questioning whether such a divide is necessary. The standard account advocate a fundamental division based on linguistic distinctions (progressive/perfective, telic/atelic), where events are static, closed, perduring entities, while processes are dynamic, ongoing, enduring ones. I challenge this dualism, proposing…

Henning Kirschbaum Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz In this paper, I will argue that we use a heuristic to ascribe abilities, the obstacle heuristic. I show that once our use of this heuristic is understood, seemingly compelling arguments against free will can be rejected. The paper has two parts.In the first part, I will develop the obstacle…

Julia Knight Seton Hall University William Clifford argues in “The Ethics of Belief” that it is wrong to believe anything without sufficient evidence. This claim is problematic for religious beliefs, which typically do not rely on evidence for justification. Should all non-evidential religious beliefs be rejected to uphold Clifford’s principle? In this essay, I outline…

Saibiayi Alimu University of Macau Whether addiction is a pathology remains a controversial topic within the philosophy of medicine. Some debates focus on whether alcoholism should be regarded as a disease or as a brain disease (Fingerette, 1988; Segal, 2013; Heather, 2013; Heyman, 2009; Levy, 2013; Lewis, 2017; Pickard, 2022). Recently, the concept of behavioral…

Satbhav Voleti Università della Svizzera italiana “While writing La Disparition, Georges Perec intentionally never used the letter ‘e’. In other words, he omitted the use of the letter ‘e’. Does this sentence have as reference the omission of the use of letter ‘e’? If so, what is such an omission, metaphysically speaking? Clearly, Perec is…

Fabiola V. Cárdenas Maldonado National University of San Marcos (UNMSM, Peru) This presentation aims to highlight the practical consequences of conducting research based on grounded theory (GT), a methodological approach with significant influence within social science research communities. According to this perspective, the most effective way to engage with social reality is to allow theories…

Kristina Bogdan University of Vienna Within the ‘standard view’, consent is understood as a singular, intentional mental state directed at a specific act. However, this framework falls short of capturing the complexity of how consent is being communicated within sexual interactions. The aim of this paper is to explore how sexual consent can be effectively communicated. …

Antonina Jamrozik University of Warsaw, Faculty of Philosophy Inquisitive Semantics (cf. Ciardelli et al. 2018) is a powerful formal aparatus, designed mainy to formalise the idea that a conversation is not simply an exchange of information, but rather a game of raising and resolving issues. Most of the implementations are rather straightforward — questions are…

Xavier Piccone Colorado State University  In this paper I propose one approach to answering the question of how apparently intractable infinite systems help us understand the finite natural world. To do this I focus on the role of thermodynamic limit taking operations in statistical mechanics that explain critical behavior in fluids. I argue that the…

Brian Ortmann Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg Downward causation is causation between higher-level causes (e.g. mental ones) and lower-level effects (e.g. physical ones). Intuitively, there are many instances of downward causation. For example, if I form the desire to move, and subsequently move, my desire is a higher-level cause of my move…