| Project "On Content" | ||
A Research Project of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon Funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology. Project Reference - POCI/FIL/55562/2004 Starting Date - 30.09.2005 Duration in months - 36 Principal Contractor - Fundação da Universidade de Lisboa Principal Research Unit - Centro de Filosofia Host Institution - Universidade de Lisboa Project Director - Adriana Silva Graça (PhD) Research Team: Aires Nuno Rebelo Almeida (MA) António Manuel Correia de Jesus Lopes (PhD student) Célia Cristina Patrício Teixeira (PhD student) Desidério Murcho (PhD student) Fernando Costa Janeiro (MA student) Fernando Jorge Inocêncio Ferreira (PhD) João Miguel Biscaia Valadas Branquinho (PhD) Maria Teresa Matos Ferreira Marques (PhD) Pedro Miguel Galvão Lourenço (PhD student) Pedro Manuel Trindade Cordeiro dos Santos (PhD) Abstract The project on Content consists mainly in carrying out philosophical research on some central issues that cut across such disparate areas as the Philosophy of Language, the Philosophy of Mind, the Philosophy of Mathematics and Epistemology. The activity associated with the project can be sorted out into the following two categories: (i) regular activities and (ii) other events. (See below).
Philosophical Background The philosophical background of the Project “On Content” may be found in Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell logical and philosophical work. Frege was the first to apply the methods of Logic to philosophical research and, more importantly (having this project in mind), the first to distinguish between ‘meaning’ and ‘reference’. Actually, his seminal paper “Uber Sinn und Bedeutung” gave rise to the tradition of distinguishing between Theories of Meaning and Theories of Reference. Bertrand Russell, in turn, in “On Denoting”, presented his theory of Definite Descriptions, which strikingly modelled our way of thinking about philosophical problems in the Philosophy of Language, besides having presented a theory classified by Ramsey as a “paradigm of philosophy”. There is a huge variety of views around the topics they have introduced and most of these philosophical problems are not yet solved. Some of them are to be developed in the present project.
Project Objectives The central aim of the Project on Content is to develop philosophical research in areas traditionally belonging to or revolving around the Philosophy of Language. Some of the central objectives of the project are the following:
There is no agreement in the literature about these and other related topics.
The aim of this project is to try to outline the central features of a new
approach to such topics. Regular ActivitiesCentro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Seminário de Filosofia Analítica 2006-7 http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702/sfa.html Sessão 3 Teresa Marques Embedding Emotions Abstract: Entrada Livre Organização: Prof Adriana Silva Graça, adrianasg@netcabo.pt Projecto "Conteúdo" Apoios: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia ______
Permanent Internal Seminar – Seminário de Filosofia Analítica – see http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702. This category covers regular actions, taking place throughout each year on a systematic basis. They consist mostly of the research undertaken by every member of the team associated with the project. Often, we invite philosophers from other countries to present their work in one seminar session.
Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Instituto Filosófico Pedro Hispano Seminário de Filosofia Analítica 2006-7 http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702/sfa.html Sessão 2 Josep E. Corbí (University of València)
First-Person Authority, Self-Knowledge, and Authenticity 28 de Fevereiro de 2007, 17:00, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Sala Mattos Romão (Depto de Filosofia)
Abstract: 1. If someone had asked Ulrich whether he intended to attend the Great Session at Diotima's and he had answered 'Yes', not even such a thought-provoking writer as Robert Musil would have indulged into challenging Ulrich's epistemic authority in this respect. Neither might Musil have tried to detail the evidence in virtue of which Ulrich might have acquired such a robust piece of self-knowledge. A demand for detailed evidence could only be proposed as a sort of joke, but hardly to reveal a deeper truth about Ulrich's life. On the contrary, Musil is quite inclined to explore the actual motivations behind Ulrich's declared intentions and to point out that most such motivations are, to some degree, unknown to Ulrich. In fact, Musil's great novel, A man without qualities, abounds in such explorations in a rather desperate attempt to articulate a way in which a person of a certain upbringing may become a man with a character and not just a character without a man. The standard debate about self-knowledge tends to focus on the sort of first-person authority that is revealed by the fact that Ulrich's self-ascription of the intention to attend the Great Session cannot be reasonably be challenged, except by lack of sincerity. In such case, none could reasonably ask Ulrich to provide evidence to support his claim and the impertinence of providing evidence emphasizes, instead of decreasing, Ulrich's epistemic authority. On the contrary, when it comes to motivations, Ulrich's authority is less clear. The narrator has no problem in challenging Ulrich's views in this respect. Part of the lure of the novel lies, as I have suggested, in Musil's ability to investigate Ulrich's character beyond the latter own views and to intermingle the narrator's, the reader's and Ulrich's perspective to shed some light on the latter's character and his capacity to lead a meaningful life. In fact, the narrator, or some other character in the novel, may assume that knows better than Ulrich himself what the latter's ultimate hopes, fears, and expectations are. And, varying from case to case, it may be more or less reasonable to challenge Ulrich's self-ascription of some mental states and, correspondingly, ask him to provide evidence in support of his claims. The kind of unconscious motives stipulated by psychoanalysts constitute, in my view, an extreme case in the array of ways in which an agent may keep some his motivations out of sight. In any case, the psychoanalyst's interests in exploring an agent's unconscious motives, derives from the conviction that an agent's capacity to recover from his neurosis is connected to a certain manner of becoming aware of such motives. Similarly, Musil exploration of Ulrich's hopes and motivations is associated with the conviction that, only in virtue of a certain kind access to them, may Ulrich's overcome his incapacity to identify himself with his actions and the projects that, despite his detachment, he keeps carrying on so efficiently and intently. In
other words, both Musil's and the psychoanalyst's investigation seem
to be
guided by an idea of what counts as a valuable or meaningful life and
how it
2. We may thus say that there are some cases where first-person authority with regard to one's own psychological states is readily acknowledged. But there others in which self-knowledge is to be regarded as an achievement and not a trivial one, insofar as certain kinds of self-knowledge may be turn out to be crucial to the agent's capacity to lead an authentic life. In this paper, I intend to examine some connections between these three issues, namely: first-person authority, first-person knowledge, and the conditions under which an agent may lead an authentic life. I will firstly consider some central aspects of the current debate about the source of first-person authority. I will sketch a position which, even if it could be recognized as expressivist, may allow me to preserve some of the intuitions that lie behind both a detectivist and a constitutivist view. Secondly, I will argue that there are some crucial cases where self-knowledge comes as an achievement and, nevertheless, it is still first-personal in a rather relevant sense. To this purpose, I will examine the kind of abilities that are involved in such cases. More specifically, the capacity to pay attention to some or other aspect of a situation will play a crucial role and, in the light of it, I will vindicate the importance in self-knowledge (and self-formation) of a kind of practical necessity which is alien to natural necessity and close to the kind of necessity involved in the acceptance of a mathematical conclusion. All this will help us to sophisticate the expressivist view defended in the first part and allow us to understand how some expressions of our inner states may be assessed as true or false and, relatedly, why some kinds of self-knowledge can be regarded as an epistemic achievement. At this stage, Richard Moran's notion of avowal and Bernard Williams' concept of acknowledgement will be invoked. And, thirdly, I will sketch how I think this kind of achievement may allow us to understand what counts as an authentic life and the role that some epistemic attitudes may play inspired by such an ideal. This will again allow is to refine our initial expressivist view and Bernard Williams' notion of making sense will contribute to this last step. Entrada Livre Organização: Prof Adriana Silva Graça, adrianasg@netcabo.pt __
Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Instituto Filosófico Pedro Hispano Seminário de Filosofia Analítica 2006-7 http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702/sfa.html Sessão 1 António Lopes (Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa) A Revolução dos Cravos: Problemas da Autenticidade na Interpretação Musical 12 de Janeiro de 2007, 15:00, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Sala Mattos Romão (Depto de Filosofia) Resumo: O facto mais marcante no mundo da música clássica nas últimas quatro décadas tem sido a emergência e institucionalização da “interpretação historicamente informada” (IHI), caracterizada pelo uso de instrumentos e práticas contemporâneos da criação das obras executadas. IHI pode ser encarada como estilo interpretativo particular, como movimento estético-ideológico poderoso (para uns reaccionário e escapista, para outros, apogeu tardio do modernismo), ou como simplesmente analítico ao conceito de execução de obras musicais. A sua hegemonia tem significado a perda, por parte dos intérpretes “tradicionais”, do direito a um segmento significativo do repertório. Executar uma obra para cravo em piano é equiparado por IHI a uma transcrição do original. De especial interesse para a estética aplicada são os dilemas que se colocam aos músicos confrontados com decisões interpretativas que envolvem concepções acerca de intenções expressas, implícitas e contextuais para obras criadas em contextos histórico-musicais distintos do presente. Articulando a discussão em termos de possibilidade, desiderabilidade e motivações do regresso às práticas e instrumentos originais, serão passados em revista os argumentos centrais a propósito de problemas como o carácter intencional das obras de arte, a autoridade do autor e o multiplismo interpretativo, a possibilidade de uma dimensão ética da execução, vantagens e limites técnicos e expressivos dos diferentes meios de execução, e a natureza da experiência musical. Defenderei que, apesar de bons argumentos militarem a seu favor, IHI deve ser encarada como uma estratégia interpretativa competindo democraticamente com outras pelos melhores resultados estéticos. Concluirei ainda que a única possibilidade de IHI reclamar uma posição a priori preferencial reside no apelo a um conceito trans-histórico de obra musical que inclua os parâmetros da instrumentação e prática originais, e que esse apelo falha, em virtude de a distinção entre qualidades essenciais e acidentais de obras ser irremediavelmente contextual quanto à própria estrutura sonora pura, e logo, a fortiori, quanto a esses parâmetros.Entrada Livre Organização: Prof Adriana Silva Graça __ Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Argumentos formalistas contra o instrumentalismo estético -- uma resposta 28 de Abril de 2006, 17:00, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) Resumo:Os formalistas pensam que o valor da arte é autónomo e não instrumental; consideram que o valor da arte é independente de quaisquer aspectos exteriores às próprias obras, residindo exclusivamente nas suas propriedades formais. Alguns dos mais importantes argumentos contra as teorias instrumentalistas da arte, nas quais se inclui o cognitivismo estético, foram apresentados por Eduard Hanslick, a propósito da música. Defender-se-á que esses argumentos não conseguem mostrar que a música em particular, e a arte em geral, não tem valor instrumental e que o seu valor pode ser cognitivo. Entrada Livre ___________ 1st Lisbon Workshop on Semantics Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon 6-7 October 2006 Description The Lisbon Workshops on Semantics provide a forum where some of the best work currently done in the field of semantics and adjacent fields is presented and discussed. By promoting scientific interaction among semanticists working from different perspectives and in different disciplines (Philosophy, Linguistics, etc.), the Lisbon Workshops on Semantics are expected to contribute to the development of new views and arguments on some important and perennial semantical issues. Among the topics that might be discussed are indexicality, the semantics of tense, truth-theoretic vs. use-based accounts of meaning, the semantics of attitude reports, the semantics of anaphora, the semantics of names and descriptions, the divide between pragmatics and semantics, the semantic role of speakers intentions, context and content, the semantics of quantification, rigidity, modality, the semantics of adjectives, theories of reference, the semantics of pronouns. Hosting Institutions The Lisbon Workshops on Semantics are hosted by the Instituto Filosófico de Pedro Hispano (Peter of Spain Philosophy Institute), an institution based on the Department of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. Peter of Spain, the Portuguese medieval logician and philosopher, was himself an influential semanticist in the Middle Ages, having developed a highly sophisticated theory of reference (suppositio) for general terms. The 1st Lisbon Workshop on Semantics is part of the Project on Content (POCI/FIL/55562/2004), a research project carried out at the Philosophy Centre of the Universisty of Lisbon, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, and coordinated by Adriana Silva Graça. Organization The 1st Lisbon Workshop on Semantics is organized by João Branquinho (University of Lisbon) and Jason Stanley (Rutgers University). Participants António Branco, University of Lisbon João Branquinho, University of Lisbon Paul Elbourne, University of London Michael Fara, Princeton University Delia Graff, Princeton University Jeffrey King, University of Southern California Nikola Kompa, University of Münster Peter Ludlow, University of Michigan Adriana Silva Graça, University of Lisbon Pedro Santos, University of Algarve Jason Stanley, Rutgers University ________ Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa – Projecto Conteúdo Instituto Filosófico de Pedro Hispano 2005-06: Sessão 7Joseph Almog (University of Califórnia at Los Angeles)Paradoxes in the Foundations of Language and Thought? 26 de Maio de 2006, 17:00 Abstract: The founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Frege and Russell, were a shining example of a methodology I’d like to call paradox-your-way-into-philosophy. Their methodology is well summed up by Russell’s 1905 “On Denoting” dramatic declaration that, besieged as we are by paradoxes, their defusion is to be the litmus test for any viable philosophical analysis. We are told by Russell (as we are, later, by technically minded paradox-hunters such as Tarski, Quine, Carnap and Church) that the paradoxes signify a “crisis” in the very foundations of our account of language, thought and logic. And so, the paradoxes are better read as evidence for the bankruptcy of our naïve intuitions. In response, analytic philosophy has been designing, now for more than a century, technically clever but not really natural solutions of the threatening paradoxes. And as we have been designing such technical solutions, we have also been confessing our sins-- in the paradoxes, we only got what we deserved. For the paradoxes drove home what should have been clear all the while-- common sense is not a reliable guide in the logical analysis of belief, reference and existence (as well as the ideas of: plurality, set, truth, etc.). In his discussion of puzzled-and-puzzling Pierre, Saul Kripke calls upon the analogy of set-paradoxes. I will be looking at the set theoretic analogue to argue how unfounded the methodology of paradox-your-way-into-philosophy is. The troublemakers may be Russell’s class, Burali-Forti’s totality of ordinals, Cantor’s universal class (and down the road, the very idea of “choice function”, where the combinatorial and the definitionalist notions clash clearly, in the so-called “Banach-Tarski paradox”). Through and through, I see the paradoxes as engendered by an illusion of understanding the basic intended notions. Given certain simple observations (NB. not results, just observations) about the intended notions—what a set is, what a plurality is, what any old combination of things is, what a rank is, etc.—the paradoxes dissipate (in fact, they never afflicted the natural notions to start with). And as for the paradox-inducing notions, they were never the natural-primal notions but rather revisionist ideas forced on us by ambitious epistemological agendas. The paradoxes are not mysterious vis-à-vis these notions, they are theorems witnessing the un-tenability of the revisionist program. In this spirit, I would like to examine a host of notorious foundations of language-and-thought paradoxes: Frege’s identity puzzle, Quine’s puzzling man Ralph, Kripke’s belief-report puzzle, Donnellan’s empty (co-) believing cases, and not least Russell’s yacht-paradox (“I thought your yacht was longer than it is”). Yet again, the puzzles (i) do not (never did) afflict our natural common sensical notions and (ii) they are impossibility results vis-a vis the epistemologically driven revisionist notions. Organização: Prof. Adriana Silva Graça, adrianasg@netcabo.pt Entrada Livre _________
Lecture 1: RUSSELL’S EPISTEMOLOGY OF LANGUAGE & mine (I) 29 May 2006, 15:00, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Sala D. Pedro V (junto ao Conselho Directivo) Lecture 2: RUSSELL’S EPISTEMOLOGY OF LANGUAGE & mine (II) 30 May 2006, 15:00, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Sala D. Pedro V (junto ao Conselho Directivo) The Petrus Hispanus Lecturer 2006. A distinguished philosopher in logic and semantics, David Kaplan has made fundamental contributions in the fields of logic and philosophy of language. He is a technological innovator and the co-creator of the widely used "Logic 2000" software. Kaplan's main interests include logic, semantics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He applies his theories to everyday expressions that color our language - like "ouch", "oops", and familiar forms of address. His research aims to shed new light on traditional and non-traditional areas in the study of semantics including nicknames, politically correct speech, and sarcasm. A prolific writer, Kaplan has published numerous essays and articles. His more recent publications include: "A Problem in Possible World Semantics" published in the book Modality, Morality and Belief (1995) and "Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals" (1997). Currently, Kaplan is the editor of several scholarly journals, including the Journal of Philosophical Logic and Studies in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics. He also holds the patents on two devices used in the Polaris submarines' satellite navigational system. Kaplan received a B.A. in Philosophy in 1956 and a B.A. in Mathematics in 1957, both from UCLA. He has served as Professor of Philosophy at UCLA since 1970, and in 1994 he was named the Hans Reichenbach Professor of Scientific Philosophy. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the Institut International de Philosophie. Kaplan was Vice President of the Association for Symbolic Logic, from 1973-76, and President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division), from 1980-81. In 2000, he was honored as "Teacher of the Century" by UCLA Today. The Petrus Hispanus Lectures are delivered every other academic year at the Universidade de Lisboa by a leading figure in current research about the nature of mind, cognition and language. Previous Petrus Hispanus Lecturers: Hilary Putnam (Harvard), 1998; Richard Jeffrey (Princeton), 2000; Ned Block (New York University), 2003; and Daniel Dennett (Tufts University), 2004. The Petrus Hipanus Lectures 2006 are part of the Project on Content (POCI/FIL/55562/2004), a research project carried out at the Philosophy Centre of the Universisty of Lisbon, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, and coordinated by Adriana Silva Graça. Contact: Professora Adriana Silva Graça, Departamento de Filosofia, Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214 Lisboa. Fax + 3517960063. E-mail: adrianasg@netcabo.pt Admission: free _______________
Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Seminário de Filosofia Analítica 2005-2006 - http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702/sfa.html Abstract: The talk will explore the notion of "content" in the philosophy of language/philosophy of mind. Among the topics to be discussed are the distinction between Fregean and Russellian explications of the notion, the distinction between semantic and cognitive content, and the metaphorical character of the notion. I will argue for a position that makes do without the notion of content, semantic or cognitive. Howard Wettstein é um nome bem conhecido na Filosofia da Linguagem contemporânea, um dos principais proponentes da chamada Nova Teoria da Referência para nomes próprios e demonstrativos. É o autor do livros The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Oxford University Press, 2004) e Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?, And Other Essays (Stanford University Press, 1990) Entrada LivreOrganização: Prof Adriana Silva Graça
Events Petrus Hispanus Lectures – June 2006 – organized by Adriana Silva Graça (University of Lisbon). (To be announced). “Lisbon Workshop on Semantics” – November 2006 – organized by João Branquinho (University of Lisbon) and Jason Stanley (Rutgers, USA). (To be announced). “Workshop on Propositions and Content” – it is intended to be the corollary of the research project – June 2008 – organized by Adriana Silva Graça (University of Lisbon). (To be announced).
Associated Events ENFA 3 (Third National Meeting - Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy). See http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0154943702.
______
Recently, Max Kölbel and others have argued that relativism about
propositional truth can make sense of faultless disagreement, where A and
B faultlessly disagree just in case (i) A asserts P and B asserts ~P, and
yet (ii) neither A’s assertion nor B’s assertion is incorrect.
Here, (i) is meant to imply that A and B disagree, while (ii) is meant
to imply that their disagreement is faultless. In order to defuse this objection, Kölbel and others suggest conceiving of propositional truth as being relative to perspectives, where a perspective is a function from propositions to truth-values. The idea then is that P may be true relative to A’s perspective while ~P is true relative to B’s perspective, even though P & ~P isn’t true relative to any perspective. So, it seems that we can make sense of faultless disagreement after all. Drawing on Fregean insights into the nature of assertion and its relation to truth, I argue that this appearance is deceptive. |
||