Author Archives: Chong-Ming LIM

Two Problems for Pragmatic-Descriptive Accounts of Empty Names, by Fred Kroon (6 October 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 6 Oct 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Fred Kroon, Associate Professor, University of Auckland; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract:
In this paper I consider two problems for the idea (favoured by many Millians) that descriptions play a pivotal non-semantic role in what is asserted with sentences containing empty names: the specification problem, which holds that candidate descriptions often fail to have the kind of content that would allow them to fulfil this role, and the variation problem, which holds that candidate descriptions often show considerable variation even in ordinary conversational exchanges.  I suggest that a theory like causal descriptivism can be used to solve the specification problem.  The nature of the descriptions appealed to in such a theory, however, makes the variation problem look even more recalcitrant.  For much of the rest of the paper I consider a new way of solving the variation problem, one which combines the appeal to causal descriptivism with an appeal to Pluralistic Content Relativism (PCR) — the doctrine, defended in particular by Cappellen and Lepore and Soames, that what is said or asserted by an utterance at a context of utterance depends crucially on the context of interpretation from which the utterance is interpreted.

Fred KroonAbout the speaker: Fred Kroon teaches philosophy at the University of Auckland, mainly in the areas of formal and philosophical logic, and the theory of computability.  His research areas include metaphysics, the philosophy of language (especially the theory of reference), and the philosophy of fiction.  His papers in these areas have appeared in a wide range of journals, including the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Noûs, the Philosophical Review and the Journal of Philosophy.  He is an associate editor of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, and an editor for 20th century Philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Explanation and gravity, by Lina Jansson (29 Sept 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 29 Sept 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Lina Jansson, Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTU; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract:
Both Newton’s theory of gravity and the theory of general relativity are central examples of explanatory progress within the sciences.  In this talk I argue that both cases provide instances of explanation where a more complicated attitude than the standard accounts of explanation can easily accommodate is warranted.  Moreover, this problem affects any account with a specific kind of exclusivity about the relationships that can do explanatory work.  Here, I suggest that developing an account of explanation based on a notion of dependence allows us to better understand these central cases.

Photo on 12-09-2011 at 16.17 #2About the speaker: Lina Jansson is an assistant professor of philosophy at Nanyang Technological University.  She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2011.  Before starting her Ph.D. she received a B.A. in physics and philosophy from Oxford University.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Gaining Access: Indirect Measurement in Planetary Astronomy and Geophysics, by Teru Miyake (8 Sept 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 8 Sept 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Teru Miyake, Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, NTU; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract:
We have been astonishingly successful in gathering knowledge about certain objects or systems to which we seemingly have extremely limited access.   In light of this success, what are the methods through which we have come to have this knowledge, and what are the limits of what we can know using these methods?  Traditionally, philosophers have viewed the methods that scientists use in the investigation of limited-access systems as being hypothetico-deductive.  I argue that these methods are better understood by thinking of what scientists are doing as gaining access to the previously inaccessible parts of these systems through a series of indirect measurements.  We obtain a clearer picture both of what we can know with confidence about limited-access systems, and the limits of this knowledge.  I illustrate this way of thinking about the epistemology of limited-access systems through an examination of planetary astronomy and geophysics.

TMiyakeAbout the speaker: Teru has a BS in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology.  He worked as an engineer and then as a freelance translator specializing in science and technology before doing an MA in Philosophy at Tufts University.  He then went on to Stanford University, where he got his PhD in Philosophy.  His main area is in Philosophy of Science.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Saving Sosa’s Safety, by Mark McBride (1 Sept 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 1 Sept 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Mark McBride, DPhil candidate, Oxford University, and Postdoctoral fellow, NUS; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract:
My purpose in this paper is to defend safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. First, I introduce Ernest Sosa’s (1999) safety condition. Second, I set up and grapple with Juan Comesaña’s (2005) putative counter-example to safety as a necessary condition on knowledge; Comesaña’s case forces us to consider Sosa’s updated (2002) safety condition. From such grappling a principled modification to Sosa’s (2002) safety condition emerges. Safety is safe from this, and like, attacks.

mcbrideAbout the speaker: Mark McBride a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University. During AY 2011-12, he is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Faculty of Law.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

A Puzzle About Partial Belief, by Alan Hajek (4 August 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 4 August 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Alan Hájek, Professor of Philosophy, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract:

Fill in the blank:

Truth is to belief, as ___ is to partial belief.

Orthodox Bayesianism requires exactly this much of you: your credences should be coherent—conform to the probability calculus—and they should change under the impact of new evidence by conditionalizing on that evidence. The scandal of orthodox Bayesianism is its extreme permissiveness, sanctioning as it does credences that are radically out of step with the world. We are hardly so tolerant when it comes to all-or-nothing beliefs: it is generally acknowledged that truth is a virtue (perhaps the most important one) that a belief may or may not have. What is the analogous virtue for a degree of belief?

Van Fraassen, Lange and others would fill in the blank by appeal to the notion of calibration, a measure of the extent to which degrees of belief track corresponding relative frequencies. I marshal several arguments against this answer. My own answer is:

agreement with objective chance.

Some will complain that the notion of chance is mysterious, or even nonsense. I reply by pointing out several things that we know about chance. The centerpiece of my argument is a ‘magic trick’: Give me any object, any number between 0 and 1 inclusive, and a specified accuracy, and I will use the object to generate an event whose chance is the number given to the accuracy specified.

hajekAbout the Speaker: Alan Hájek studied statistics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne (B.Sc. (Hons). 1982), where he won the Dwight Prize in Statistics. He took an M.A. in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario (1986) and a Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University (1993), winning the Porter Ogden Jacobus fellowship. He has taught at the University of Melbourne (1990) and at Caltech (1992-2004), where he received the Associated Students of California Institute of Technology Teaching Award (2004). He has also spent time as a visiting professor at MIT (1995), Auckland University (2000), and Singapore Management University (2005). Hájek joined the Philosophy Program at RSSS, ANU, as Professor of Philosophy in February 2005.

More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Intensional and Phenomenal Readings of Perceptual Verbs, by David Bourget (2 August 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 2 Aug 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: David Bourget; Director of Centre for Computing in Philosophy, Research Fellow, University of London; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract: This talk has three parts. First, I argue that perceptual verbs such as “see”, “hear”, “smell”, etc have intensional readings just like other intensional verbs such as “believe” and “order”. Next I clarify the relation between the perceptual states ascribed on such readings and the so-called phenomenal states, or the subjective aspect of experience. Finally I show some applications of the findings of the two first parts of the paper. These findings can help to clarify the debate between disjunctivists and representationalists about perceptual consciousness as well as enable regimented descriptions of phenomenal states.

redAbout the speaker: David Bourget is director of the Centre for Computing in Philosophy and a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy in the University of London. His research ranges from the role of technology in philosophical research to the nature of perceptual experience. David holds a PhD in philosophy from the Australian National University.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

On the First and Second Proof of the Eighteen Discussion of Tahafut al-Falasifa, by Edward Moad (28 July 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 28 July 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Edward Moad; Assistant Professor, Qatar University; Moderator: Dr. Ben Blumson

Abstract: The topic of this paper is the eighteenth discussion of the Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (‘Incoherence of the Philosophers’) of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), in which he raises objections against Ibn Sina’s arguments for the immateriality of the soul.  I will focus on the first two sections, on what Ghazali calls the ‘first’ and ‘second’ proof, respectively.  These two proofs are essentially similar in that they both turn on the premise that a relation between a bodily (and therefore divisible) substratum and an indivisible object of cognition (the intelligible form) is impossible.  Ghazali’s objection – that this proposition is inconsistent with ibn Sina’s theory of perception, and the role therein of the wahm (‘estimative faculty’) – is sound.  However, this just leaves open the option of resolving the contradiction by modifying the theory of perception to make it coherent with the proof, and Ghazali does not take an explicit position on which side to take.  His aim, as he says, is just to show the contradictions in the theories of the philosophers, and not to make positive positions.
I will show, however, that underlying this explicit dimension of the discussion, there is a tacit philosophical point that Ghazali intends for the discerning reader.  That is that the real mystery that imposes itself on a theory of the soul is not just the question of how a relation is possible between a divisible, material cognitive faculty and an indivisible object.  Rather, it is the more fundamental question of the possibility of any relation between a unity and a multiplicity.  This question imposes itself with equal force against both the theory of an immaterial soul as it does against the kalam theory of a material ‘atomic’ soul.  These first sections of the eighteenth discussion are therefore connected to an over-arching theme of the Tahāfut in that they call attention to an apparent metaphysical impossibility that is nevertheless a manifest reality.

UntitledAbout the speaker: Edward Omar Moad graduated from University of Missouri-Columbia with his PhD in Philosophy in 2004.  He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Philosophy Department at the National University of Singapore from 2005-2008.  Since then, he has been Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities at Qatar University.  Besides dabbling in This and That and Some Other Stuff, he has been particularly interested in classical Islamic philosophy, and especially the historical debate between Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Rushd, centered around the Incoherence of the Philosophers and the Incoherence of the Incoherence.  He has been gradually piecing together a critical commentary of the debate, and a study of its philosophical relevance to This, That, and Some Other Stuff, which when (if) completed may perhaps be entitled, Coherence of the Incoherence.
More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Talk: Liar Paradox II: Revenge of the Liar Paradox, by Ben Burgis (26 April 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 26 April 2011, 2-4pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Ben Burgis; Visiting Professor, University of Ulsan in South Korea; Moderator: Dr. Tang Weng Hong

Abstract: Dialetheists like Graham Priest and JC Beall conclude from the Liar Paradox that sentences like “This sentence is not true” are fact both true and untrue, and that we must therefore revise our logic to accommodate the existence of true contradictions. Similarly, “paracomplete” theorists like Hartry Field avoid the contradiction posed by the Liar Paradox by rejecting one of the central elements of classical logic, the Law of the Excluded Middle. A more conservative solution starts from the claim that sentences that attempt to attribute truth or untruth to themselves are meaningless, and therefore simply not the kinds of things we can logically symbolize or apply truth talk to without committing a nonsensical category mistake. The most common objections to this move are (1) that the “meaninglessness solution” is refuted by the existence of “revenge paradoxes” like the one revolving around the sentence “This sentence is either false or meaningless”, and that (2) the sentences involved are so obviously meaningful that it’s just not possible to take seriously the claim that they’re literally meaningless in any ordinary sense, like “Blorks geblork” or “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” whereas the dialetheist and paracomplete approaches have the advantages that they (1*) make room for the perfectly obvious fact that, in any language with normal expressive resources, we can construct perfectly meaningful sentences that attribute untruth to themselves, and (2*) are immune to refutation by means of “revenge paradoxes.” I will argue that (1), (2), (1*) and (2*) are all completely wrong.

About the speaker: Ben Burgis is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ulsan in South Korea. He has an MA from Western Michigan University, where he worked on problems related to the metaphysics of time, and a PhD from the University of Miami, where his dissertation was about the dialetheism and the Liar Paradox. His other research interests involve quantum logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the problem of how to reconcile his atheism with the existence of good whiskey.
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More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Talk: No-Alternative Arguments, by Stephan Hartmann (12 April 2011)

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Philosophy Seminar Series: 12 April 2011, 2-3:45pm, Philosophy Resource Room; Speaker: Stephen Hartmann, Chair in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Director of the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Tilburg University, The Netherlands; Moderator: Dr. Tang Weng Hong

Abstract: We construct a Bayesian model to show that the observation that no one has yet found an alternative to a proposed hypothesis supports the hypothesis in question. Our model has various applications in epistemology and philosophy of science (such as the realism debate and IBE) which we also discuss. The talk is based on joint work with Richard Dawid (Vienna).

HartmannAbout the Speaker: Stephan Hartmann is Chair in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science in the Department of Philosophy at Tilburg University and Director of the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science. He was formerly Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Director of LSE’s Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science. From 2002-2005, he directed the research group Philosophy, Probability and Modeling at the University of Konstanz. His primary research and teaching areas are general philosophy of science, formal epistemology, philosophy of physics, and political philosophy. Hartmann published numerous articles and the book Bayesian Epistemology (with Luc Bovens) that appeared in 2003 with Oxford University Press. His current research interests include formal social epistemology, modeling deliberation, the philosophy and psychology of reasoning, methodological questions regarding the use of mathematics and statistics in the social sciences, intertheoretic relations, and probabilities in physics.

More information on the Philosophy Seminar Series can be found here. A list of past talks in the series can be found here.

Stephen Hartmann

Chair in Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, Director of the Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science

Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Alumni Publication (Alvin Lim)

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Alvin Lim obtained his BA (Hons) in 1999, and MA in 2002 from the Department of Philosophy. He is currently a Ph. D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has recently published an article in the Journal Theory & Event.

“Breakfast with the Dictator: Memory, Atrocity, and Affect.” Theory & Event 13, no. 4 (2010).
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v013/13.4.lim.html