Category: Talks SOPhiA

Johannes Nystrom Stockholm University When scientists seek further confirmation of the result of a scientific model, they often try to replicate it in a variety of different models that share the same theoretical core. If successful, the result is said to be robust. Traditionally, the confirmation value of robustness has been understood as being based…

Jan Rostek Jagiellonian University I argue that recent arguments designed to give more credibility to dualism with mental causation at the expense of epiphenomenalism are invalid and that the former, which can be dubbed causal dualism, should not be treated as a default option for dualists.Metaphysicians with dualist tendencies might end up as epiphenomenalists or…

Gabriel Malagutti University of Lisbon Non-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, is the view that all one needs in order to justify testimonial acceptance, is the lack of negative reasons – defeaters. Lackey (2008) has introduced the biggest challenge to non-reductionist accounts of testimony: The Alien Case. Perrine (2014) published a reply to Lackey, arguing…

Damiano Ranzenigo University of Konstanz I aim at presenting some puzzles about the concept of ‘existential self-identification’ (ESI, from now on), according to which some people come to consider some of their strong and intrinsic evaluative states as constitutive of how they conceive of their lives as meaningful. Examples of existentially self-identifying people are found…

Ugur Yilmazel FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant assumes that in moral imputation we can never determine the real merit and guilt of actions. It is impossible to figure out to what extent natural inclination or grounds of reason play a role in bringing about a course of action, Kant says. As…

Ufuk Özbe FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg Is sex by deception always a serious wrong? It is, as long as the deception relates to a fact that, if known to the partner, would have been a dealbreaker, no matter how irrelevant the fact may seem. That is the dealbreaker view, notably propounded by Dougherty (2013). In my talk,…

Sabina Domínguez Parrado ILLC, University of Amsterdam Some authors argue that truth is a normative concept, for it sets the normative standards for assertion or belief (see e.g. Boghossian 2003; Engel 2013; Lynch 2009; Ferrari 2009; McHugh 2014; Price 1998 ; Wedgwood 2002). Opponents of deflationism argue that if truth is normative, then deflationism cannot…

Drishtti Rawat Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The normative non-naturalist realist holds that normative truths must exist because they are indispensable to deliberation (for David Enoch, 2011) or because they improve the coherence of theories in the normative domain (for Thomas Scanlon, 2014). In this paper, I first argue that these reasons do not justify the realist’s…

Vasiliki Xiromeriti Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University It is widely accepted that scientific knowledge is a social achievement. Scientific inquiry builds on collaborative interactions among experts who divide the labor. Mutual criticism and argumentation, institutionalized in the form of academic journals and scientific events, are also believed to bear epistemic benefits to the scientific community,…

Andreas Frenzel LMU (MCMP) In this article, I will take a look at the implementation problem of conceptual engineering as proposed by Max Deutsch, which consists in the idea that conceptual engineers are unable to change the semantic meaning of a term and that merely changing the speaker’s meaning is trivial. I will start by…