Theory of Graded Consequence

Carla Fehr (University of Waterloo) gives the evening lecture at the Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (26 July - 1 Agusut, 2015) titled "Prioritizing Epistemic Arguments for Justice in the Academy". Abstract: White women, and men and women who are members of some racialized groups are underrepresented in many areas of academic research. In addition to the ethical benefits of addressing this problem and improving diversity within our research communities, I have argued that there are also positive epistemic outcomes of this work. In other words, I have argued that improving diversity generally results in better research. In this paper I explore the relationship between these ethical and epistemic approaches, and conclude that significant ethical benefits arise from focusing on epistemic arguments for improving diversity in our universities.

Julia Staffel (Washington University in St. Louis) gives a lecture (first session) at the Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (26 July - 1 Agusut, 2015) titled "Attitudes in Epistemology: Belief vs. Credence". Abstract: This lecture stream is intended to be an introduction to some central topics in formal epistemology. Formal epistemology is a relatively recent branch of epistemology, which uses formal tools such as logic and probability theory in order to answer questions about the nature of rational belief. An important feature that distinguishes formal epistemology from traditional epistemology is not just its use of formal tools, but also its understanding of the nature of belief. Traditional epistemology tends to focus almost exclusively on what is called ‘outright belief’, where the options considered are just belief, disbelief, or suspension of judgment. By contrast, it is widely accepted among formal epistemologists that this conception of belief is too coarse-grained to capture the rich nature of our doxastic attitudes. They posit that humans also have degrees of belief, or credences, which can take any value between full certainty that something is true, and certainty that it is false. The shift in focus towards degrees of belief has generated a rich research program, parts of which integrate with issues in traditional epistemology, and parts of which are specific to the debate about degrees of belief. Important questions in the field are for example: How are degrees of belief related to outright beliefs? What constraints are there on rational degrees of belief, and how can they be defended? How can we adequately represent degrees of belief in a formal framework? How do ideal epistemological norms bear on what non-ideal agents like us ought to believe? The results of these debates are relevant for many areas of philosophy besides epistemology, such as philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and practical reasoning.

Isidora Stojanovic (Jean Nicod Institute Paris) gives a lecture (first session) at the Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (26 July - 1 Agusut, 2015) titled "Context-dependence and the Semantics-Pragmatics Interface". Abstract: Context-dependence is ubiquitous not only in language, but in cognition and action more generally. In the first part of the course, we shall introduce two basic tools from formal semantics (and pragmatics) that help understanding how the truth of a statement may depend on the context: on the one hand, the notion of presupposition, and on the other, possible world semantics, with its extensions and applications to modality, tense and doxastic expressions. In the second part, we shall use these tools to address a range of issues at the semantics-pragmatics interface, such as the relationship between alethic, deontic and epistemic modals, or the context-sensitivity of knowledge attributions and belief reports.

Kevin Zollman (CMU) gives a lecture (first session) at the Summer School on Mathematical Philosophy for Female Students (26 July - 1 Agusut, 2015) titled "Introduction to Networks". Abstract: Social networks have become a central feature of the scientific study of social behavior and have been imported into philosophical discussions – like ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science – where social behavior is important. In ethics, scholars have asked what effect social networks might have on the evolution and maintenance of different ethical norms like fairness, cooperation, and altruism. As epistemologists have begun to take the social nature of knowledge more seriously, they too have begun to ask about how networks might influence the way knowledge is generated and transmitted. Finally, in philosophy of science scholars have asked how incorporating networks might change scientific theory, and how networks of scientists might come to learn about the world. This course will introduce students to the basics of social networks, some of the uses of social networks in philosophy, and how to understand and analyze networks for original research. Because some of the analysis of social networks requires the use of computer simulation, this course will also teach students how to use the computational tool NetLogo for analyzing networks. No prior knowledge of programing is expected.

Mihir K. Charaborty (Kolkata) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (9 July, 2015) titled "Theory of Graded Consequence".

Hartry Field (NYU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (21 May, 2015) titled "Caie's Paradox of Credence". Abstract: Call a sentence ‘contradictory’ if it together with acceptable assumptions entails absurdities, and ‘paradoxical’ if it and its negation are both contradictory in this sense. There are plausible examples of paradoxical sentences: e.g. Liar sentences that assert their own untruth. What should our credence be in paradoxical sentences? There is a seemingly compelling argument that it should be interval-valued: in the case of non-empirically paradoxical sentences, our credence should be the full unit interval [0,1]. But Michael Caie has raised the issue of how to handle doxastic paradoxes. These paradoxes raise problems for the above view about appropriate credence. I’m not sure how best to deal with Caie’s examples; the talk will be a somewhat inconclusive exploration of this issue.

Teresa Kouri (Ohio State) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (21 May, 2015) titled "Connective Meanings in Beall and Restall's Logical Pluralism". Abstract: I will show that there is a problem with the meanings of the connectives as presented in Beall and Restall's Logical Pluralism. In their system, they claim that $\neg$ in constructive logic and $\neg$ in relevant logic are one and the same. I show this cannot be, given how they have defined the meaning of a logical connective. I suggest that this type of problem is typical of a certain way of thinking about the meanings of connectives, and gesture towards an alternate route to logical pluralism which does not encounter such problems.

Hartry Field (NYU) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (20 May, 2015) titled "Indicative Conditionals, Restricted Quantification, Naïve Truth". Abstract: Truth is "naive" if for eternal sentences S, the attribution of truth to S is equivalent to S. Kripke’s theory of truth (the Kleene based version) shows how to get naive truth for very simple languages. After some motivation, I will sketch how to extend a broadly Kripkean approach to a language with a variably strict conditional operator, of the kind that Stalnaker and others have used to represent ordinary indicative conditionals of English. Also, to show how to combine this with a different conditional operator to handle restricted quantification. Previous attempts at logics for restricted quantification compatible with naive truth have mostly led to very impoverished logics. The only exception is a 2014 paper by me, but it was based on an ad hoc and unmotivated construction. This talk shows how to get a good logic for naive truth and restricted quantification in a much better-motivated way.

Karolina Krzyżanowska (MCMP) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (13 May, 2015) titled "What is Wrong with the Ramsey Test". Abstract: According to an influential idea of Frank Ramsey, known as the Ramsey Test, evaluating an indicative conditional, “If A then C,” amounts to evaluating the conditional’s consequent, C, on the supposition of its antecedent, A. This idea inspired a popular view among contemporary philosophers and psychologists that the only thing we learn when someone asserts a conditional is that the speaker believes the conditional’s consequent to be highly probable on the supposition that its antecedent holds. Though prima facie intuitively appealing and to a great extent supported by empirical data, theories of conditionals based on the Ramsey Test alone fail to account for the connection between a conditional’s antecedent and its consequent, forcing us to yield acceptable and assertable conditionals as bizarre as “If Shakespeare did not write Anna Karenina, then raccoons are American mammals noted for their intelligence.” I will argue for a theory that takes the connection between conditionals' antecedents and their consequents seriously.

Alexander Paseau (Oxford) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (23 April, 2015) titled "Capturing Consequence". Abstract: What reasons are there for revising our logic? One natural suggestion is that we should move from a logical theory L to L′ when L′ does “better” than L in terms of “simplicity, ontological leanness (Occam’s razor), explanatory power, a low degree of ad hocness, unity, [and] fruitfulness.” (Priest 2006, 147) This is to apply relatively familiar standards of scientific theory choice, such as inference to the best explanation, to the case of logic. There are special difficulties in the case of logic, however, since our choice of a logical theory impacts the background theory in which we carry out theory choice. It is by no means obvious that we can have a logically neutral account of how L and L′ meet these criteria. Certain ways of developing these criteria are not logically neutral as I show. And, given that they are not, there is a serious epistemic worry about the permissibility of using such reasons. Or, anyways, so I shall argue.