Greetings all,
Below is the current project's calendar for this
semester. As you see, there are still a couple of
slots free, but they are going fast so.....
PLEASE NOTE the second seminar, Alex Paseau, is to be
held on a Wednesday not the usual Monday. It will be
at 3.00, the usual departmental seminar time, in the
usual current project's room.
See you all soon,
Kristie
Monday Feb 25 Peter Godfrey-Smith, Harvard
"Models and Fictions in Science"
Wednesday Feb 27 Alex Paseau Oxford
"Hilbert, Gödel and Non-Deductive Reasoning in
Mathematics".
Abstract: "Hilberts Programme claims that the more
theoretical
(ideal) parts of mathematics should be regarded as
an instrument for
proving truths about the more elementary (real)
parts. Gödels
Second Incompleteness Theorem seems to show that one
cannot prove the
consistency of ideal mathematics from within real
mathematics and hence
is generally thought to destroy Hilberts Programme.
This paper will
take issue with that verdict. By considering
non-deductive reasons in
mathematics, I explain why Hilbert Programmes
survives Gödels
theorems. I conclude with an assessment of
mathematical
instrumentalisms prospects. The paper keeps
technicalities to a minimum and is aimed
at a general philosophical audience."
Monday March 3 Rachael Briggs, MIT,
"How to Whistle It"
"What you can't say you can't say, and you can't
whistle it either"
--Frank Ramsey
Many philosophers endorse the following claim about
belief:
MP: The contents of beliefs are sets of metaphysically
possible worlds.
Critics of MP complain that it is incompatible with
(what they take to
be) an obvious truth:
DNC: A person might entertain beliefs about several
distinct necessary
contents.
I will defend MP. Although MP is indeed inconsistent
with DNC, DNC is
not an obvious truth. In fact, much of DNC's appeal
comes from a temptation
to confuse it with the following obvious truth.
DNS: A person might entertain beliefs about several
distinct necessary
contents.
I suggest that the motivations for accepting DNC would
be better
accepting DNS by appeal to DNS, provided we think of
linguistic competence as we
should--i.e., in terms of knowledge how rather than
knowledge that.
Monday March 10 Charles Wolf University of Sydney
Do organisms have an ontological status?
Monday March 17 Anjan Chakravartty University of
Toronto
TBA
Monday March 24 Easter Break
Monday March 31 Kristie Miller University of
Sydney
Mathematical Contingentism
Platonists and nominalists disagree about whether
mathematical objects exist. But they almost uniformly
agree about one thing: whatever the status of the
existence of mathematical objects, that status is
modally necessary. Two notable dissenters from this
orthodoxy are Hartry Field, who defends contingent
nominalism, and Mark Colyvan, who defends contingent
Platonism. The source of their dissent is their view
that it is what is known as the indispensability
argument that provides justification for believing in
the existence, or not, of mathematical objects. This
paper considers first, whether commitment to the
indispensability argument entails, or even suggests,
that one should be a contingentist about mathematical
objects, and second, it considers whether mathematical
contingentism is a viable metaphysical view.
Monday April 7 Dean Rickles University of Sydney
Am I a Property?
I try and motivate an affirmative answer based on the
problems of material composition and temporary
intrinsics.
Monday April 14 TBA
Monday April 21 Luke Russell University of Sydney
TBA (Evil, or thereabouts).
Monday April 28 TBA
Monday May 5 TBA
Monday May 19 Larry Shapiro University of Wisconsin
TBA
Monday May 19 Guido Bacciagaluppi University of
Sydney
TBA
Monday May 26 Mark Kristian van der Pals University
of Sydney
TBA
Monday June 2 John Cusbert ANU
TBA
Monday June 9 Cynthia Townley Macquarie University
TBA
Monday June 16 TBA (Possibly Katie Steele)
Monday June 23 TBA
Dr. Kristie Miller
Australian Research Council Post-doctoral Fellow
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney, Australia
Room 411, A18
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ph: (work) 02 93569663
Ph: (mobile) 0432 275 286
http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home%20Page.html
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