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Upcoming (or the most recent) talks are shown
first. Past talks are located toward the bottom. Talks by former faculty
are not shown.
Lars
Vinx (Department of Philosophy)
Constitutional Indifferentism and Republican Freedom
Time & Place: Fri 26 Sep 2008 at 12:40 in FA120
This paper argues that the neo-republican conception of political freedom as
non-domination, as developed by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, is either too
undemanding to have much critical force or too demanding to sustain stable
political order. In either case, the conception of political freedom as
non-domination will fail to be of any use as a guidepost to constitutional
design or reform.
Hilmi Demir (Department of Philosophy)
The Verdict Still Stands: The Counterfactual Theory of Information is a
Genuine, but a Weak Alternative
Time & Place: Fri 9 May 2008 at 12:40 in FA120
Cohen and Meskin [2006] claim that the counterfactual theory of information
fares better than the standard probabilistic account [Dretske 81] on three
grounds: first, it provides a better framework for explaining information flow
properties; second, it requires a less expensive ontology; and third, because it
does not refer to doxastic states of the information-receiving organism, it
provides an objective basis. Demir [2008] responds that none of these is really
an advantage. Moreover, Cohen and Meskin are mistaken in applying their
criticism of the standard probabilistic account to Shannon's mathematical theory
of communication. Cohen and Meskin [forthcoming] accept their mistake in regards
to Shannon's theory. However, they reject the first part of Demir's response.
They still insist that the counterfactual theory of information fares better.
Their response has three components. First, information flow properties that
Demir [2008] mentions are just intuitions about information flow and they are
not relevant for a technical theory of information. Second, because of
deflationary accounts of counterfactuals semantics, the counterfactual theory of
information does not require possible worlds. Thus, it still provides a less
expensive ontology. Third, Demir's [2008] suggestion about the recursive
character of the informational content does not solve the problem of reference
to doxastic states.
In this work in progress, I plan to rebut Cohen and Meskin's three claims.
Here is how it goes. First, intuitions about information flow are relevant and
important unless independent reasons are given for doubting them. Even Shannon
himself developed his technical theory on the basis of three basic intuitions
about information flow. And hardly anybody doubts that Shannon's theory is a
technical one. Second, deflationary semantic accounts of natural laws are
available to the standard probabilistic theory of information. Thus, as claimed
in my 2008, on the account of less expensive ontology, the result is a tie
between the counterfactual theory and the standard account. So, the verdict
still stands. Lastly, reference to doxastic states is eliminable in the standard
account, because the standard account assumes that information is objective and
the ultimate informational content of a signal does not depend on any doxastic
state. Once again, the verdict still stands.
Simon Wigley (Department of Philosophy)
Ulterior Motives and the Doctrine of Fair
Avoidability
Time & Place: Thu 1 May 2008 at 12:40 in FA120
One influential account of responsibility contends that (i) an agent should
not incur a cost, such as punishment or deprivation, for which they did not have
the adequate opportunity to avoid and that (ii) an assessment of the agent's
reasons for action has no bearing on whether they should incur such a cost (or
at least can only have a bearing if the cost was adequately avoidable). Call
this the Doctrine of Fair Avoidability (DFA). I will argue that there is
a category of cases where the cost was not adequately avoidable and yet the
quality of the agent's will means that she should bear the cost.
Sandy Berkovski (Department of Philosophy)
A Bayesian Account of Historical Contingency
Time & Place: Fri 11 Apr 2008 at 12:40 in FA120
I offer a Bayesian way of characterizing chancy historical events. Such
events, I suggest, are, first, neutral to the dominant hypothesis of the given
historical narrative and, second, refute at least one prediction yielded by that
hypothesis. In the later half of the paper I examine and reject alternative
approaches that interpret chancy events either as chaotic, or as causally
undetermined, or as products of a surprising collision of causal chains.
Liz
Disley (Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas)
Re-enchanting Nature - Hegel and the Unboundedness of
the Conceptual
Time & Place: Fri 4 Apr 2008 at 12:40 in FA120
The aim of this paper is to explore some possible
conclusions for Hegelian philosophy, and particularly his concept of
self-consciousness, that can be drawn from John McDowell's discussion of the
unboundedness of the conceptual and the interplay of receptivity and spontaneity
in his 1994 work Mind and World. In particular, I will examine the
consequences of McDowell's concept of second nature in combination with the
specific interpretation of subjectivity in Hegel's discussions of experience and
self-consciousness which I am offering. I wish to suggest a way in which
McDowell's idea of a re-enchanted nature, which cannot be conceived as inside or
outside the mind, fits in with a view of Hegelian self-consciousness that tries
to sublate, on an individual level, the subject/object dualism. The second part
of my argument concerns the dualism between self-as-subject and self-as-object
in the development of self-consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.
I argue that there is a direct parallel between the overcoming of the
'inside/outside' dualism tackled explicitly by McDowell, and the overcoming of
the subject/object dualism which is necessary for an individual's becoming
self-conscious. Just as there is a temptation for the philosopher to "lurch
between the Myth of the Given and an unsatisfying coherentism" when thinking
about how knowledge can be justified, there is a temptation for the conscious
being to lurch between the view of the self as pure subject and the view of the
self as pure object. I will argue that it is intersubjectivity which provides us
with both a way past these dualisms and a convincing idea of a second nature.
Lars
Vinx (Department of Philosophy)
Hobbes and the Personality of the State
Time & Place: Thu 13 Mar 2008 at 12:40 in FA121
Hobbes's account of the personality of the state in chapter
16 of Leviathan is often accused of being a manipulative misuse of the
concept of political representation that serves only to bolster sovereign claims
to arbitrary power. I will argue that Hobbes's theory of political
representation can be given a more charitable interpretation. While Hobbes's
theory of representation indeed entails that there can be no legal limitations
of sovereign power, it is tied to a notion of reasonable authorship over our own
actions that indirectly limits sovereign power.
Lucas Thorpe (Department of Philosophy)
Formal Idealism – A Defense
Time & Place: Fri 23 Nov 2007 at 12:40 in FA120
Kant sometimes calls his form of
idealism 'formal idealism'. This paper is an attempt to explain and defend
formal idealism. The formal idealist distinguishes between a number of senses of
possibility. We can distinguish between logical and objective possibility, and
then within objective possibility we can distinguish (at least conceptually)
between physical possibility and metaphysical possibility (see NOTE). The formal
idealist then makes two claims. Firstly, that we can only have knowledge of
logical possibility and physical possibility, and secondly, it is logically
possible that there are things that are physically impossible but metaphysically
possible. To justify these claims, the transcendental idealist presupposes two
distinctions (1) the form-matter distinction and (2) the understanding-intuition
distinction. The distinction between understanding and intuition is basically a
version of the concept-object distinction, with the added twist that for this
distinction to play any useful epistemic role there must be some sort of
possible relation between concepts and object. The distinction is meant either
to explain or to justify the distinction between logical possibility and
objective possibility. The form-matter distinction is necessary to either
explain or justify the distinction between physical possibility and metaphysical
possibility. The argument has at least three premises: (a) intuition/objects can
be thought of as having a form and a matter. (b) we can have knowledge of the
form of intuition/objects but not the matter (c) it is logically possible that
the form of intuition could be different.
NOTE: I obviously need to say more about these different
notions of possibility. At this stage, I should note that, for Kant, all these
notions of possibility are second order concepts, being different properties of
concepts. I'm particularly worried about how to explain "objective possibility".
At present I think there are three possible ways to explain this notion. To
claim that x is objectively possible means:
(a) The concept x could be instantiated
(b) The concept x is instantiated (there is an object
corresponding to x)
(c) The construction of the concept x is justified (in a
certain way)
(a) seems to be circular. (b) faces the problem of seeming
to equate objective possibility with existence. This might be avoidable if we
can give a broad enough account of what an object is. (c) is probably closest to
Kant's position. But this seems to turn objective possibility into an epistemic
notion and seems to rely on or imply some form of verificationism.
Lars
Vinx (Department of Philosophy)
Authority, Arbitration, and the Claims of the Law
Time & Place: Fri 19 Oct 2007 at 17:40 in G160
This paper
argues that Joseph Raz's normal justification thesis fails to explain how the
law can meaningfully claim arbitrative authority. Given that the law's claim to
authority is usually understood to amount to (or at least to include) a claim to
arbitrative authority, this result suggests that the law's claim to authority,
if it is meaningful, must be justifiable in ways not captured by the normal
justification thesis. Those who reject such alternative means of justification
should also reject the core element of Raz's view of the nature of law: the
thesis that the law necessarily claims practical authority.
István Aranyosi (Department of Philosophy)
'Schmoperties'
Time & Place: Wed 10 Oct 2007 at 12:40 in FFZ01
According to dispositional essentialism (DE), properties have the causal
powers they bestow upon objects that instantiate them essentially. DE yields the
result that laws of nature, on the condition that they relate properties, are
necessary. The question arises as to how to characterize the resulting
necessity. I will put forward my version of the basic component theses of DE,
and argue that DE entails a new kind of necessitarian view, which I will call
'semi-strong'. Semi-strong necessitarianism (SSN) results from considering (1) a
more fine-grained distinction than that between weak and strong necessitarianism
about laws, and (2) the commitments regarding properties resulting from (a) the
view of causation congenial to DE and (b) the task of providing a Kripkean
framework for explaining the intuition of contingency regarding laws. SSN is
stronger than weak necessitarianism in that it excludes possible worlds with
laws relating alien properties; at the same time, SSN is weaker than strong
necessitarianism in that it does not require that all possible worlds contain
the actual properties. The coherence of SSN depends on the plausibility of
entities that play the property role in some worlds, but are not properties; we
might call them 'schmoperties'. I will argue that the idea of schmoperties does
indeed make sense, and might be the only option if we are to accommodate both DE
and the intuition of contingency regarding laws.
Attila Güllü (Curator of Bilkent Art Gallery)
Sanat ve Yaşam [Art and Life]
Time & Place: Thu 26 Apr 2007 at 15:40 in G160
This seminar will be held in Turkish.
Talat Halman (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters)
From Global Pillage to Pillars of Co-operation: The Plunder and Smuggling
of Archaeological Wealth and Proposals for a New Regime of International
Collaboration
Time & Place: Tue 17 Apr 2007 at 17:40 in G160
Ulrich Steinvorth (Department of Philosophy)
Liberalism and Individualism
Time & Place:
Mon 6 Nov 2006 at 18:00 in G160
The question I
follow is, Is the liberal free in choosing his kind of individualism? My
suspicion is that he is not, that in contrast to common expectations he is
rather committed to a weak form of individualism, at least if he takes seriously
beliefs that a liberal should never abandon. To such beliefs belong (as Popper
said) the belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of
fundamental rights and a free society.
I presuppose
that what is common to the many forms of liberalism and individualism is their
giving moral priority to the individual over society. If we distinguish for
historical and systematic reasons between a stronger and a weaker form of
individualism as constitutive and toleration individualism, the stronger form
seems better to correspond to the idea of the individual's priority. In fact,
the individualism liberals like Popper and Rawls ascribe to liberalism is of the
stronger kind.
Yet I argue
that it is only the weaker form that follows the ideas that have been decisive
in the historical revolution that replaced the moral priority of society over
the individual by that of the individual's priority. I support the argument by
citing Locke and Kant as defenders of toleration (and not constitutive)
individualism, by pointing to elements of toleration individualism even in Rawls
and Popper (and the incompatibilities with Popper's philosophy of science these
elements imply), and by the conjecture that it is only toleration and not
constitutive individualism that can protect individuals and individuality from
being dissolved by the forces of society.
Radu Bogdan (Department of Philosophy)
Tales of Predication
Time & Place: Mon 30 Oct 2006 at 17:40 in G160
Predication, as an ability to attribute a property to an
object or a relation to two or more objects or an action to an agent, has been
long puzzling to philosophers and psychologists. Three of its most essential but
often neglected properties -- descriptiveness, predicate-to subject
directedness, and topic-comment format -- elude standard explanations in formal,
grammatical, mentalese, and conceptual terms. Attempts to find predication in
animal or infant minds fail because they cannot demonstrate the presence of the
same essential properties. The explanation I propose is that the mental ability
to predicate is uniquely human and is assembled gradually in early childhood out
of several independent developments, mainly in child-adult communication, naive
psychology (or theory of mind), and word acquisition. Generated and shaped by
these diverse developments, the child's mental scheme of representing deliberate
and explicit naming of jointly attended targets becomes the child's initial
mental template for predication -- first, ostensively, combining what is
perceived and what is named, and then intra-linguistically in word-to-word
predications.
Josh Cowley (Department of Philosophy)
Compositionality in Inferential-Role Semantics
Time & Place: Wed 31 May 2006 at 15:40 in FA120
Among the more popular theories of conceptual content is inferential-role
semantics (IRS). Roughly, IRS claims that a concept's content is determined by
the role it plays in reasoning. Although this view has had no shortage of
supporters, defenders of the view have yet to answer one of its most significant
objections. The objection is that IRS is incapable of dealing with the
compositional nature of concepts. In this paper I propose that a solution to
this problem can be found in theories of defeasible inference.
Sandrine Berges (Department of Philosophy)
Laws for Ordinary People: Persuasion and
Education in Plato’s Laws
Time & Place: Tue 16 May 2006 at 15:40 in FA120
In the Laws, three interlocutors, an Athenian
philosopher and his two companions, a Spartan and a Cretan, are discussing the
planning of a new colony, and in particular, what laws it ought to have. The
Athenian proposes that all laws should be accompanied by a preamble designed to
persuade citizens that they have good reasons to obey the laws in question. This
is in principle a satisfactory response to the worry that a virtue based theory
of law would be unacceptably paternalistic. However, several commentators have
argued that the preambles given by Plato either constitute a threat to citizen’s
autonomy, or fail to persuade altogether. In this paper I would like to suggest
a different view of why the preambles of the Laws are not as persuasive
as they might be, namely that the preambles given in the Laws are not
identical to the preambles that the Athenian would expect to give to the
citizens of the new colony. What the preambles can and should be is determined
by the education received by those to whom they are addressed. This places two
limitations on the Athenian’s ability to formulate appropriate preambles for the
citizens of the colony. First, the preambles must be understood by those who
will have the job of writing them, Clinias and Megillus, and these two have
received an education which the Athenian regards as insufficient. Secondly, the
Athenian is at the same time writing for an audience which does not yet exist,
and so he cannot fully predict what will and will not be appropriate for that
audience.
Simon Wigley (Department of Philosophy)
Rights, Necessity and
Compensation
Time & Place: Tue 9 May 2006 at 15:40 in FA120
The received view amongst moral and legal philosophers is
that when an agent is compelled by necessity to cause harm, they must bear the
burden. According to that view the agent has a duty to compensate the victim because permissibility does not entirely rule out the moral force of rights. I
argue that the fact that rights retain a moral residue in such cases does not
entail that the agent must bear the burden of their justified choice. The
justice claim that the agent should internalize the losses she has caused is in
competition with the further justice claim that those who act out of necessity
do not deserve the losses that they cause. Thus, the appropriate way for the
agent to restore the moral balance between herself and the victim is simply to
express regret, rather than to absorb the burden.
Sandy Berkovski
(Department of Philosophy)
Happiness, Ignorance, and Externalism
Time & Place: Tue 2 May 2006 at 15:40 in FA120
Simon
Wigley (Department of Philosophy)
Who Should Bear the Burden of a Justified Choice?
Time & Place: Tue 14 Feb 2006 at 15:40 in FA120
Moderate deontologists argue that even when a choice is justified by the
circumstances in which it is made (e.g. Aristotle's example of the ship
captain who jettisons cargo during a storm in order to prevent the boat from
sinking), the chooser should still bear the burden of that choice (e.g.
compensate the cargo owner). At the same time they typically accept that the
agent should not bear the burden of their justified choice when they
themselves are the victim (e.g. choosing to endure tedious or unpleasant
working conditions because paid employment is the only way to feed one's
family). In this paper I argue that the two cases -- justified harm to others
and justified harm to self -- are symmetrical and, therefore, that the
moderate deontologist's position is inconsistent.
Bill
Wringe (Department of Philosophy)
Emotions, Modularity and Non-Conceptual Content
Time & Place: Wed 2 Mar 2005 at 16:40 in FA113
Some philosophers hold that perception has a kind of content which is
illuminatingly described as 'non-conceptual'. Some (other) philosophers hold
that there are illuminating analogies between perception and emotion. If both
these claims are correct, then it is natural to ask whether emotional content is
like perceptual content in being, either in whole or in part, non-conceptual.
In this paper I shall try to motivate the claim that emotions have
non-conceptual content by arguing that it enables us to resolve a tension which
thinking about the emotions of animals and pre-linguistic infants. I shall then
go on to provide a more direct argument for the same conclusion drawing on some
considerations about the modularity of emotions which have been put forward by
Paul Griffiths. I shall argue that, on one widely accepted account of the
distinction between conceptual and non-conceptual content, the apparent
modularity of emotion gives us reason to think that emotions have non-conceptual
content.
Simon
Wigley (Department of Philosophy)
Automaticity
and Responsibility
Time & Place: Wed 23 Feb 2005 at 16:40 in FA113
Consider the familiar situation where a person suddenly becomes aware of the
fact that they have been driving a car for the last half hour. The question that
this paper is concerned with is whether we can hold a driver responsible if they
have an accident whilst they are in an automated state. The problem is by no
means trivial because, in the interests of efficiency, a nontrivial proportion
of our everyday actions are conducted 'without thinking'. Given that the
driver did not consciously will the accident it might seem that we cannot blame
her for any resulting injuries. Criminal and civil law typically gets around
that apparent excuse by downplaying the significance of the quality of the
person's will and emphasizing the conduct and consequences of her actions.
Nevertheless, even within the frame of intentional choice there may be grounds
for attributing blame. Firstly, the automated state was the result of a
temporally prior choice. Secondly, the agent can extract himself or herself from
the automated state. That is, automatic behavior is similar to addicted
behavior in the sense that is the product of a temporally prior choice, but
different in the sense that there is no subsequent internal physical or mental
constraint on the agent's freedom of choice. Prima facie, therefore, it seems
implausible to say that the driver is unwillingly automated. But whether that is
in fact the case hinges on whether (a) we have a higher-order awareness that we
are in an automated state and, assuming that we do, (b) we have sufficient
control over when and when we are not unaware of the particular thing we are
doing. If either condition is not fulfilled, then it would be inappropriate to
say that the automated driver can be 'held' morally responsible for the
accident. At most we can say that it would be socially efficacious if the
automated driver 'takes' legal responsibility for the accident.
Sandrine
Berges (Department of Philosophy)
Understanding the Role of Laws in Plato's Statesman
Time & Place: Wed 16 Feb 2005 at 16:40 in FA113
Hazım
Murat Karamüftüoğlu (Departments of Computer Engineering &
Communication and Design)
Aesthetics of Information Arts
Time & Place: Mon 6 Dec 2004 at 14:40 in FA121
The art world is in crises: most modern art is "pretentious,
self-indulgent, craftless tat!," claimed one commentator. To make things more
complicated there is a new breed of "Hi-Tec" or "Information Arts" which
mixes Art with Science and Technology. A few examples would illustrate the
emerging patterns of collaboration between these traditionally distinct fields:
Paul Garrin is an artist who uses motion detection technology to create
installations that comment on a variety of culturally topical themes. Artist
John Dunn and Biologist Mary Anne Clark have collaborated in the creation of
music that is based on the features of organic material and chemical
characteristics of molecules. Suzanne Anker creates art installations that
reflect on the scientific representations of chromosomes. On the more popular
side, astrophysicist and recording artist Dr. Fiorella Terenzi developed
techniques to convert radio waves from galaxies into sound.
In this talk I will propose a solution to the problem of how to make sense
and evaluate the new breed of Information Arts or the emerging patterns of
collaboration between Art, Science and Technology. The proposed solution is
based on the idea that the value of the artwork depends on its potential to
raise significant questions regarding fundamental epistemological and
ontological assumptions relevant to the scientific disciplines from which the
artwork derives its methods, concepts or tools. I will also attempt to compare
and contrast briefly the present approach to aesthetics with another recent
approach, namely, the "Relational Aesthetics" of Bourriaud.
Kumru Arapkirlioğlu (Department of Landscape
Architecture & Urban Design)
Environment and Ethics: "Other Living
Entities and Us"
Time & Place:
Wed
1 Dec 2004 at 15:00 in
Bilkent University Concert Hall
Environments and environmental entities have been used and
abused by human beings in many ways. This
has been through over-use, developing technology and industrialization coupled
with population growth. This seminar will
briefly discuss the mentioned reasons of environmental degradation but mainly
focus on human beings' approach towards himself/ herself from the notion of
responsibility.
Although human beings' relations to other individuals and
to the society have been questioned since early ages, our relation to natural
entities has received little interest. In
this seminar I want to raise the following question: Do we (academicians,
professionals, and students from different backgrounds) need to enlarge our
ethics sphere to other living entities?
Lucas
Thorpe (Department of Philosophy)
Why Study
Ethics: Kant on the Value of Moral Philosophy
Time & Place: Wed 12 May 2004 at 13:40 in EB104
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