*Date: Tue 18 May 2010* *Time*: 11am - 1pm *Location*: W6A 720 *Speaker*: Wylie Breckenridge (Sydney/Macquarie) *Topic*: Arbitrary Reference
*Abstract*: I will argue that we can refer to things arbitrarily. A speaker might say, "Let John be an arbitrary French man", and thereby succeed in referring to a particular French man, although we do not and cannot know which. We do this kind of thing whenever we employ 'instantial reasoning' - when we deduce that an arbitrary thing of kind k has some property p and conclude that all things of kind k have p. It may even be the way in which the content of a vague expression is fixed. If so, then we have an epistemicist view of vagueness, one that differs from Williamson's in how it explains our ignorance of the sharp cut-off points. ***************************************** *Date: Tue 25 May 2010* *Time*: 11am - 1pm *Location*: W6A 720 *Speaker*: Christopher Tindale (Windsor/Macquarie) *Topic*: On Persuasion *Abstract*: Prior to a “pragmatic turn” in argumentation marked by Charles Hamblin’s seminal work, there was a general tendency to oppose argumentation and persuasion, with the former based in reason and the latter depending on a series of manipulative techniques. Under such thinking, the notion of “rational persuasion” would not arise. More recent attempts to look seriously at what rhetoric can contribute to argumentation encourage a review of the nature and role of persuasion. In this paper, I contribute to that project through an examination of the understanding of persuasion that informs Aristotle’s *Rhetoric* and ways in which insights arising there can be applied to more recent models of argumentation like that of Habermas. *Schedule of seminars in Semester 1 is available at: http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/events/*
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