ABSTRACT. Closure principles tell us under which conditions one can gain new knowledge from old on the basis of the holding of certain inferential relations. Such principles not only warrant us in claiming new knowledge from old, they also undermine the having of knowledge since they provide an essential premise in skeptical and Gettier arguments. This has led some (e.g. Nozick) to allegedly reject closure as a defense against the skeptic. I argue, however, that these well-known closure-rejecting analyses of knowledge are indeed compatible with it, a fact that is made especially clear when both the analysis and the closure principle are made sufficiently precise. This amounts to a larger defense of closure as an attractive principle essential to everyday reasoning.

ABSTRACT. (Section: Epistemology) In the events, following the influential arguments against the a priori – a posteriori distinction that were provided by philosophers like Quine, Philip Kitcher and Timothy Williamson, the classic concept of a priori knowledge was presumed dead and buried. In its place, a new concept of a priori justification arises – more flexible and ready to give in to contingency, experience and debunking arguments. In my talk, I will argue against the “new a priori” on the grounds that it seems to fail in doing the job that is required of the concept in the first place.

ABSTRACT. Epistemology. Jennifer Nagel (2010, Epistemic Anxiety and Adaptive Invariantism. Philosophical Perspectives, 24 (1): 407–35) famously explained the stakes effect on knowledge ascriptions by pointing to the subject of a knowledge claim and to their potential state of epistemic anxiety (“the inclination or desire for increased cognitive activity”, 414). In my presentation, I want to discuss, on the one hand, a problem with Nagel’s account, and to suggest, on the other hand, a further application of <epistemic anxiety> to the ascribers of knowledge. In my opinion, the epistemic anxiety of the ascriber is what primarily contributes to a knowledge denial.

ABSTRACT. Truth pluralism has become a much-discussed position in contemporary truth-theoretic debates. In general, truth pluralists hold that there are various truth-rendering properties of sentences and that these properties vary by domains of discourse.

Motivated by the array of problems that the widely accepted commitment to discourse domains generates, I argue in favor of a domain-free pluralist theory of truth that is currently missing from contemporary truth-theoretic discussions. The core of my argument is that truth-rendering properties can and should be defined sentence- rather than domain-specifically.

ABSTRACT. Counterpossibles, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents, are infamously vexed. Most people have focused on the problem of their truth. In this paper, I want to address a separate question about counterpossibles, which might have some bearing on the truth question: what is their subject matter? How to determine what counterpossibles are about? I will examine some theoretical possibilities inspired by the work of Yablo (2014) and Fine (2020), and show how the question matters in certain specific discussions.

ABSTRACT. [topic: Epistemology]

According to Relevant Alternatives Theories (RAT) of knowledge, a subject knows that p if the subject's evidence rules out all relevant alternatives to p. One general class of problems for RAT concerns easy knowledge. Such problems occur when the relevant alternatives are eliminated too easily, perhaps even trivially because none exist. In such cases, the theory unjustly ascribes knowledge. We will address three specific instances of this general problem, and show how a RAT which is built not on possible worlds semantics but on truthmaker semantics can satisfactorily answer the problem of easy knowledge.

ABSTRACT. The current literature on living organ donation relies on three misguided assumptions about voluntary consent and detecting them can teach us three important lessons about voluntary consent more generally. I claim that the misguided assumptions are what I call the Unwillingness View, the Relational View, and the Influence-Focus View. I then argue that rejecting these views will show that voluntariness is not a psychological but an ethical concept, that involuntary consent is different from ill-judged consent, and that the voluntariness of consent depends on the interaction between surgeon and donor as opposed to what happens outside of this interaction.

ABSTRACT. Topic: Ethics.

The term moral sanction is generally understood as an informal sanction imposed by individuals or groups upon those who have been perceived as immoral, either from the standpoint of an ethical theory or that of a culturally defined moral background. While sanctioning behaviour has been studied through experimental ethics and game-theoretic approaches, a general conceptual account of moral sanctions is lacking in the literature and this talk is an attempt to do just that: provide a framework that could help unify empirically attained intuitions regarding their definition and scope and the complicated relationship between formal and informal sanctions.

ABSTRACT. Post-personhood is a category of moral status above personhood, in the sense that post-persons might rightfully claim a set of rights that would reduce the immunity to permissible harm of mere persons. Given recent advancements in biotechnologies aimed at cognitive enhancement, the physical possibility of post-personhood is considered plausible. However, I will argue that we are not justified in believing that post-persons are physically possible since our acts of conceiving such beings are unreliable indicators of possibility.

ABSTRACT. One classical problem in ethics is the problem of the “Wrong Kind of Reasons”, which arises within the overall framework of fitting-attitude theories of value. The argument that I will develop consists of examining the dynamics of emotional responses to reasons, accounted for by a property that I call “reason-sensitivity”. Elucidating the conditions under which this property is instantiated and can vary may make evident the specificity of the set of reasons to which emotions are sensitive to. Constructing prototypical examples of ambivalent situations involving mixed emotions will prove crucial to this aim.

ABSTRACT. During my paper I will present and analyze Valerie Tiberius’ value fulfillment theory of well-being (VFT), according to which well-being consists in the fulfillment of values which are appropriate, i.e. are (1) suited to a person’s desires and emotions, (2) being reflectively endorsed, and (3) capable of being fulfilled together over time. I will argue that VFT doesn’t fully take into account the relation between well-being and human nature and thus fails in recognizing certain values which are universal and which stem from the requirements of human nature, namely: (a) reason, (b) purpose (in terms of meaningful work), (c) self-esteem.

Topic: Ethics

ABSTRACT. This symposium takes the perspective of “boundary work” (Gieryn 1995) from science and technology studies in order to discuss the works/oeuvre of the American philosopher Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985); her major and minor sources of philosophical influence and ways of working on the intersection of analytic and continental philosophy; and the reception of her work across philosophical traditions and disciplines. Each of the speakers addresses an exemplary phase, topic, or method from Langer as to demonstrate how she bridges and traverses analytic and continental philosophy.

ABSTRACT. We will offer a case study of theory choice in mathematical research and the role of analogous results as data for shaping new theories and axiomatizations of those. We will debate the recent developments of the theory of infinite graph theory exemplified by the theory of infinitary cycles. We furthermore want to extend the Lakatonean methodology to more formal parts of mathematical research and show fruitful connections between methodology from philosophy of science and Philosophy of Mathematics / Mathematical Practice.

This talk is joint work with Anonymized

ABSTRACT. Weak Mathematical Structuralism (WMS) can be introduced in the mathematical structuralist debate as a further interpretation of non-eliminative structuralism. WMS is based on Mutual Grounding, in which objects and structures are mutually – but not exactly symmetrically – grounded in each other. On that view, mathematical objects are reconceptualized as quasi-thin mathematical objects, which play a more substantial role in the structural ontology and suggest a possible response to the typical identity problem affecting ante rem structuralism. On the other hand, an ante rem individuation of structures will be defended, in order to preserve the priority of structures and provide a ‘bound from below’ for WMS.

ABSTRACT. The Enhanced Indispensability Argument (EIA) argues for mathematical platonism by inference to the best explanation. Scope generality is considered to be one of the generalities that makes mathematical explanations better than non-mathematical explanations. Due to a circularity objection, the original argument was reformulated with a non-mathematical explanandum. Subsequently, an adjustment to the argument needed to be made, using HP and dyadic second-order logic, to bridge the arisen gap between the mathematical explanans and non-mathematical explanandum. By contrasting the adjusted argument with a nominalistically acceptable explanation using Robinson Arithmetic (Q), interpreted in a theory of concatenation of non-empty strings of a's and b's (QT), we conclude that scope generality begs the question against the nominalist.

ABSTRACT. This presentation aims to elucidate Helmholtz and Mach’s proposals on the empirical foundations of geometry. I propose that a comparison between both approaches, which, despite its value, is rarely made by the literature, clarifies many of the assumptions and philosophical stances of each author. Specifically, I show that, although both natural philosophers sought the empirical roots of geometry, they radically diverged on the scope of idealizations and the nature of representation. As a consequence, they advocated for opposite conclusions regarding the priority between geometry and mechanics.

ABSTRACT. [Social and Political Philosophy]

There are various political liberal arguments against the political institution of marriage. Whilst not in itself problematic, this variety obscures an underlying complaint that any pro-marriage position should address. This paper reframes the anti-marriage position to identify two key claims. The first states that some personal relationships warrant direct regulation (via the creation of a distinct legal category). The second, that the romantic relationship does not warrant direct regulation. The resulting underlying complaint against the political institution of marriage is that it directly regulates the romantic relationship, a personal relationship that does not warrant a distinct legal category.

ABSTRACT. I argue that a UBI implemented in only some but not all countries creates an entirely new privilege for those who enjoy a UBI, namely, the privilege to be able to meet one’s basic needs regardless of willingness to work or contribute to society in other ways. This privilege is unjust, if it can only be sustained on the back of the labour of those who do not enjoy the same privilege. I then show how my criticism does not also count against national welfare-state provisions not implemented in all countries. There is a crucial difference between a UBI and welfare state provisions that makes the former more difficult to justify under conditions of global injustice.

Social and Political Philosophy

ABSTRACT. If philosophical anarchists believe that (positive) law cannot provide reasons for action, then we might be surprised to find that this is entailed by several popular theories about authority, legal reason-giving, and even a classic theory about the nature of law. I focus on three theories: reductionism about practical authority, trigger theory about reason-giving, and classical natural law, showing that they are committed to philosophical anarchism. While there is nothing wrong with holding an anarchist view, it might be a surprise to some adherents of these views that their positions commit them to it.

ABSTRACT. My talk introduces, by way of an analogy with Universal Basic Income, the concept of a Basic Universal Genetic Endowment (BUGE). Taking into account the possibilities created by CRISPR-Cas9, my argument will be that a liberal society could address issues of justice through a non-coercive BUGE: the state should allocate the resources in order to provide parents with the option of offering their babies the best basic genetic endowment possible. I will argue that the state should do this based on the principle of procreative beneficence but also as a way of addressing Rawlsian luck-egalitarian concerns over the distribution of desirable genetic traits and as a way of potentially decreasing the amount of public resources spent on health.

Topic: Ethics

ABSTRACT. The lecture develops and defends with a detailed justification a moral-instrumentalist conception of deliberative democracy, according to which, so the main thesis, deliberative democracy is the best means for the binding realization of moral values. This conception combines an epistemic component, i.e. deliberation serves to determine which measures serve the public good most, with a participatory component, i.e. democratic voting serves to give social power to this moral insight. Because of the controversy over the criteria of public good, these two components also have the function of continuing the debate on them and deciding on the criterion to be implemented.

ABSTRACT. Social and Political Philosophy

There has been a recent effort to make Libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive policies. I show that neither of them is able to reconcile (right-)libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. I suggest that, instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentiells of (right-)libertarianism head-on.

ABSTRACT. Topic of reference: Social and Political Philosophy

The paper introduces the liberal-democratic notion of political equality, then it investigates the limitations of such ideal under non-ideal circumstances. My thesis is that being epistemically disempowered has a negative impact on the way in which members of disadvantaged groups understand themselves as political actors: lacking social recognition may impede a proper development of reflexive agency. Discussing the option of granting epistemic privilege to members of oppressed groups, I introduce two concerns about this proposal, one morally grounded and one pragmatically oriented. Finally, I briefly sketch some institutional remedies for addressing systemic forms of epistemic injustice.

ABSTRACT. In recent debates about implicit and explicit understanding of false beliefs and/or reasons it is often taken for granted that children acquire an explicit understanding of beliefs at around the age of four but an understanding of reasons only a few years later. Yet, this presupposes a psychologistic notion of reasons as belief-desire-pairs. The recently popular non-psychologistic notion of reasons as facts opens up new theoretical possibilities regarding an earlier understanding of reasons in humans and such understanding in nonhuman animals. This symposium investigates the philosophical foundation for new investigations in this area.

ABSTRACT. We will discuss the development of formal theories of truth with the emphasis on the input coming from mathematical and philosophical logicians. In other words, truth theories will be treated as a case permitting us to study the interplay between mathematical and philosophical logic.

ABSTRACT. Nudges are popular types of interventions. Recent years have seen the rise of `norm-nudges' - nudges whose mechanism of action relies on social norms, inducing or changing social expectations. Norm-nudges can be powerful interventions, but they can also fail to be effective and even backfire unless they are designed with care. I highlight important considerations when designing norm-nudges and discuss a general model of social behavior based on social expectations and conditional preferences.