OZSW 2017: 5TH ANNUAL OZSW CONFERENCE IN PHILOSOPHY
PROGRAM FOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 11TH
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10:00-11:00 Session 8: Keynote lecture: Åsa Wikforss
Location: Congreszaal A
10:00
Resisting the Facts
SPEAKER: Åsa Wikforss

ABSTRACT. The paper examines the epistemology of fact resistance. I argue that it cannot coherently be construed in terms of a violation of the truth norm but should rather be understood as a type of evidence resistance. I examine various types of fact resistance studied by the psychologists (confirmation bias, politically motivated thought, etc.) from an epistemological point of view and suggest that a philosophical understanding of these phenomena are crucial if we are to counteract them.

11:15-12:55 Session 9A: "Risk, Technology, and Moral Emotions" - symposium
Location: Maarten Maartens
11:15
Symposium on "Risk, Technology, and Moral Emotions", Published with Routledge. Authored by Sabine Roeser; with Commentaries from the Perspective of Meta Ethics, Emotion Research, Moral Psychology, and Philosophy of Risk
SPEAKER: Neelke Doorn

ABSTRACT. Professor Roeser’s research covers theoretical, foundational topics concerning the nature of moral knowledge, intuitions, emotions and evaluative aspects of risk, but also urgent and hotly debated public issues on which her theoretical research can shed new light, such as nuclear energy, climate change and public health issues. Since the book covers both foundational, meta-ethical issues, and more practical issues on the acceptability of technological risks, the proposed book symposium will provide commentary from these different perspectives. The book symposium will be chaired by Neelke Doorn.

11:15-12:55 Session 9B: Realizing Economic Justice - symposium
Location: J.F. Bordewijk
11:15
Realizing Economic Justice: Institutional Design and Taxation
SPEAKER: Bruno Verbeek

ABSTRACT. In this session we will look closer at the merits of using the tax system to realize economic justice. How does taxation compare to other institutional means in realizing economic justice? Are there limits, moral limits, as to what can be achieved through taxation? And what does the use of fiscal policy require of institutions as well as the agents acting within those institutions? For example, does the use of fiscal policy to address unequal distributions of burdens and benefits put moral limits on the willingness to avoid taxes? Finally, is there a real question of justice here? That is, is the question of pre-distribution versus redistribution only instrumentally important for the realization of desirable social outcomes? In this session we will tackle these and other questions.

11:15-12:55 Session 9C: Autonomy and Paternalism
Location: Congreszaal C
11:15
Bridging the Transparency Gap: Information Fiduciaries for Digital Health Systems
SPEAKER: Chirag Arora

ABSTRACT. Wearable self-tracking devices capture multidimensional health data and offer new ways of facilitating research. However, they also create a conflict between individual interests of avoiding privacy harms, and collective interests of using data for public benefits. While some scholars argue for transparency and accountability mechanisms to resolve this conflict, an average user is not adequately equipped to access and process information relating to the consequences of consenting to further uses of her data. As an alternative, this paper argues for fiduciary relationships, which put deliberative, conscientious and robust demands on data collectors to keep the interests of their data subjects at the forefront.

11:55
Nudging and Autonomy
SPEAKER: unknown

ABSTRACT. The literature on nudging has rekindled normative and conceptual debates surrounding the legitimacy of both the aims and means of liberal and democratic governments. An oft-heard criticism is that nudging governments manipulate their citizens and therefore violate or undermine their autonomy. In this paper, we analyze and deflate these criticisms. After disentangling the multiple conceptions of autonomy that pervade the arguments of both nudging enthusiasts and critics, we argue why some criticisms can be discarded because of the all too demanding notion of autonomy involved. Focusing on the most plausible conceptions, we also show how quite a few nudges can be said to support rather than violate people’s autonomy.

12:35
The Dependence Between the Ethical and Evidential Standards of Behavioral Public Policies

ABSTRACT. Behavioral public policies aim to steer citizens’ life choices towards prudential directions through subtle influences on decision-making (Sunstein 2016). These policies are also underpinned by insights from behavioral economics and neighboring disciplines regarding the causal mechanisms of less-than-fully-rational choice (Barton and Grune-Yanoff 2016). There is an extensive philosophical literature that attempts to cash out whether behavioral public policies are ethically and evidentially justified (see, for a review, Heilmann 2017). In this paper, my aim is to evaluate this literature by an exploration of how evidential and ethical standards invoked in existing accounts relate to each other.

11:15-12:55 Session 9D: TF Networking Event
Chair:
Location: Congreszaal B
11:15
TF Networking Event
SPEAKER: Mieke Boon

ABSTRACT. This is a networking event aimed at graduate students and staff members related to the OZSW theoretical philosophy group. The event will focus on getting to know from graduate students what their needs are, and what they would like to receive from the OZSW-TF. The structure will be brainstorm in small groups and plenary presentations. The ideas coming out of this sessions will be discussed in the meeting of the OZSW-TF committee and senior TF members in the afternoon, and turned into plans and a written report that can be communicated to all TF members. Graduate students related to TF,  OZSW-TF committee members and other staff related to TF are kindly invited to attend. Contact person of this event is Mieke Boon, chair of OZSW-TF.

11:15-12:55 Session 9E: Justice, Equality and Human Rights
Location: Multatuli
11:15
An Argument for Desert and Against Luck Egalitarianism
SPEAKER: Huub Brouwer

ABSTRACT. We show that desertism and luck egalitarianism are competing theories by illustrating four differences between them. First, compared to desertism, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too lax: It fails to compensate people for praiseworthy, costly, free choices. Second, luck egalitarianism is sometimes too restrictive—holding that deserving economic agents should not be compensated because their contributions arose from so-called “brute luck”. Third, luck egalitarianism cannot diagnose economic injustice that arises independent of the comparative levels of resources or welfare between citizens. Desert can. Fourth and finally, we argue that metatheoretical considerations demonstrate desert’s superiority over luck egalitarianism.

11:55
“Attacker threatens Victim”: The Revisionist Myth and the Ethics of War

ABSTRACT. The disagreement between Revisionists and Traditionalists has focused on whether there is something distinctive about war such that it calls for its own moral code, or if killing in war should be evaluated in the same terms as individual aggression and self-defense. I argue the ‘Attacker’ cases that are meant to motivate Revisionism are not, as the Revisionist claims, grounded in an individualist morality that is distinct from the political, rather, they are politically loaded. I draw on Claudia Card’s institutional analysis of rape to illustrate the flawed Revisionist reliance on abstract ‘Attacker’ cases.

12:35
Two Challenges to Human Rights
SPEAKER: Jos Philips

ABSTRACT. This paper deals with two very common – perhaps the most common – challenges to human rights, the relativist challenge and the political pawns-challenge. I will argue that human rights can to a considerable extent be defended in the face of these challenges.

11:15-12:55 Session 9F: History of Philosophy
Location: Annie M.G. Schmidt
11:15
Spinoza’s Definitions; Nominal, Real, and Genetic

ABSTRACT. This presentation addresses the nature of the definitions of Spinoza’s Ethics. First, I will show the problems resulting from interpretations according to which they are nominal or real. Secondly, I will examine Gueroult’s view, according to which they are genetic, identify its obscurities, and subsequently introduce the Aristotelian concept of genetic definition, which contains a shift: nominal definitions turn into real definitions through the demonstration. This makes new interpretation possible since Spinoza’s own utterances on definitions differ according to the addressee: beginners of the Ethics will regard its definitions as nominal, but through the demonstration, they realise they are real.

11:55
On Kant's Diverse Notions of Cognition
SPEAKER: Alan Daboin

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I lay out the three different notions of “cognition” (Erkenntnis) at work in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Seeing as all three notions appear to be in significant conflict with one another, I discuss some of the potential motivations for Kant’s variegated usage of the term. Apart from comparing these to what we might call “knowledge,” I make use of the three-fold distinction to clarify some of Kant’s more challenging statements regarding human cognition. I also point us to some of the interesting exegetical consequences of reading one sense of the term in place of another.

12:15
Aristotle's Principle of Opposites

ABSTRACT. Aristotle’s contribution to constitutional theory is often understood in terms of his theory of the mixed regime. In this paper, I seek to argue that Aristotle makes an additional contribution. Stability, according to Aristotle, is also preserved by the ‘principle of opposites’, which involves a prudent catering to the needs of the classes that are excluded from offices of power, for example, by employing a particular rhetoric or enforcing a certain kind of civic education. The principle is an important Aristotelian insight about how political stability may be maintained in divided societies.

12:35
Cavendish on Causation

ABSTRACT. Margaret Cavendish provides a distinctive account of causation, but there is increasingly little consensus about what that account is. Among the candidate theories are that Cavendish is an occasionalist, that she is an interactionist who thinks that all motion is by contact, and that she adopts a certain Stoic account of causation. I offer alternative readings of passages invoked by partisans of interactionist and Stoic interpretations, and establish textually that Cavendish is an occasionalist about body-body causation. But I also show why an interactionist account of a body’s animate matter moving that same body’s inanimate matter remains on the table.

13:55-14:40 Session 10: Panel discussion: Crisis of reason

Panel discussion "Crisis of reason". Participants: Hans Radder, Henry S. Richardson, Maureen Sie, Åsa Wikforss, Paul Ziche. Moderator: Daniel Cohnitz.

Location: Congreszaal A
14:55-16:35 Session 11A: 'Navigational Agency: A Capability Theory of Justice' - symposium
Location: Congreszaal B
14:55
Symposium on 'Navigational Agency: A Capability Theory of Justice' by Rutger Claassen
SPEAKER: Huub Brouwer

ABSTRACT. In this symposium, Huub Brouwer, Martin van Hees, Thomas Nys and Jojanneke Vanderveen will comment on Rutger Claassen’s forthcoming ‘Navigational Agency: A Capability Theory of Justice’. In a slogan, the book sets out to ‘liberalize the capability approach, while socializing liberalism’. The resulting theory is an ‘agency-based capability theory of justice’. The book aims to offer a new way to realize the potential of the capability approach to offer a theory of social justice, and hence a new candidate for theorizing social justice more generally. 

14:55-16:35 Session 11B: Non-Derogatory Uses of Slurs - symposium
Chair:
Location: Congreszaal C
14:55
Non-Derogatory Uses of Slurs
SPEAKER: Dan Zeman

ABSTRACT. In this symposium we explore less discussed uses of slurs illustrated by certain non-straightforward uses. While the most widespread uses of slurs – the hateful derogatory ones – have been the focus of most discussions in the literature, slurs have other uses as well: corrective uses (“Institutions that treat Chinese as chinks are racist”, Hom (2008)), metaphorical uses (as in John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song “Woman is the nigger of the world”), didactic or meta-linguistic uses (such as those used by semanticists when writing on slurs), as well appropriated uses (when slurs are used in a positive way).

14:55-16:35 Session 11C: Varieties of Power - symposium
Location: Maarten Maartens
14:55
Varieties of Power
SPEAKER: unknown

ABSTRACT. The contemporary metaphysical debate on powerful properties is concerned with two topics: the nature of powers in general, and possible uses of the notion of power in accounts of, e.g., causation, laws of nature, or free will. We believe that this division overlooks an interesting question: whether there are metaphysically different varieties of power. This symposium has two aims: (1) to argue that the concept of a power indeed admits of a division into metaphysically different species, and (2) to illustrate that awareness of the resulting variety of powers is useful for a fruitful application of the powers idea.

14:55-16:35 Session 11D: Metaphysics/Logic
Location: L. van Deyssel
14:55
The Acceptability and Probability of the Indicative Conditionals

ABSTRACT. My presentation is devoted to the probability and the acceptability of indicative conditionals. It will be organized around three influential theses, namely Stalnaker's thesis: ST p(A → B) = p(B|A) Adams thesis (where "ac" indicates acceptability): AT ac(A → B) = p(B|A)1 and the quantitative version of Adams thesis, the so-called Qualitative Adams Thesis: “(QAT) An indicative conditional “If A, B” is assertable for/acceptable to a person if and only if the person’s degree of belief in Pr(B|A) is high.” (Douven and Verbrugge, 2012, p. 483) In the first part of my presentation I will discus the results of the empirical experiments devoted to test the three hypothesis and try to show that none of them is well supported. Then I will move to the theoretical considerations. I will discus some of the triviality proofs with a special attention dedicated to their assumptions. Then I will show that all three thesis are semantically baseless. They are not implied by any semantic theory of conditionals. I the last part of my talk I will discuss some alternative proposals.

15:15
Necessity by Accident

ABSTRACT. The central aim of this paper is to overturn general consensus that contingencies lack the requisite modal ‘umph’ to ground the modal status of some necessities. More specifically, I argue that, for every contingent Q that is a partial ground for some necessary P’s truth, there is a contingently obtaining plurality Γ, consisting of Q plus some (possibly empty) Δ, that is a full ground for P’s modal status. As well as providing a direct counter-example to the contingency horn of Blackburn’s dilemma, this result has significant impact on debates about the foundations of modality.

15:35
The Gestalt of a Round Square: 
Producing Impossible Objects in the Psychological Laboratory
SPEAKER: Carlo Ierna

ABSTRACT. According to Ehrenfels, “Widerspruch” (contradiction or incompatibility) is a Gestalt, arising through the failure to attain an intuitive presentation of an impossible object. Moreover, it would be fundamental to defining our notion of evidence and intuitability. How can the failure to produce a Gestalt generate another Gestalt, which moreover would be typical of impossible objects? Meinong’s students Mally, Benussi, and Ameseder, working at the Graz Psychological Laboratory, improved the theory of Vorstellungsproduktion, so we can look in more detail at where, when, and how the attempt to produce the Gestalt of and impossible object breaks down.

14:55-16:35 Session 11E: Ethics and Technology
Location: Multatuli
14:55
Robotization/Automation of the Workplace and the Future of Meaningful Work
SPEAKER: Sven Nyholm

ABSTRACT. Robots and automation are entering the workplace across a wide range of domains, and they are here to stay. Some social commentators and philosophers of technology think that this will mean an end to human work and worry that this is a serious threat to opportunities for meaningful human activities. I favor a more moderate approach. My interpretation is in terms of greatly increased human-robot collaboration within the workplace, rather than a complete robot take-over. Accordingly, I will explore how philosophical models of meaningfulness can be applied and extended to work involving extensively increased human-robot collaboration.

15:35
Persuading the Vulnerable, an Exploration of the Ethical Concerns Arising with Persuasive Technologies for Health-Related Behavior Change for Vulnerable People
SPEAKER: Naomi Jacobs

ABSTRACT. Preventive health engineering is a burgeoning area of innovation for the development of persuasive behavior change technologies. These technologies promise potential savings in health care costs and ways of responding to the shortage of medical professionals and caregivers. This drives government, health insurance companies, and other stakeholders to invest in persuasive technology  (hereafter PT) for health and wellbeing. PTs are the class of technologies intentionally designed to voluntarily change a person's attitude or behavior, or both. However, their use raises ethical concerns regarding voluntariness, consent, and privacy, amongst others. No attention has yet been given to ethical concerns that specifically arise with the design and use of PT for vulnerable people. In this session, I give an account of vulnerability and its ethical significance, and argue that an ethical framework for the design and use of PTs for behavior change must pay attention to the unique interests of the vulnerable and must be able to account for ethical problems that arise especially for vulnerable people with their use.

15:55
Is Electronic Coaching (Softly) Paternalistic?
SPEAKER: Philip Nickel

ABSTRACT. The use of e-coaching for health care raises the charge of paternalism. In this paper, we consider a defense of e-coaching on which, since it typically aims at health goals shared by both user and technology, it is softly and thus unproblematically paternalistic. We argue that in order for e-coaching to take advantage of this defense, it must be highly sensitive to personal goals and values. It must only intervene to make sure a person is doing what they want or protect them from some outside force interfering with what they want. This is hardly possible in current e-coaching technology.

14:55-16:35 Session 11F: History of Philosophy and Aesthetics
Location: Annie M.G. Schmidt
14:55
The Truth in the Acquaintance Principle
SPEAKER: Daan Evers

ABSTRACT. I will argue that the following version of the Acquaintance Principle is false: One cannot form a justified judgement of aesthetic value without first-hand experience of the object. I will then argue that the following Principle of Positive Experience is true: One cannot form a justified non-testimonial judgement of beauty without a positive experience concerning its object. I argue that this is what Kant had in mind when he says that one cannot be reasoned into a judgement of beauty. I will examine the extent to which this Kantian principle precludes realism or objectivism about beauty, and the extent to which it requires acquaintance with the object for non-testimonial judgements of beauty to be justified.

15:15
The Heideggerian Artist
SPEAKER: Rose Trappes

ABSTRACT. Martin Heidegger’s essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” has been much discussed for its account of art as ontological. In this talk I examine the neglected topic of the artist in Heidegger’s account, showing that Heidegger’s artist is distinctly passive and non-situated. Moreover, I argue that Heidegger’s erasure of the artists’ agency and situatedness denies two aspects of artistic practice that are necessary for achieving its ontological goals. I therefore conclude that Heidegger presents a faulty image of artistic practice, and contend that revealing being requires affirming and engaging with one’s own situatedness and agency.

15:35
De Dicto, de Re, de Traditione: Some Considerations about Robert Brandom’s Inferentialist Account of Interpretation
SPEAKER: Marcello Ruta

ABSTRACT. In his essay 'Pretexts', included in the Volume 'Tales of the Mighty Dead', Robert Brandom proposes an inferentialist reading of Gadamer’s hermeneutics. In this presentation I will not be tackling the question whether Brandom’s reading respects the letter and/or the spirit of Gadamer’s text. I would like on the contrary to focus on some aspects of Brandom’s inferentialist account of interpretation and put them in relation with some open issues of the (more or less) recent discussion on this subject.

15:55
When Artists Fall: On Admiring the Immoral
SPEAKER: Alfred Archer

ABSTRACT. We consider whether artists can be admirable for their works despite engaging in immoral behaviour. If admiration is a globalist attitude – i.e. one that takes the whole person as its object – then this looks impossible. We first argue that admiration is not a globalist attitude, and so immoral artists may still be (aesthetically) admirable despite being (morally) contemptible. This clears the field for two pressing ethical questions: (1) Is it permissible to overtly admire an admirable yet immoral artist? (2) Is it permissible to privately admire an admirable yet immoral artist? We argue that such admiration is often impermissible.

16:15
Virtue in Nietzsche's Drive Psychology
SPEAKER: Mark Alfano

ABSTRACT. To help come to grips with Nietzsche’s conceptions of drive (Trieb), instinct (Instinkt) and virtue (Tugend and/or Keuschheit), I employ a digital humanities methodology to systematically track his use of these terms. I go on to show that this is indeed Nietzsche’s project: for him, a virtue is a well-calibrated drive. Such calibration relates both to the rest of the agent’s psychic economy (her other drives) and to her social context (what’s considered praiseworthy and blameworthy in her community).

14:55-16:35 Session 11G: Moral Responsibility and Moral Psychology
Location: Oranjerie@Koetshuis
14:55
Moral Responsibility for Implicit Bias: Discussing Stereotypes and Prejudices
SPEAKER: Maureen Sie

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I argue that holding one another morally responsible for actions caused by so-called implicit bias (AIB) is crucial to the difficult and painstaking process of making our practices more inclusive. The reason for this, is, first of all, contrary to what is often assumed, it is not clear that we all agree on which stereotypes and prejudices are harmful, why and to what extent, and, secondly, what we can expect of one another to do about it. If this is right, the usual question raised with respect to our moral responsibility for AIB can be substituted for one that focuses on the social aspects of our moral practices.

15:35
Team Reasoning and Participatory Intentions
SPEAKER: Hein Duijf

ABSTRACT. Philosophical accounts of collective intentionality typically rely on members to form a personal intention of sorts. This tendency is opposed by recent economic literature on team reasoning (as studied by Bacharach, Gold, and Sugden), which focuses on the reasoning process leading up to the formation of the members' intentions. These team-reasoning theorists typically argue that team reasoners surpass pro-group I-mode reasoners in cooperative contexts (for instance, Hakli, Miller, and Tuomela). We bridge these paradigms and criticize the team-reasoning literature by discussing three intention types: pro-group intentions, team intentions, and participatory intentions.

15:55
The Sense and Nonsense of Tracing in Theories of Moral Responsibility

ABSTRACT. Drunk-driver cases are cases in which an agent is not in control, but still believed to be morally responsible. According to many defenders of control-based theories of moral responsibility, we can ‘trace’ back responsibility for some actions outside of an agent’s control to suitably related actions over which the agent does have control. I argue that we must distinguish between two readings of the ‘tracing’ approach. Furthermore, I argue that on one reading tracing is theoretically indispensable only in a limited sense, while on the other tracing is implausible.

14:55-16:35 Session 11H: Philosophy of Economics
Location: J.F. Bordewijk
14:55
Measuring Social Norms in Economics. A Philosophy of Science Perspective
SPEAKER: unknown

ABSTRACT. Economists are increasingly interested in the economic consequences of social constructs. Building upon the results from other social science, they have started to incorporate social constructs into economic models and develop them both via theoretical and empirical research. Little attention has so far been paid to theoretical as well as methodological issues that arise when measuring social constructs. In this paper, we analyse the case of social norms. Taking the institutional economic literature as our point of departure, we propose a new, objective, macroeconomic measure of social norms that is grounded in an overall theoretical framework.

15:35
The Role of Tradition in the Capability Approach

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I would like to revisit the role of tradition in the context of economic development processes. For this purpose, I will suggest a conceptualization of tradition within a pragmatist framework which allows for critical scrutiny and evaluation. I will then use the capability approach of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum to show that a selection of relevant capabilities can enrich or modify an existing tradition. Thus, tradition does not have to be an obstacle to development, but can support the cultural changes which are required by it.