ABSTRACT. In this symposium, we showcase some of the work that members of the ERC-funded project 'The Social Epistemology of Argumentation' have been doing on the political epistemology of argumentation. The presentations will highlight the need to go beyond the mere content of arguments and the Millian imperative to ‘engage with dissenters’. We explore the role of factors such as social and political identities/perspectives, the perceived trustworthiness of sources, and the configuration of spaces for argumentative exchanges (both in the physical and in the virtual world) in political argumentation and deliberation

ABSTRACT. Humanity’s future might be very long–perhaps millions of years–and the number of future people potentially vast. Some moral philosophers have argued that it is therefore extremely important, morally speaking, to make the long-term future better for those who inhabit it, at least if we can do so predictably. But can we do so predictably? And, if so, how? This symposium addresses two challenges for those interested in improving the long-term future: 1) that of gathering evidence about the long-term impacts of our actions; and 2) that of acting on what evidence we do have.

ABSTRACT. Situated cognition approaches to agency usually conceptualise it as skilful adaptation to a changing environment in view of pursuing the agent's goals. I argue that this approach to agency needs to be modified to account for how specific environments also influence the initial goals of the agents. I propose a revised account of agency based on how goals and values are shaped by habitual skilled action. Using this revised conception of agency, I propose several criteria to map and evaluate environments based on how hostile or agency conducive these are.

ABSTRACT. Although Donald Davidson is better known for his account of motivating reasons, he did write about what we now call normative reasons, propounding a sort of non-reductive naturalism modelled on his anomalous monism. Much as he claimed that motivating reasons can causally generate people’s actions without compromising their agency, he claimed that normative properties can causally generate people’s motivating reasons while retaining their prescriptive authority. I begin by defending this claim against some familiar metaphysical worries about causality, supervenience, and grounding, before considering whether it can be squared with Davidson’s own views about pro-attitudes and normative beliefs.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, my aim is to argue against the assumption that actions (as causings) share a single metaphysical identity. I argue that actions can (and should) be defined as causings of change, if we want our concept to encompass some of the instances of agency that matter the most to us, but that this does not require us to think that all actions are processes, pace Steward and Stout. If this is right, the upshot is that we can accept both a unitary conceptual account of action (acting just is causing change), and a pluralistic ‘constitutive’ account of actions.

ABSTRACT. Recently, Tebben has argued that in order to incorporate selfless testimony into an epistemic norm framework, we must assume that assertive sincerity is a matter of the speaker’s capacity to commit oneself to taking p as true. In contrast, I will defend another idea. According to this idea, the success of selfless testimony depends on the speaker’s epistemic authority to assure that the reported proposition p provides a congruent response to the hearer’s epistemic interest. Such an assurance allows the addressees of the speech act to stop their own inquiry. I call this view the inquiry-based approach of selfless assurance.

ABSTRACT. The epistemology of testimony can be split into two broad camps: conservatives and liberals. Conservatives argue that testimonial entitlement requires non-testimonial, positive reasons; liberals deny this condition. A key conservative claim is that the omission of this condition leads to an objectionable form of epistemic irrationality. In this paper I defend liberalism from this claim. By drawing on work from outside of the current debate, I firstly demonstrate that more cautious does not mean more rational. I then show that, once this is cleared up, it is in fact plausible that liberalism represents the more epistemically rational position.

ABSTRACT. Paradigm cases of testimony usually assume that the recipient of testimony is both actively inquiring into a question and paying attention to the testimony. I introduce the notion of passive testimony, in which the recipients are neither inquiring into a (related) question nor actively paying attention to the testimony. I focus in detail on online passive testimony, which is particularly worrisome in the context of exposure to misinformation. Finally, I adopt Jason Kawall’s (2020) notion of epistemic credit and expand it to allow for the attribution of epistemic discredit to testifiers whose testimony negatively impacts the recipients’ epistemic attainment.

ABSTRACT. The existence of non-standard models of first-order Peano-Arithmetic threatens to undermine the claim of the moderate mathematical realist that non-mysterious access to the natural number structure is possible. The move to logics stronger than FOL is denied on the grounds that it merely shifts the indeterminacy into the meta-theory by assuming the determinacy of the notions needed to formulate such logics. This talk argues that the challenge can be met by demonstrating how the quantifier "there exist infinitely many" can be uniquely determined in a naturalistically acceptable way, thereby justifying its use in a characterization of the natural number structure.

ABSTRACT. The natural numbers are not abstract individuals but cardinality properties of collections. So understood, their arithmetical relationships and their applicability are two sides of the same coin without need of an abstractive bridge between them generating ontological indeterminacy and Bad Company objections. Restricting collections to those of individuals alone however requires an axiom of infinity if Peano arithmetic is to hold. By recognising higher-order collections this dubious empirical assumption can be circumvented. The infinitely weaker and evidently true empirical proposition that there are at least two individuals suffices, in a suitable logical framework, for the derivation of Peano’s axioms.

ABSTRACT. Well-known results in logic rely on Gödel numberings, assignments of numbers to syntactic entities such as formulae. However, these results fail under certain specific numberings – the deviant numberings. While it is quite intuitive to know when a numbering is not deviant and thus admissible, it is rather difficult to specify what exactly makes it such. In this talk, I propose a specification of the class of admissible numberings. For doing so, I investigate Feferman’s (1960) numbering and take it to be canonical. I then defend some of its key properties and argue that any admissible numberings should possess them.

ABSTRACT. This paper makes two main contributions. Firstly, I argue that the evidence of early pretend play does not suffice to provide evidence of early mental state attribution. Secondly, I argue that the findings from pretend play are nonetheless significant for Theory of Mind research as they provide evidence of an early ability to deal with inconsistent representations. Pretend play thus poses a puzzle for the development of Theory of Mind: if children are able to deal with inconsistent representations and knowledge attributions provide evidence of mental state attribution, why do they nonetheless struggle with the false belief task?

ABSTRACT. The Extended Mind Thesis (EM) says that our minds extend beyond our bodies. EM has come under attack for its claim that extended states are functionally equivalent to internal mental states. In a similar vein, I argue that extended states cannot function unconsciously. On my view, unconscious mental states can be active in two ways: (1) being manifested in the consciousness without being recalled consciously, and (2) being generated or changed due to undergoing unconscious processes. My conclusion is that EM’s scope is at best limited to mental states that are unlikely to operate unconsciously.

ABSTRACT. I propose a knowledge-first theory of the folk psychology of belief, according to which to believe p is to treat p in the fully specific way F such that F is relevantly similar to the fully specific way G such that in normal circumstances, anyone treats anything they know in G. I highlight some of the explanatory benefits of this theory, which include: fitting the developmental trajectory of the folk psychologies of knowledge and belief; explaining why the verb ‘believe’ admits degree modifiers and comparatives; predicting results by experimental philosophers and di­verging intuitions about cases of delusion and superstition.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyses the current ‘epistemic crisis [in democracy]’ through the lens of epistemology of testimony. Building on Sandy Goldberg’s (2011) concept of distributed credibility monitoring (i.e. that hearers depend on their wider epistemic community in making credibility appraisals), I introduce the term public credibility dysfunction to refer to a state in which that mechanism fails to the point where hearers are severely frustrated in forming apt credibility appraisals. This phenomenon partially explains citizens’ ignorance and increase of false beliefs. Furthermore, I argue that it undermines the safety of our true beliefs, and potentially affects the knowledge-producing capacity of democracy.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to analyze the concept of insouciance proposed by Cassam (2019). To do this, I use the development proposed by Le Morvan (2021). However, the ultimate purpose of this work is to determine more specifically the phenomenon of bullshit. To do this, firstly I will analyze the characteristics of the bullshit, following the Frankfurt analysis (1986/2005). Secondly, I will introduce the cassamian concept of insouciance in Frankfurt’s definition. Finally, I will criticize the characteristics of insouciance to broaden the notion of Frankfurtian bullshit.

ABSTRACT. It is widely held that the epistemic problem of believing in a conspiracy theory stems from the belief's inherent resistance to falsification in the face of disconfirming evidence. Another common view is that beliefs in conspiracies resist falsification in the same way that scientific theories do. I argue against both views. I argue that characterizing faulty reasoning about conspiracies in terms of resistance to falsification runs into a dead end when encountering confirming evidence from the conspirators. Second, I argue that reasoning about conspiracies is not analogous to scientific theories, as conspiracy theories resist falsification not due to underdetermination.

ABSTRACT. Combining recent work on metametaphysics and epistemology, I propose that among different epistemic states, holistic understanding suits very well with the view that the system of ontological categories is the general object of consideration of metaphysics. Recently, this view has been defended by Peter Simons, Barry Smith and E.J. Lowe in their formal ontological metametaphysics. In the present-day epistemology, the epistemic state whose object is a system or structure is holistic understanding. My proposal opens the door for the prospect that epistemic progress in metaphysics does not require the full holistic understanding; holistic understanding can come in degrees.

ABSTRACT. Recently, Kerry McKenzie argued that theory change in science threatens the value of engaging in naturalistically-inclined metaphysics before a final theory is at hand. According to McKenzie, the basic problem is that naturalistically-inclined metaphysics lacks a concept of progress. We criticise her conception of progress as too narrow, even in science, and propose an alternative notion of scientific progress that metaphysical investigations can and do latch on to, namely progress understood as exploring and constraining theory space. As an inspiration, we examine progress in particle physics. We then lay out in detail how our proposal can be applied to metaphysics.

ABSTRACT. Socially disruptive technologies (SDTs) bring about ethical and social challenges; some SDTs carry so many issues that we’d better consider whether it would be worth eliminating them or redesigning some components. I argue that Thomasson’s pragmatic method for Conceptual Engineering (2020) can be applied to “engineering” our emerging SDTs'ontology and metaphysics, for it can address those ethical and social concerns. As we do with concepts, asking what function SDTs serve and we want them to serve may help us understand what we should keep about these entities and, in some cases, even whether we should keep them altogether.

ABSTRACT. There have been several attempts within philosophy to define harm, but none of them has proven capable of dealing with the many examples that have been presented. We define a qualitative notion of harm that uses causal models and is based on a well-known definition of actual causality. The key features of our definition are that it is based on contrastive causation and uses a default utility to which the utility of actual outcomes is compared. We show that our definition is able to handle examples from the literature, and illustrate its importance for reasoning about situations involving autonomous systems.

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces the

Fitting-Object Analysis of Goodness: Goodness is the higher-order property of possessing lower-order properties that (together) constitute the source of a reason to hold some positive evaluative attitude towards these lower-order properties.

This paper argues that this view is distinct from its closest rivals (Buck-Passing and Fitting-Attitude analyses of goodness) and avoids a host of problems facing each, including the Wrong Kind of Reasons Problem, the Intrinsicality Problem, and the Too Much Goodness Problem. As such, the Fitting-Object Analysis of Goodness is a unique and compelling meta-ethical theory of goodness that deserves further consideration.

ABSTRACT. Subjectivism is the theory that our reasons are grounded in our non-rational conative attitudes. Too-few-reasons objections claim that subjectivism cannot account for all our reasons. In one such objection, the Agony Argument, Parfit imagines that I know that some event will cause me a future period of agony, but have no desire that would be served by avoiding it. Parfit insists I would have reason to avoid the agony, but subjectivism cannot accommodate it. I argue that the Agony Argument fails because dislike is essential to agony, and agony is a thick evaluative concept.

ABSTRACT. This talk will show that the notion of incomplete understanding, generally considered to support externalism, is compatible with internalism. Frege’s distinction between sense and tone suggests that Frege distinguished (in)complete understanding and semantic (ir)rationality. Incomplete understanding constitutes a basis for the Fregean sense insofar as Frege’s principle employed to detect senses presupposes that a person ignorant of some aspects of word meaning can be semantically rational. Incomplete understanding also triggers a deferential mode of presentation, due to which the speaker is disposed to modify or discard some lexical information if it is inconsistent with the expert knowledge.

ABSTRACT. For Recanati, a mental file maintained by a subject s is a repository for mentalese predicates that s treats as true of one and the same object. Kaplan (2011: 167n24) objected that conceiving files as repositories/boxes that cannot intersect "doesn't work well for relations, which would seem to require that we put the files into each other". After examining and dismissing three solutions to this problem involving pointers (Recanati 2012: 50), file labels (Schiffer 1996: 93n4) and polyadic mentalese predicates conceived as file links (Murez 2011 & my …), I will propose to conceive files as points/nodes in the mind.

ABSTRACT. In my paper, I address misconceptions about John Perry's work in “Thought without Representation” [1986]. Some have misinterpreted Perry's distinction between a representation being about something vs concerning something as exclusive and this has led some to incorrectly attribute to him the use of relativized propositions to capture the truth-conditions of such representations. However, I argue that Perry's distinction is not exclusive and that he argues that unarticulated constituents are part of a representation's truth-conditions and that representations concern both articulated and unarticulated constituents. Furthermore, I argue that accepting relativized propositions would go against the very idea of unarticulated constituents.

ABSTRACT. Philosophers of moral progress argue that some past (and potential future) progressive social changes are caused by people acquiring better beliefs about the extent to which their practices are “natural, necessary, and inevitable feature[s] of the social world” (Pleasants 2010, 166). This is the de-naturalisation mechanism and I aim to provide a more rigorous account of it to better assess its plausibility. I give an account of what it means to claim that practices are natural, the extent to which practices can be conventional, and the psychological mechanisms which maintain false perceptions of naturalness and how these can be overcome.

ABSTRACT. “Genome-Wide Association Studies” correlate a given phenotypic characteristic with particular “haplotypes” (patterns of associated “single nucleotide polymorphisms”) by comparing genomes drawn from persons displaying said characteristic with genomes drawn from (otherwise similar) persons lacking it. Their spread raises the question of whether the information they convey implies that complex behavioral characteristics related to unequal socio-economic outcomes – e. g., educational attainments – are ultimately genetically determined. Our article addresses this question in light of recent literature on the intrinsic stochasticity of gene expression and debates on the relations between chance and credence within the epistemological framework inaugurated by David Lewis.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we argue for the following etiological definition of a biological function: a trait token is considered as functional if and only if, by performing its activity, it is recurrently contributing to the organism’s fitness, which, in turn, explains its maintenance. Specifically, we assess the explanatory depth (or power) of function statements according to their resistance to fluctuations of background conditions. Thus, an etiological explanation is deeper when the statement accounts for the trait’s maintenance under differing background conditions. Finally, the explanatory depth in question corresponds to the degree of functionality ascribed to a trait.

ABSTRACT. According to Frege, logic is concerned with truth in a very peculiar manner. Only logicians, he argues, are occupied in uncovering the truth about truth. Nevertheless, Frege—the very father of modern logic—said remarkably little about the nature of truth. This state of affairs has the makings of a paradox.

The present contribution seeks to unravel this paradox by illustrating how Frege’s fragmentary remarks on truth can be brought together into a unified picture. Ultimately, I suggest, the scarcity of Frege’s comments on truth is precisely the result of the absolute logical fundamentality that he assigns to this notion.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I argue that Fregean sense should not be considered a casualty of the well-founded criticism that has been directed toward Michael Dummett’s interpretation of Frege as a proponent of a truth-conditional semantics for (an idealized version of) natural language. Although Frege did not envision his notion of sense as furnishing such a semantics, and although natural language does resist such attempts at systematization, Fregean sense is still needed to account for features of our linguistic behavior unrelated to the unpredictable ways in which natural language utterances are contextually endowed with determinate truth conditions.

ABSTRACT. While Frege conceives of scientific definitions as sharp boundaries of concepts, he claims that all definitions are boundaries merely metaphorically. Against this, I argue that there are scientific definitions that are literally boundaries of concepts, namely, geometrical definitions. For instance, Euclid defines the triangle as a rectilinear plane figure contained by three straight lines (Elements I.def.19ii). The triangle is both bounded by straight lines and defined by the terms straight and line. More generally, the boundaries by which a geometrical object is contained are contained in its definition. Euclid’s geometrical definitions thus refute Frege’s claim that all definitions are boundaries only in a metaphorical sense.

ABSTRACT. Traditional arguments for central bank independence are usually progressed by claiming that independent central banks produce better policy outcomes. This claim is only usually problematised from the perspective of democratic participation. This paper attempts to broaden the debate on central bank legitimacy, by suggesting that we should also pay attention to the underlying understandings of the economy in such arguments. This, it is argued, is best done by fostering a pluralist approach to economics in central banks. It is claimed that Laroue’s approach to pluralism as a question of reasonableness also sufficiently limits pluralism for it to be politically applicable.

ABSTRACT. Critics of the fossil fuel divestment movement argue that from the point of view of the individual organization, divesting is futile. Against this, Lenferna (2018) and Mangat et al (2018) argue that divestments create a stigma around the use of fossil fuels, and rally the masses for the good cause. These arguments do not avoid the fundamental problem. While enough divestments would have these effects, no single divestment would make a difference to these outcomes. Elsewhere, this is called the collective harm problem. Building on Touborg’s (2018) account of causation, I suggest a solution to this problem.

ABSTRACT. The problem of dirty hands concerns situations in which an agent has to choose between two incompatible moral demands so that they inevitably have to violate an important moral value. While dirty hands cases can arise in all areas of life, it has been argued that they are most pressing in the realm of politics. The paper aims to suggest a shift in the literature to turn our focus to what is owed to the victims of dirty hands. In particular, I defend the claim that politicians owe reparations to those that have been negatively affected by their dirty-handed decisions.

ABSTRACT. Depictions of ‘typical’ philosophers are almost entirely of white men, preferably with beards. The idea of a wise, reflective, genius type has almost always been a male-coded ideal and for the most part tracks white supremist and exceptionalist ideology.

Since the 1990s significant progress was made in bringing women philosophers back into our histories of the early modern period. Black feminists made a similar case for black female intellectuals, some of whom should count as philosophers; these thinkers have been ignored or excluded from our histories mostly due to genre and circumstance.

Alongside this positive incorporation of gender and ethnic diversity in the philosophical conversation, has been the steady progression of an all-white male narrative of analytic philosophy, written almost exclusively by men. This story is false and it is easy to prove it to be so.

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer will talk about mechanisms of exclusion, canon formation, and modes of writing historiography. She will provide evidence from the historiography of philosophy for long-lasting patterns of thought that marginalised women’s contribution to philosophy and codified women’s role in philosophy to that of ‘students’ or ‘assistants’ to male philosophers. Focussing mostly on the German context, she will briefly take up the case of Rose Rand (1903-1980) and critically discuss the model of historiography used by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western philosophy (1946).

Ruth Hagengruber will reflect on how women have critically examined the concepts of philosophy, discussed or questioned the history of philosophy itself, exposed idolatry, and were active in important areas of religious criticism. She will briefly discuss Du Chatelet and Kant to illustrate the problems that arise from this sexist exclusion and that shape a history of philosophy that is still marked by abridgements, half-truths and plagiarism.

Sophia Connell will introduce the work of a number of influential and intellectually powerful female philosophers from the period 1830-1970, whose influence extends to contemporary analytic philosophy. Maria W. Stewart's public speeches contain the roots of arguments still crucial to political philosophy, Dr Sophie Bryant was the first woman to hold a postdoctoral degree in Philosophy in the UK, Professor Grace De Laguna's speculative brand of philosophical investigation is still influential, and Professor Alice Ambrose Lazerowitz's transatlantic ponderings in the early 1930s would help to shape the very way we do philosophy today.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the paper is to define and criticize a view according to which communicative intentions of legislative bodies should be treated in an ultra-realistic way: namely, that parliaments etc. should be treated as capable of possessing functionally interpreted corporate attitudes. I will argue (by referring to the ‘hard problem of content’) that because parliaments are not required to have minimal internal complexity, we cannot see them as capable of generating intentions with determinate propositional content. Consequences for the legislative intent debate and general philosophy of mind are discussed.

ABSTRACT. It is natural and common to suppose that:

Understanding-Empiricism: If one has not experienced red then one cannot fully understand what red is like.

It is moreover relatively common to suppose that Understanding-Empiricism is supported by observations of the blind and the colourblind. But do such observations support Understanding-Empiricism? I argue for a qualified answer: Observations of the blind and colourblind raise the probability that Understanding-Empiricism is correct to some, but only to a rather limited extent. As far as such observations go, the falsity of Understanding-Empiricism is very much a live option.

ABSTRACT. Subjects such as doctors, or mathematicians, seem to become acquainted with certain objects in virtue of the skills they possess. Yet traditional theories which take acquaintance to be a type of causal relation between subject and object do not take this into account. This paper, therefore, will explore the relationship that exists between skill and acquaintance. An alternative, skill-based account of acquaintance is then proposed which overcomes the shortcomings of causal accounts of acquaintance. Furthermore, I also show how the upshot of adopting this novel account is that it allows us to explain acquaintance with a wider variety of objects.

ABSTRACT. There is debate on the precise meaning of the act of retweeting. Philosophical discussion of the topic has yielded heterogenous answers regarding the motivation underlying retweeting, ranging from drawing attention, pointing and quoting or the notion that there is no clear meaning to retweets. All accounts reject the endorsement view which holds that retweets are endorsements. This study offers empirical support of the endorsement view, albeit only in a weaker form. It aims to bridge the gap between philosophical and empirical work on retweets. Finally, it rejects the validity of blanket disclaimers such as ‘A retweet is not an endorsement’.

ABSTRACT. This paper seeks to contribute to current theorizing on ignorance in social, feminist epistemology by formulating a “functionalist approach” to ignorance. My account (1) discerns several specific mechanisms through which ignorance operates as a practice. Additionally, (2) I shed light on the multitude of social functions of ignorance, not all of which are negative or repressive. In doing so, I seek to advance an ignorance-friendly epistemology that is able to illuminate the positive value of ignorance as an epistemic and political practice while at the same time addressing ignorance’s oppressive societal functions in areas such as politics or science.

ABSTRACT. I will argue that epistemic manipulators can exploit epistemic agents by manufacturing of the illusion of reliability. This illusion of reliability is built through (1) finding or creating a polluted epistemic environment and (2) directing audience research within that environment to seemingly verify shocking or desirable claims. In this way, manipulators can manufacture the feeling of reliability without actually being reliable. Additionally, I will argue that when epistemic agents get exploited in this manner, fact checking from outside sources will be rendered ineffective. This is because the epistemic agent finds the manipulator more reliable than the outside source.

ABSTRACT. The focus of the paper is a position in contemporary philosophy of mathematics known as non-eliminative structuralism. The lack of a robust non-eliminative structuralist account of systems that exhibit non-trivial automorphisms is taken to limit the applicability of non-eliminative structuralism to rigid systems. This verdict applies to two abstractionist forms of non-eliminative structuralism, one due to Linnebo & Pettigrew (2014), the other to Schiemer & Wigglesworth (2019). I challenge this verdict, and articulate a multiset-based approach to systems/structures that helps both forms of non-eliminative structuralism pass the automorphism test, thus extending the applicability of non-eliminative structuralism to non-rigid structures.

ABSTRACT. In the last ten years potentialist set theory has emerged as one of the most lively trends in the philosophy of set theory. Remarkably, a modal account of sets has been developed in two different ways, the first inspired by the work of Charles Parsons and the second dating back to Hilary Putnam and Geoffrey Hellman. The aim of the paper is to present these two approaches through two groups of questions, with the aim of outlining the state of the art while, at the same time, sketching the new paths and challenges soon-to-be-faced by a potentialist account of sets.

ABSTRACT. According to an argument by Dummett, the incompleteness of PA shows that the notion of a well-defined predicate of the natural numbers is indefinitely extensible. A possible consequence that he sees with this is that the law of the excluded middle is no longer applicable to the natural numbers. The details of this claim, however, let alone any possible arguments to its effect, are very obscure. As a clarification of Dummett’s claim, I aim to give a framework that models the the type of indefinite extensibility he has in mind and apply it to evaluate his claim about LEM.

ABSTRACT. It is still widely held in philosophy of action that there is a necessary nexus between the deliberative mind and agency. The main players in this picture are intentions: they are both the receptacles of practical deliberation and the causal antecedents of bodily movement. Thus, whenever an agent acts, they exercise their ability to form intentions. In this paper, I resist this Nexus Picture on the basis of counterexamples of mundane, mindless actions: contra-intentional actions. In cases of contra-intentional agency, the agent acts only once they skip their deliberative apparatus, and “just do” the action, as it were, without thinking.

ABSTRACT. Ruth Chang views commitment as a reason-creating mechanism for rational agents that constitutes one's rational agency. Because commitment, used as a term of art by Chang, is a will to make certain facts reasons for us. Thus, rational agents are not only subject to rational constraints, but also at liberty to create reasons for themselves. I will argue that this view fails to differentiate the constitutive significance between conscious and unconscious commitments. Chang's formulation allows commitments to be unconscious while significantly contributing to rational agency without passing any check of rationality. Two problems thus arise: low exit-cost and conflicting commitments.

ABSTRACT. According to the “intentional action thesis”, all actions are intentional actions. This claim is based on the assumption that only intentional behaviours are deeply and intimately related to the agent and, hence, are worthy of being considered actions. By proposing “agential pluralism”, I challenge this claim. I argue that considering only intentional actions does not fully capture all behaviours which are deeply and intimately related to the agent. There are non-intentional processes, such as creative thinking, which are deeply and intimately related to the agent and which, I argue, should be considered actions too.

ABSTRACT. It is absurd to believe the content of “P and I don’t believe that p.”––this is a version of Moore’s Paradox. I will argue that Moore’s Paradox is an instance of a general paradoxical schema that manifests a rational tension between (i) a mental activity or state and (i) a de se belief about that very mental activity or state. I will present two conditions that are necessary for the general paradoxical schema to manifest the rational tension. These conditions will then be used against recently defended counter-examples to Moore’s Paradox, which do not satisfy these conditions.

ABSTRACT. Impurism in epistemology is the view that knowledge is sensitive to practical context. Impurism faces a number of thorny objections. My aim is to develop a novel version of impurism, called “context-relative impurism”, which is better equipped to handle the objections than current versions in the literature. In the presentation, I focus on Keith DeRose’s “killer objection” to impurism as well as his multi-tasking objection. I show how context-relative impurism handles these objections and then address Baron Reed’s contention that treating knowledge as context-relative is unattractive.

ABSTRACT. A widespread consensus states that assertions are our primary source of information. Nevertheless, there is a deep disagreement concerning how the informativeness of assertions should be understood. I argue that assertions essentially deliver new information. As a result, uninformative assertions are improper. I motivate my claim by appealing to conversational patterns, an analogy between assertions and inquiries, and an asymmetry between assertions and uninformative speech acts. I defend the informativeness of assertions against recent criticisms (e.g., Montminy 2020; Willard-Kyle 2021), by showing that the discussed cases are either only apparently proper assertions or are different speech act types whatsoever.

ABSTRACT. Philosophers generally distinguish between properties denoted by natural language predicates(abundant properties) and properties that play a role in (fundamental) reality (sparse properties). I will argue that the ontology reflected in natural language displays another notion of a property, tied to the notion of an abstract or 'Kimean' states, which has been argued plays a role as a Davidsonian argument of (most) stative verbs. Thus, explicit property-referring terms like 'the property of being wise' resist clausal modifiers with eventive or concrete state verbs. This so far unnoticed constraint raises an interesting issue about the learnability of the ontology of natural language.

ABSTRACT. There are no tables. Nor chairs or statues. The truth is: there are no composite objects at all. This is, in a nutshell, mereological nihilism (MN), according to which there are no instances of the proper parthood relation (Van Inwagen 1991). While the study of MN is intrinsically interesting, Calosi (2016) has shown that it can also provide fruitful insights into other mereological debates. In this paper, I shall pursue the same path, arguing that it gives us reasons to reject that there is no "real" definition of proper parthood, as recently argued by Cotnoir (2016 and 2018).

ABSTRACT. Sagi (2014) developed a theory of logical terms as a kind of semantic constraint. Semantic constraints themselves are characterized as restricting the class of admissible models. As this framework is very flexible regarding the admissiblity of different classes of models, an application to hyperintensional phenomena (essence, counter-possibles, conceptual grounding) is developed and compared to existing accounts of hyperintensionality. Essences can be construed as sets of semantic constraints regarding certain (types of) objects. Counter-possibles are shown to be not vacuously true in all admissible classes of models. And conceptual grounding will be explained as a relation between semantic constraints.

ABSTRACT. This paper tries to answer the question of what judgmentalism is, a behavior that is often criticized in ethics but not well defined. It shows that philosophers use the term for four different phenomena: jumping to conclusion, moralism, meddling, and a lack of understanding. The paper argues that these different phenomena of judgmentalism can, however, be brought together. It defines judgmentalism as characterized by a desire to correct others and an attempt to satisfy that desire through a judgmentalism expression that is manifested in one (or more) of the four different phenomena.

ABSTRACT. I present a formative challenge for moral judgment pluralism—a burgeoning view according to which multiple kinds of moral judgment exist, including belief-like and desire-like ones. First, I show that moral judgment pluralists are committed to the claim that MORAL JUDGMENT refers disjunctively to different psychological kinds. Second, I problematize four metasemantic explanations of MORAL JUDGMENT’s disjunctive reference, turning on family resemblance, reference magnetism, linguistic deference, and conceptual role, respectively. Third, I consider whether moral judgment pluralists might evade their explanatory burden by pivoting from conceptual analysis to conceptual amelioration. I identify some practical questions that this maneuver raises.

ABSTRACT. I argue that any brand of moral realism adequate to moral phenomenology needs to be substantively more ambitious than the most ambitious realist position in the current landscape of analytic metaethics, David Enoch's robust realism. For this purpose, I articulate the phenomenology of joy as involving the goodness of the world as such, as captured by Nietzsche’s remark „In order to rejoice in anything, one must approve of everything.“ Any plausible understanding of what is involved in the world as such being good is incompatible with the ontology of robust realism, on which goodness is both contingent and causally inert.

ABSTRACT. In his recent book A Referential Theory of Truth and Falsity, Ilhan Inan argues for a truth theory, where truth and falsity are accounted in terms of sentential reference. Most controversial aspect of this theory appears to be its explanation for the sentences embedded under logical operators. Inan argues that negation shifts the reference of a sentence from a state to a proposition. He focuses on sentential negation, but I believe the most natural interpretation of negation in a natural language is predicate negation. Interpreting negation in this way would save the referential theory of truth from questionable assumptions.

ABSTRACT. Inferentialism is a use-theoretic approach to linguistic meaning, which takes the material validity of inference rules to be explanatorily basic. Furthermore, modest inferentialism – as opposed to strong versions – does not eschew truth as an explanatory notion in semantic theorising, but embraces it. However, despite the attractive combination of use-theoretic metasemantics with truth-conditional semantics, modest inferentialism appears to lack proper foundations in the literature. This paper develops the starting points for such on conceptual grounds, argues that all inferentialists ought to be modest, and discusses the relationship of modest inferentialism with mainstream formal semantics.

ABSTRACT. Truth pluralists of various sorts argue that the nature of truth varies across discourse domains. Prominent approach defines domains as classes of sentences that are individuated based on subject matter like physics (correspondence-criterion) or mathematics (coherence-criterion). After articulating several issues with individuating domains on grounds of subject matters, this paper defends a novel ontology-based approach to individuating discourse domains that seeks to avoid the aforementioned issues. Finally, the proposed model for domains does not serve only the truth pluralists, but all who rely on there being robust boundaries between discursive contents.

ABSTRACT. Scepticism about psychiatric progress is fuelled by the lack of a common framework for classifying mental disorders: classifications that favour clinical utility (such as DSM or ICD) have little empirical validity, whereas classifications that promote empirical validity (such as RDoC or HiTOP) have limited clinical utility. I shall resist this sceptical outcome by embracing a pragmatic rather than a teleological conception of progress, that is, by shifting the focus from measuring progress globally, against an elusive end goal (where empirical validity and clinical utility converge ‘in the long run’), to measuring it locally, against more specific aims and values.

ABSTRACT. Philosophers in search of a theory of content determination for mental representations often employ the following methodology: they analyse cognitive science literature, aiming to make explicit an implicit naturalistic theory guiding the attribution of mental content within cognitive science. At least, they attempt to generate a theory which is consistent with scientific usage. However, Frances Egan puts forward a compelling argument to the effect that scientists have no implicit naturalistic theory guiding content attribution. In this paper I attempt to answer Egan, demonstrating that a certain class of content attributions satisfy her conditions on being guided by a naturalistic theory.

ABSTRACT. In the last decade, evidential pluralism has achieved great relevance in the philosophy and methodology of medicine. According to this approach, to establish a causal claim, both mechanistic and statistical evidence are crucial. Recently, some advocates of evidential pluralism have claimed that this approach should be extended to the social sciences. The proposed extension of evidential pluralism (implicitly) assumes that, between biomedical and social sciences, there are no relevant differences concerning evidence. In this paper, we discuss and challenge this assumption. Furthermore, we draw some guidelines for pluralists approaches to evidence in the social sciences.

ABSTRACT. There is a deficit of metaontological reflection within the analytic metaphysics of time. Firstly, I will show what metaontological reflection means for the metaphysics of time by distinguishing between restricted quantification, i.e., statements about temporal localization, and unrestricted quantification, i.e., statements about temporal existence simpliciter. Secondly, I will point out that this distinction is useful since it allows for the refutation of some eternalist positions. Finally, I will propose two new theoretical options that are arise by a metaontological approach; in this part, the utility of the distinction between ontological and metaontological dispute will be adressed.

ABSTRACT. Cora Diamond has developed a therapeutic outlook on philosophical methodology: focusing on the objectivity of thought, her goal is not a straightforward answer to our worries about it but a demonstration that these worries are unfounded. Echoing Kant, she says that philosophy should bring thought “into agreement with itself.” Barry Stroud points out that this might just restate the difficulty: thought may be internally consistent and nonetheless be unobjective. I suggest that the sources of this deep problem of objectivity can best be identified and understood via a version of transcendental idealism, implicit in both Diamond and Stroud.

ABSTRACT. The normativity challenge is supposed to be a devastating objection to naturalism: No matter what virtues a descriptive theory of a normative category might possess, it can’t be true because it can’t explain normativity. The normativity challenge is actually three distinct challenges. Moore’s challenge says naturalism can’t explain the meaning of normative expressions. Hume’s challenge says naturalism can’t explain the motivating force of normative claims. Kant’s challenge says naturalism can’t account for objective reasons. None of these challenges raises a serious worry for naturalism (much less a devastating objection). Explaining normativity is a challenge for everyone, not just the naturalist.

ABSTRACT. The separation thesis of legal positivism claims that validity and content of law are matters of social facts alone, without recourse to morality. Interpretation involves moral valuation. This puts the separation thesis in jeopardy. If legal interpretation requires moral valuation, then legal content is not exclusively a matter of social facts. Legal positivists have several options how to reconcile the separation thesis with moral commitments of legal interpretation. In the paper the arguments for and against each of those accounts will be discussed. I will demonstrate that none of proposed solutions is satisfactory

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the concept of foreseeability in law. In general, foreseeability is a principle in law that refers to the ability to anticipate the potential consequences of an action or event reasonably. The analysis will proceed on several levels. First, the project involves a dogmatic analysis of the concept of foreseeability. Second, the project assumes the reconstruction of the folk concept of foreseeability. Third, the mutual confrontation of these two reconstructed aspects of the concept will be used to design an empirical study to see how the attribution of foreseeability can be influenced by various factors.

ABSTRACT. According to Duff’s strong negative legal moralism, only conduct that is wrongful independently of its criminalisation may be criminalised. In this talk, I explore how this view is undermined by cases in which criminalisation is needed to change suboptimal or harmful norms in society. In particular, I show that Duff’s response to such counterexamples fails: legal moralism can allow for criminalising the harmful conduct only when it is no longer the norm, as this conduct is not wrongful before the social context has changed. This means that legal moralism cannot accommodate criminalisation as a tool for important positive norm change.

ABSTRACT. In recent years explanation has been a hot topic in metaphysics. However, traditional views about explanation have been challenged by epistemologists and philosophers of science that have investigated the connection between explanation and understanding. Metaphysicians have thus far rarely taken notice of this lively debate. And philosophers working on understanding usually neglect metaphysical explanations. The present talk aims to bring both debates into contact. I propose a novel account of understanding that is suitable to accommodate the kind of understanding that is provided by metaphysical explanations.

ABSTRACT. According to the maxim of neutrality, formal ontological notions like ontological dependence, grounding, and metaphysical explanation are supposed to be neutral with regard to substantive metaphysical commitments and material ontological views. Nothing in their characterization should rule out any substantive metaphysical views. In this paper I tackle the question if or to what extent we can make sense fo the maxim of neutrality. I argue that the intelligibility of this maxim depends on whether we can make sense of a specific notion of possibility. I do so by discussing a specific principle about metaphysical explanation that has recently been proposed.

ABSTRACT. Grounding is central to contemporary discussions in metaphysics. However, there currently is no well-developed methodology for finding grounding connections. I define, investigate, and evaluate three proposals for developing an a priori epistemology of grounding. The first proposal concerns explanatory gaps: it posits that there should be no explanatory gaps between grounds and groundees. The second proposal concerns metaphysically explanatory properties: it posits that groundees will inherit the properties of their grounds that metaphysically explain them. The final proposal concerns ubiquitous properties: it posits that groundee will inherit the ubiquitous properties of their grounds.

ABSTRACT. Early modern philosophers practiced the history of philosophy as philosophy; they read past philosophers for the purpose of entering a dialogue. But there are different kinds of dialogues; and from this perspective I would like to classify the histories of philosophy of the seventeenth century into three categories. I will call the first category – following a relatively recent debate of the twentieth century – “collegial history of philosophy”. Much like their twentieth century “colleagues”, some of the Aristotelian philosophers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century were willing to engage in open, collegial debates with their past predecessors, learning to detect, evaluate and refute their arguments, while defining and strengthening their own positions during these disputation with imaginary opponents. A second type of history of philosophy I call “genealogical”. This history of philosophy is done with an entirely different purpose; it provides a respected genealogy for one’s own ideas, places one’s philosophical position within a “tradition.” This type of history of philosophy is also a-historical; or, at least, it often invents entirely fictional chronologies. There are many examples of genealogical histories of philosophy: Ficino’s Platonism, Gassendi’s Epicureanism, Lipsius (Neo)Stoicism are some such examples. Much has been written about these two ways of doing history of philosophy for the sake of philosophy. In this talk I would like to talk about a third category, one in which the dialogue with past philosophers is neither genealogical, nor disputational, but collaborative. In this history of philosophy, one takes past philosophers to be colleagues in the true sense of the term, i.e., fellow travelers on the road to Truth. Like the other two, this history of philosophy is also a-historical and harbors a degree of fictionalism. In my talk I will focus on a particular example of collaborative history of philosophy, one in which the fictional element is distinctive and plays a very important role. This is Francis Bacon’s attempt to recreate the persona of Democritus as an embodiment of the true method and practices of a new “experimental” philosophy. I will show that we have in Bacon’s complex reconstruction the perfect example of a fictional history of philosophy which stands in stark contrast with both the genealogical and the collegial models of doing history of philosophy. Fictional history of philosophy does not seem to be practiced in philosophy nowadays; but in my talk I suggest that we can establish interesting correlations between Bacon’s fictional reconstruction of Democritus and the ways in which (integrated) history of science (&HPS) is practiced today.

ABSTRACT. It has been argued that agent-neutral reasons can be traced back to the understanding of agent-neutral roles connected with joint action and group agency. I contend that things are more nuanced. The latter only provide agents with group reasons that are agent-relative, yet mature socio-cognitive capacities involved in complex forms of cooperation account for understanding and acting on reasons that go beyond group reasons. Thus, while agent-neutral reasons cannot be traced back straightaway to group agency, they can be explained in terms of normative expectations that emerge from the psychological infrastructure of cooperation.

ABSTRACT. I defend a new way to understand collective intention as a combination of individual conditional intentions. Revising an initial statement of the conditional intention account in response to several challenges leads to a specification of the properties these intentions need to have in order to be genuine commitments. I then show how a structure of conditional intentions with these properties settles a collection of agents on engaging in social interactions that display all the features typically associated with shared agency.

ABSTRACT. Our paper discusses critically some recent intellectualist theories about skill, focusing on Pavese (2017), (2019), (2021). In these works, Pavese puts forward an intellectualist account of skill, using the notions of practical representation and practical meaning, which are supposed to provide the content needed in order to mediate satisfactorily between propositional knowledge and skilled performance. Our arguments will supplement the critique of Robertson and Hutto (forthcoming) by focusing on the gap between the context-specificity of practical representations, on the one side, and the coarse-grained character of abilities and of the presumed propositional knowledge that underpins those abilities, on the other.

ABSTRACT. The role of testimony in the transmission and generation of knowledge has been debated vividly in contemporary epistemology. More recently, also other types than propositional knowledge are being discussed, among them know-how. No special attention, however, has been paid to tacit know-how yet. I am arguing for the thesis that testimony, understood in an inclusive way, can play a central role in the transmission and generation of tacit know-how. This thesis is embedded in a virtue-theoretic framework: next to testimony, successful acquisition of tacit know-how depends on the relationship between teacher and student and the virtues both display.

ABSTRACT. It has been claimed that phenomena such as placebo analgesia demonstrate that the pain system is cognitively penetrated, therefore it is not encapsulated from the central cognition. However, important arguments have been formulated which aim to show that cognitive penetrability does not entail a lack of modularity. My goal is to offer an alternative way to reject the modularity of the pain system. I propose that there are good reasons to accept that certain cognitive mechanisms are parts of the pain system. I argue that such “cognitive constitution” of the pain system entails that the pain system is not modular.

ABSTRACT. Pain Asymbolia (PA) is a neuropsychiatric syndrome producing atypical responses to noxious stimuli. The standard interpretation of PA is that affected subjects experience pain, but their experience lacks some important features. Supposedly this demonstrates the complex nature of pain. I challenge the standard interpretation. I argue that the clinical evidence for PA does not support the standard interpretation, that the standard interpretation commits a mereological fallacy which renders it incoherent, and that, on an essentialist understanding of pain, the standard interpretation reduces to subjectivism, which it was designed to avoid. Finally, I suggest taking a deflationist stance toward PA.

ABSTRACT. We often inquire not just to acquire true beliefs or to know, but to understand. Although there has been a recent splurge of philosophical interest in inquiry and its norms, especially in contrast with traditional ‘epistemic’ norms (Friedman 2019, 2022; Archer 2021; Flores & Woodard, forth), philosophers have paid virtually no attention to the norms that govern understanding in the context of inquiry, despite understanding being a paradigmatic if not constitutive aim of many inquiries. My aim in this paper is to give an initial outlook of what inquiring to understand amounts to and the norms that might govern it.

ABSTRACT. Here are two norms which may seem above suspicion: EN: one ought to believe what is supported by the evidence. And ZIP: if one wants to figure out something, one ought to take the necessary means to figuring out this thing. In a recent paper, Jane Friedman argues that one cannot satisfy ZIP without violating EN. From this, she concludes that one needs to renounce the well-established epistemic norm EN. The purpose of my paper is to sidestep this draconian revision by solving the tension between EP and ZIP in an original way.

ABSTRACT. We press Lewis's (1986) dilemma for 'magical realism' against views in the metaphysics of propositions.

Propositions (truth-apt objects of attitudes) stand to situations as possibilities stand to circumstances. In Lewis's terminology, much as the actual world 'selects' an abstract possible world according to the magician, so a situation like Trump's running 'selects' the proposition that Trump runs. But selection is an internal or external relation, and, on many views, including (Frege 1892), (Merricks 2015), (Salmón 1986), and (Stalnaker 1984), propositions are abstract simples. So the relation's not internal. And, if it's external, it's unacceptably brute. Thus, those views are false.

ABSTRACT. Whether someone has a general ability is often seen as a matter of what that person is intrinsically like. In contrast, whether someone has a disability is typically thought to depend, at least in part, on features of the social world. I argue that many general abilities, like disabilities, are attributed against a background of social norms and expectations. If many of our everyday ability attributions are a kind of social classifications, as I claim, then we, as attributors of abilities, collectively have both the freedom and responsibility to, at times, carefully renegotiate their application.

ABSTRACT. It might seem that a relevant end gives us instrumental reasons to act in a certain way only if so acting makes a positive difference to the degree to which the end is realized compared to other ways of acting. This thought, “Difference-Making”, might seem to be supported by Justin Snedegar’s recently defended contrastivism, according to which we have instrumental reasons for an action only if it is better promoted by that action than by its alternatives. In this talk, I provide problems for contrastivism and argue that a generalization of Snedegar’s insights can handle those problems without supporting Difference-Making.

ABSTRACT. This paper outlines how insights from feminist criticisms of traditional moral theory can help us understand the limitations of Effective Altruism. Feminist ethics showed how moral theory, by relying on impartiality as a methodology, lead to the exclusion of moral experience by marginalised groups, and implicitly centres groups in positions of power. Applied to Effective Altruisms commitments to cause-neutrality and impartiality, this helps to understand criticisms of Effective Altruism based on structural injustice and power dynamics. The paper closes with a discussion on how effective altruists can move forward by abandoning abstract and embracing a more interactive form of impartiality.

ABSTRACT. I consider examples of distorted reference with the use of ideologically laden expressions, with the following general form: A given term T has a definite extension E, with regard to which adherents of some ideology hold negative attitudes, so that, at least for those users, the term has additional evaluative or derogatory meaning, D. Crucially, both E and D may underwrite referential uses of T – and they can come apart. Thus, some uses of T may be guided primarily or exclusively by its derogatory connotations and not its “objective” extension. I propose an inferentialist semantics for these uses.

ABSTRACT. In my talk I want to propose an ambiguity-first approach to the semantics of anaphoric and deictic pronoun. The framework chosen for this task is Inquisitive Semantics. The idea is that referential ambiguity generates two kinds of content — inquisitive, having to do with the fact that an issue as to which disambiguation is correct is raised, and informative, having to do with the fact that some information has been given despite the ambiguity. A sketch of a formal implementation of this idea is given, along with some possibilities of extending this framework to other referential expressions.

ABSTRACT. According to orthodoxy, Leibniz's principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) is either violated or weakly valid for similar particles. However, as it is still possible to regard similar particles either as individuals or as non-individuals, French has concluded that metaphysics is underdetermined by physics (orthodox underdetermination). According to heterodoxy, by contrast, a strong version of PII is valid. As heterodoxy is backed up by physical considerations, it looks as if metaphysics is now determined by physics. In this talk, I argue that, despite appearances, heterodox metaphysics is just as underdetermined by the physics as orthodox metaphysics (heterodox underdetermination).

ABSTRACT. The replication problem has become a central debate in the philosophy, history and sociology of gravitational wave physics.The first part of this paper will discuss different definitions of replication from the existing literature and its philosophical concerns. In second part, this paper will analyse the history of replication from Joseph Weber detector to the LIGO detectors. Finally, this paper will provide a proper definition for replication that is helpful for the mega scientific projects like LIGO, and it suggests that if the same result is not derived from different detectors that have the same designs, it cannot be proven.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the present work is to analyze the epistemological conditions for a dynamic logic of belief change that guarantee the elementary aspects for a process ontology. Basically, the proposal will consist in the study of these three hypotheses:

(1) Logics of belief change that operate only over propositions, without involving conceptual change, do not satisfy sufficient conditions for establishing an ontology.

(2) Not all dynamic doxastic logics satisfy the conditions for a dynamic ontology.

(3) Dynamic doxastic logics may satisfy the conditions for a dynamic ontology, but not for a process ontology.

ABSTRACT. Manipulation arguments aim to show that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility. Manipulation arguments assume that with respect to responsibility there is no significant difference between the manipulated agent and non-manipulated agents in a deterministic universe. Because manipulated agents are not responsible for what they do the same holds for non-manipulated agents in deterministic universes. I argue that manipulation scenarios have an overlooked essential feature that does not carry over to non-manipulation scenarios: Manipulations are counterfactual robustness. The premise that there is no significant difference between the two scenarios has to be rejected.

ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the harmful effects fake news can have on the well-being of individual citizens. While the contemporary discussion focuses primarily on the harm fake news inflicts upon the political community, this paper assesses fake news' impact on the individuals' well-being using the theoretical background of Martha Nussbaum's capability theory and analyzes how being subjected to fake news can endanger the development of the two most important capabilities: practical reason and affiliation. The paper also analyzes some measures individuals and the government can implement to reduce fake news' detrimental effects.

ABSTRACT. A widespread explanation of the rise of polarization claims that it is the result of people’s epistemic vices. However, there is growing literature claiming that we can end up having false beliefs and an unwavering confidence in our views without being epistemically flawed, so polarization is epistemologically neutral. In this paper, we offer two arguments against the epistemic neutrality of polarization, both connected to justification: we can increase our confidence in our views as a result of (i) adopting a certain narrative –which can be epistemologically negligent, or (ii) trusting people from our group –which can be epistemically virtuous.

ABSTRACT. We all have epiphanies, whatever we may call them: wow-moments, experiences of wonder and awe and joy. Epiphanic experience is a central source of our knowledge of the beauty, goodness, and mystery of the world around us.

Today we face an environmental crisis around us, and an existential crisis within. The planet, our only home, is being desecrated and destroyed by our bad choices. And our own hearts, the source of those bad choices, are often as barren, lifeless, and polluted as the planet is becoming.

Epiphanies can help us here. We should make room for them, by learning to be still and to listen and to watch, and by learning to act out of the reverent stillness that is our best response to what epiphanies reveal to us: the constant, inexhaustible, always-surprising beauty of the world.

ABSTRACT. This paper considers the role of attention in the evolution of sophisticated cognition. In rudimentary cognition, representations of environmental states of affairs are directly connected to representations of action, whereas sophisticated cognition requires the manipulation of discrete descriptive and directive representations (Millikan 1995; 2004). For creatures exhibiting some degree of ‘behavioral decoupling’, or the ability to act in multiple ways in light of a given situation, attention has a prioritizing function enabling flexible action (Wu 2014; Watzl 2017). I argue that the emergence of attentional capacities was also a crucial step in the origins of discrete descriptive and directive representation.

ABSTRACT. The paper focuses on the relation between two cognitive capacities required for self-conscious human cognition: (1) assessment of our cognitive attitudes as apt to be objectively correct or not; and (2) their assessment in light of reasons. A common view seems to be that (1) is a precondition for (2). I shall formulate three different challenges that suggest that a grip on cognitive attitudes as objectively correct or incorrect always already involves some grip on them as located in a space of reasons.

ABSTRACT. The dispute whether agents are subject to causal determinism, the problem of freedom, has proven to be sticky: A substantial minority of philosophers rejects compatibilist solutions to the problem, falling for either determinism or libertarianism – a resolution of the debate is not in sight. We propose that our cognitive psychology is to blame for this; but this does not debunk any particular alternative. Humans possess two competing incompatible cognitive mechanisms to detect causality – for mechanical and for agentive causality. These hard-wired mechanisms produce incompatible intuitive judgments and will keep doing so – fuelling the competing intuitions motivating incompatibilism.

ABSTRACT. By ‘epistemological compass’ we mean a conceptual device for acquiring knowledge and better orienting oneself in one’s intellectual and physical environment. Epistemological compasses are therefore made of concepts and theories (the latter both explicit and implicit). According to several contemporary social scientists, post-truth represents the best conceptual tool for investigating the dynamics of societies. We aim to show that this is wrong because post-truth cannot be matched with any plausible concept of objectivity. This will be done by analysing the many kinds of objectivity that the latter concept allows.

ABSTRACT. You know that P. Someone asks you how you know. If it’s not sceptical, the import of this question is unclear. On one view it is epistemological: a request for your reasons for believing that P. On another the question is not epistemological but rather metaphysical or perhaps even merely social.

I argue that neither view adequately captures what’s going on here. The question really is often genuinely epistemological. Equally often, natural and adequate answers do not identify good reasons for believing that P. I provide an alternative, ecumenical view that draws on a notion of your knowledge’s modal shape.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I offer a theory of the practical basing relation called “double dispositionalism” (DD). In a nutshell, I argue that acting on the basis of a reason is doing what one is disposed to consider appropriate. I defend DD on the following grounds: DD can address the problem of deviant explanatory chains, it does not over intellectualize practical basing, and can explain why acting on the basis of a reason is subject to a tricky form of higher-order defeat (what I call “proper basing defeat”).

ABSTRACT. Dretske (1969, 2000) famously argues that there is a fundamental visual ability that is not tied to any epistemic presuppositions such as knowledge and belief. This idea of non-epistemic seeing, or simple seeing, was already developed to some extent by Warnock (1955) and Soltis (1966), but unlike them, Dretske provides a reductive analysis for epistemic seeing (seeing that) based on simple seeing. In this paper, I defend the notion of simple seeing against various objections and present a novel argument against the feasibility of a reductive analysis on that basis.

ABSTRACT. According to austere relationalism, (i) perceptual phenomenal character is at least partially constituted by the perceived items, (ii) perception isn’t representational. Recently, Baz, Kalpokas, and Overgaard have objected that austere relationalism can’t explain seeing aspects. In short, they argue that austere relationalism can’t account for a phenomenological observation that what it’s like to see an aspect is neither like ordinary seeing, nor like judging a perceived item to be a certain way. In response, I argue that this challenge can be met by specifying austere relationalism in terms of Pure Relationalism, an unconventional conception of perception identified by Stoneham.

ABSTRACT. Byrne and Manzotti (2022) defend the GOTHic theory of hallucination on which there is always an object of hallucination that is a physical object. Their theory assimilates hallucination to perception on phenomenological grounds. Episodic memory provides a stock of familiar objects that the visual system composes into the object of hallucination. I present three objections: the empirical objection considers evidence from late-stage Alzheimer’s to target the role it accords to episodic memory; the conceptual objection considers hallucinations based on confabulated memories; the phenomenological objection is that it collapses the felt distinctions between sensory imagination, episodic memory, hallucination, and perception.

ABSTRACT. Understanding, several argue, requires grasping how isolated pieces of information within a common domain hang together. But what is grasping? In this talk, I will argue that grasping is the internalization of the rules guiding structural relations within understanding’s object. To that end, I will make use of a structuralist approach to understanding’s object to enable greater insight into the structural relations that the rules in question have to account for, thereby revealing their distinctive features. Once better understanding of these rules is established, I argue, the principal criteria for their successful internalization become apparent.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates the nature of the grasping component of moral understanding. Based on a critical examination of what may be called the cognitivist conception of the grasp involved in moral understanding, it is argued that this grasp is best conceived of as a specific insight into moral reality achieved in action. The nature of this insight is clarified as well as its connection to one’s proper practical engagement with moral reasons. Finally, the nature of the relationship between moral understanding and moral virtues is reconsidered in light of the proposed agential conception of the grasping component of moral understanding.

ABSTRACT. Intuition-based accounts of the a priori are criticised for appealing to a “mysterious” faculty of rational intuition to explain how a priori knowledge is possible. Analyticity-based accounts are typically motivated by opposition to them, offering a purportedly “non-mysterious” account of the a priori. I argue that analyticity-based accounts are in no better position to explain the a priori than intuition-based accounts. I focus on recent analyticity-based accounts of the a priori, which appeal to understanding alone to explain the a priori. I argue that the appeal to understanding is no less mysterious than the appeal to rational intuition.

ABSTRACT. In this talk I defend a view that I call (LOCKE) – that is, to a mind-dependent essence corresponds a mind-dependent existence. After surveying some of the reasons that make (LOCKE) plausible, I consider one of the few extant arguments in its defense, which has been put forward in Sidelle (2010). I argue that given some innocent considerations about the semantics of counterfactuals, Sidelle’s argument is not sound. Finally, I propose a modified version of Sidelle’s argument which is immune from the objections fatal to the original version and should thus be preferred.

ABSTRACT. Consider infinitival formulations of philosophical claims, in particular of essentialist, philosophical claims, such as "To be a person is to be free", "To know that p is just to believe correctly that p and for good reason”. How should they be understood? What, if anything, are they about? I argue (against D. P. Henry and Correia & Skiles) that the infinitives in such claims should not be dealt with in terms of predicates and that the best candidate for the semantic values of these infinitives is what the medievals called neutral or indifferent essence.

ABSTRACT. From the perspective of essentialism, it should be possible in principle to express an object’s individual essence by a real definition of this object. However, formulating such a real definition turns out surprisingly difficult. I, first, discuss and reject Kit Fine's proposal. Then I suggest and defend an alternative.

ABSTRACT. We argue thatthere's no reason to think we can follow the omega rule, and second, that this isn't a significant problem. We first argue that the most promising argument in the literature for the omega rule's followability is unconvincing. We then show that the inferentialist-friendly account of the categoricity of the quantifiers (of finite order) provided in Murzi & Topey 2021 is robust enough to rule out both Carnap's and Garson's deviant interpretations Finally, we explain that this result allows for an inferentialist-friendly account of the determinacy of our mathematical theories.

ABSTRACT. Although first-order logic is semantically complete, most of the mathematical theories formalized by it are non-categorical. In second-order logic we obtain categorical theories, but the semantic completeness is lost. In addition, both first and second-order quantifiers are non-categorical. Should we choose semantic completeness or categoricity? I will critically examine some recent approaches (based on open-endedness and local models –Warren 2020, Murzi & Topey 2021) for solving this tension and I will argue that adopting the omega logic, if possible, is a better choice since it provides us with semantic and deductive completeness, and with the categoricity of the first-order quantifiers.

ABSTRACT. In this talk, I will discuss a criterion (weak invariance) that has been recently suggested in order to argue for the logicality of abstraction operators, when they are understood as arbitrary expressions (cf. Boccuni Woods 2020). On the one side, I will prove that weak invariance characterises a wide range of higher-order abstraction principles (APs). So, if we accept an arbitrary interpretation of APs, many current abstractionist programs would be able to achieve the logicality objective. On the other side, I will argue that the arbitrary interpretation includes semantical insights that are radically alternative to Logicism.

ABSTRACT. Recently there is a lot of interest in collective phenomena; group speech acts among those. It is very common that we attribute assertions not to individuals but to institutions, governments, companies, research groups, etc. In this work, I offer a novel account of group assertion. I aim to distinguish between group and individual assertion. In my account, group assertion requires a special kind of authority: the authority to speak on behalf of the group. An assertion is a group assertion if and only if the individual(s) performing the utterance have the authority to represent the group.

ABSTRACT. We investigate whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) can explain. It is broadly accepted that the goal of explanation is understanding. It is, however, debated whether understanding can be transferred from a speaker to the audience. We argue that — both in human and AI interactions — understanding can only be transmitted indirectly. So what is the difference between human and AI explanations? While AI can offer explanations, it cannot participate in the practice of explaining, i.e., it can provide pieces of information necessary for our understanding but cannot guide us through the process of grasping the relations between them.

ABSTRACT. The argument from retraction (the “taking back” of a previous speech act) has been one of the main arguments used by relativists about a variety of natural language expressions in support of their view. Recently, two types of considerations (from the armchair and based on empirical studies) have been offered to undercut this support. In this paper, I engage with both and show that they are not conclusive. I urge relativists to give up the claim that retraction is mandatory and to adopt a flexible version of the view. I propose a principle underscoring this flexibility to avoid ad-hocness objections.

ABSTRACT. I argue that the problem of time of quantum gravity affects not only approaches based on canonical quantization methods, but also approaches based on covariant ones. I first review covariant quantization and then I analyze the problem of time for covariant approaches. First, it affects the justification of the theory, as it implies an important departure from the formalism of quantum mechanics and as we have reasons to believe that the quantization fails for systems analogous to general relativity. Second, it also affects the interpretation of the formalism, as I will argue that we lack a satisfactory interpretation for it.

ABSTRACT. Recent developments in the philosophy of time suggest that the concept of time should undergo a radical change. Starting from Sam Baron and Kristie Miller, empirical evidence that our naïve understanding of time cannot be captured in the monolithic manifest image of time has been provided. Likewise, Rovelli suggests that there is no unique scientific image of time, which is in some sense multilayered. I take these two insights as a starting point to argue that we should no longer believe in a unique concept of Time that should be definitively abandoned as a metaphysical relic of a bygone age.

ABSTRACT. Quantum gravity (QG) suggests that spacetime emerges from an underlying non-spatiotemporal structure (Huggett and Wüthrich 2013). However, this ‘achronic’ form of emergence might not be the only relevant notion of spacetime emergence. The resolution of classical spacetime singularities in QG suggests the occurrence of a second form of emergence: a ‘diachronic’ emergence of spacetime from a non-spatiotemporal phase ‘prior’ to the Big Bang (Wüthrich 2022, Crowther 2020). In this work, I present a novel account of ‘diachronic’ spacetime emergence that overcomes the difficulties of precedent accounts and explore some of its key implications.

ABSTRACT. Aristotle and Dewey both had the idea that one needs to have made certain experiences first in order to understand philosophy. Another example might be found in standpoint epistemology, albeit as a more restricted claim – to understand certain philosophical issues, one needs to experience the world from a certain social perspective. A different suggestion on the relation of philosophy to experience is found in Chudnoff’s work on intuitions. Here, philosophical reasoning changes our experiences. It sharpens our intuitions, and therefore, it sharpens how we experience things. Hence, we have two (not mutually exclusive) possibilities for philosophy’s relation to experience: 1) Experience being necessary for philosophical reasoning, and 2) experience as that which is being sharpened through philosophical reasoning. This paper will consider both of them and ask, if true, what consequences each would have for how we conceive of the training of philosophers.

ABSTRACT. First, this paper recommends a certain way of understanding what counts as a fictionalist account of a given topic. It draws on the distinction between epistemic and pragmatic reasons but demotes the role of the notion of fiction. Second, it discusses a condition on a genuine fictionalist account of a given topic – namely, that the account needs to deliver some independently identifiable benefit. A case study is given of a would-be fictionalist account that fails to meet this condition: fictionalism about grounding. Third, this finding is generalised and the prospects of a fictionalist account of philosophical theories are addressed.

ABSTRACT. How does philosophy bear on belief? Specifically, what should the impact of theoretical reasons—-such as philosophical arguments——be for our personal beliefs, say, the belief that one's children have value? Intuitively, they can be evidence which bears on what we ought to believe. This reflects a Socratic ideal, whereby we cannot ignore philosophy. This paper explores and defends an alternative. I argue that theoretical reasons can be ‘bracketed’ in favor of one’s first-order non-philosophical reasons. This is because philosophical reasons are fungible, but personal beliefs may only be sensitive to non-fungible reasons. This is why the personal is insulated from philosophy.

ABSTRACT. Immanent critique claims to be a non-normativistic, yet normatively significant form of social critique and thus an alternative to normative political philosophy. It has recently been argued that immanent critique cannot meet both desiderata at once, i.e. that it either relies on substantive normative standards or that the norms it relies on lack force. I argue that it can meet both desiderata at once. In short, I argue that immanent critique relies on functional-ethical norms which do not violate the no normativism desideratum, and that these norms are constitutive of societies or social institutions, which grants them normative force.

ABSTRACT. The contribution aims to qualify the sort of understanding gained in a recent orientation in cultural anthropology i.e. multispecies ethnography. The intend of the orientation is to extend the ethnographic inquiry beyond humans to nonhuman species. Understanding in anthropology was claimed in the tradition of understanding as Verstehen - the sort of understanding specific for humanities and social sciences. I will argue that the new trend puts a heavy pressure on interpreting understanding as Verstehen. This happens mainly due to the reliance on natural science, essential in multispecies ethnography that diminishes the chances of understanding as Verstehen.

ABSTRACT. The question I seek to answer is how the use of ethical criteria to diagnose the presence of social pathology can be reconciled with the anti-authoritarian commitments of mainstream liberal theory. My argument is it can, by evaluating whether the principles presupposed within our social institutions are realizable. In doing so, I rely on the claim that institutions are normatively organized around the production of collective goods. If social institutions are inherently “purposive,” I argue they make an implicit “claim to validity” in terms of whether the goods they produce successfully contribute to the well-being of social members.