Category: Talks SOPhiA

Dimana Orlinova Anastassova Roma Tre University In the evolving landscape of natural language processing (NLP), Large Language Models (LLMs) have achieved unprecedented results, reigniting the debate on whether machines can understand language [12, 6, 3, 2]. However, despite their successes in NLP tasks, scholars believe that LLMs still struggle significantly with natural language understanding (LU)…

Max Forster Stanford University How should agents adjust their credences when faced with higher-order de-feat? According to level-splitters, agents may rationally retain their first-ordercredence, while lowering their higher-order confidence that their credence isthe right one to have. Steglich-Petersen (2019) endorses a version of level-splitting, but adds an important requirement: higher-order defeat rationallyrequires agents to lower…

Tyler Miniati University of Florida Whether abductive reasoning (more commonly known as “inference to the best explanation”) can be synthesized with Bayesianism is a central question in contemporary philosophy of science and epistemology. A common proposal is that abduction is a (perhaps heuristic) method for estimating or constraining the Bayesian probabilities of explanations. In “Can…

Simon Eggersmann Heidelberg University The sensitivity account of knowledge is a famous but rarely defended theory in contemporary epistemology. Most commonly, it is rejected on the basis of its denying plausible principles of epistemic closure, i.e., there are cases in which S knows a proposition p, competently deduces q from p, and yet fails to…

David Lussi University of Bern According to explanationism about normative reasons, a fact is a reason for an agent to φ insofar as it explains a normative fact related to the agent and φ-ing. One influential version of this view, good-explanationism, holds that reasons are facts that explain what would be good. A standard objection…

Jana Baum University of Leipzig In his paper The Search for Logically Alien Thought (1992) Conant argues that the idea of a logical alien – a being that thinks in a way that is fundamentally different and, in that sense, in disagreement with the way we do – is unintelligible. The insight is that whenever…

Essence Ujah University of Innsbruck This paper introduces a broader concept of epistemic injustice called Educational Epistemic Injustice (EEI), that addresses the wrong done to someone not just in their capacity as knowers, but also in their attempts to become knowers. Existing accounts of epistemic injustice have been limited to wrongs done to someone in…

Emese Havadtői Central European University In this talk, I examine a metaethical approach that locates normative truth within agents while rejecting the Kantian attempt to ground morality in rationality alone. The leading example of such a view is Sharon Street’s Humean constructivism, which offers an agent-relative account of normative truth, grounding it in psychological states.…

Caterina Lupieri University of Trieste This paper examines a set of Italian insults formed through pejorative suffixation applied to socially connoted bases (e.g., donnuccola ‘woman+DIM.DEROG’, poveraccio ‘poor+DEROG’, dottoruncolo ‘doctor+DIM.DEROG’) within the framework of the Presuppositional Account of Hybrid Evaluatives and argues that they can contribute to philosophical theories on slurs and hate speech. The analysis…

Ruoyun Yu King’s College London In most recent discussions of Frege’s Puzzle it is treated as a puzzle about substitution failure in attitude reports (e.g., Kripke, 1979; Salmon, 1986; Soames, 1987; Sosa, 1996; Braun, 1998). The puzzle, so construed, is supposed to be solved when we have a plausible answer of why such substitutions go…