14.30 – 15.30: Kit Fine: A Truthmaker Semantics for Conditional Imperatives
15.30 – 15.45: Coffee Break
15.45 – 16.45: Friederike Moltmann: Underspecification of Attitudes and Truthmaker
Semantics
16.45-17.00: Coffee Break
17.00 – 18.00: Federico Faroldi: Truthmaker Semantics for Justification Logics – Open
Problems (joint work with Tudor Protopopescu)
18.00-18.15: Coffee Break
18.15 – 19.15: Cian Dorr: Truthmaking in the Object Language
K. Fine: A Truthmaker Semantics for Conditional Imperatives
I provide a truth-maker semantics for conditional imperatives and indicate how it might be extended to other conditional constructions.
F. Moltmann: Underspecification of Attitudes and Truthmaker Semantics
It has been argued that the satisfaction conditions of a desire can be underspecified by the complement clause. This provides support for the view according to which the complement clause gives a partial content of the reported desire, where partial content is formulated in terms of truthmaker theory. In this talk, I will discuss the extent of such underspecification and whether it truly supports a truthmaker-based approach to the content of attitudes.
Optional preparatory reading here.
F. Faroldi: Truthmaker Semantics for Justification Logics – Open Problems
Justification logics are a family of logic where "implicit" modal operators are substituted by explicit terms to get formulas of the form t : A, where t could be evidence, a reason, etc. why A is known, believed, obligatory, etc., thus resulting in an “objectual” approach to modalities. In this talk we explore how to give a truthmaker semantics for justification logics, we provide some philosophical reasons to do so, and note some technical open problems.
Cian Dorr: Truthmaking in the Object Language
I consider a simple language with Boolean connectives, sentential variables and quantifiers binding them, and a connective for propositional identity (‘for it to be the case that … is for it to be the case that …’). Using familiar techniques, the possible-worlds model theory for such a language can be ‘internalised’ to derive a theory stated in the language itself, based on the definition of ‘world-proposition’ as ‘maximal consistent proposition’, and this theory can be shown to follow from the theory that propositions form a complete atomic Boolean algebra. In this paper, I will consider to what extent something similar can be done for Fine’s truthmaker semantics. This will involve looking for a way of picking out a class of special propositions to serve as surrogates for the states, and a binary relation among propositions to serve as a surrogate for the verification relation, and using these definitions to rewrite the metalinguistic definition of a model as theory in the object-language. I will make a start at considering to what extent the axioms of this theory can be derived from an independently natural weakening of the theory that propositions form a complete atomic Boolean algebra.
Ronald Dworkin’s work always spanned a wide array of topics, from the most abstract jurisprudence through the details of American constitutional law all the way over to political philosophy and theories of justice and equality. In the last decades of his life, however, Dworkin’s work flowered in ways that went beyond even this prodigious range. Though he continued his central work in the philosophy of law and constitutional theory, he also addressed issues in international law, human dignity, the philosophy of religion, the relation between ethics, morality and legal theory, and the unity of practical thought generally. This conference will explore some of these themes in Dworkin’s late work. Beginning with a panel on his understanding of religion, we will also convene discussions of his work on legal integrity, international law, and the relation between law and morality. There will be a total of nine presentations, with plenty of time for discussion. All are welcome.
Panel 1 (Friday 1:30 p.m.): Dworkin’s Religion without God.
Eric Gregory (Princeton),
Moshe Halbertal (NYU and Hebrew U.) Ronald Dworkin Religion Without God: Morality and the Transcendent
Larry Sager (Texas) Solving Religious Liberty
Panel 2 (Friday 4:30 p.m.): Dworkin on international law.
Samantha Besson (Fribourg)
The Political Legitimacy of International Law: Sovereign States and their International Institutional Order
John Tasioulas (King’s College, London)
Panel 3 (Saturday 10 a.m.): The idea of integrity in Law’s Empire.
Andrei Marmor (Cornell) Integrity in Law’s Empire
Jeremy Waldron (NYU) The Rise and Decline of Integrity
Panel 4 (Saturday 2:15 p.m.): Law and morality in Justice for Hedgehogs.
Mark Greenberg (UCLA)
What Makes a Moral Duty Legal? Dworkin’s Judicial Enforcement Theory Versus the Moral Impact Theory
Ben Zipursky (Fordham)
The notion of an occurrence of a proposition in discourse is the subject of the following observation:
(O) A proposition may occur in discourse, now asserted, now unasserted, and yetbe recognizably the same proposition.
I shall argue that the true significance of this observation is utterly distorted by Geach’s manner of construing of it — a construal widely known today as “the Frege-Geach point”. Though it serves as a basis for a contemporary understanding of logical form, strictly thought through, this way of construing (O) can be shown to lead to absurdity. I will further argue that a straightforward, undistorted, acceptance of (O) is the key to a genuine philosophical logic.
— Irad Kimhi (The Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago)
Reception to follow.
One of the central questions facing human beings is how we should respond to the humanity of others. Since the enlightenment, secular Western ethics has gravitated towards two kinds of answer: we should care for others’ well-being, or we should respect them as autonomous agents. Largely neglected is an answer we can find the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism: we should love all. Analytic philosophers have started to pay more attention to love. But unlike those working within religious traditions, for whom an ideal of love for all serves as the central, organizing ideal in ethics, most of these philosophers see love as confined to the domain of intimate relationships between friends, family, romantic partners and the like. This paper argues that an ideal of love for all, of agape, can be understood apart from its more typical religious contexts and moreover provides a unified and illuminating account of the the nature and grounds of morality. Against challenges to the idea that love for all is possible, I offer a novel account of what it would be to love all. I go on to argue that while it is possible to love all, most of us should not, as doing so would rule out the possibility of loving particular friends and families. Instead, we should approximate love for all. I argue that the minimal approximation of love for all is, surprisingly, respect, deriving the basic, structural features of deontological ethics (including anti-welfarism and anti-aggregation) from my account of love for all.
Reception to follow.
Abstract. The Noble Lie proposed by Plato for the Just City in Republic III has been much misunderstood. Its agenda is twofold: to get the citizens of the City to see their society as a natural entity, with themselves as all ‘family’ and akin; and to get the Guardians in particular to make class mobility, on which the justice of the City depends, a top priority. Since the second is taken to depend on the first, the Lie passage amounts to an argument (1) that the survival of a just community depends on the existence of social solidarity between elite and mass, which allows for full class mobility and genuine meritocracy; (2) that this solidarity in turn depends on an ideology of natural unity; and (3) that such ideologies are always false. So the Lie really is a lie, but a necessary one; as such it poses an awkward ethical problem for Plato and, if he is right, for our own societies as well.
Presented by SWIP-NYC
riday, November 10
9:30–9:55 Check–in and Coffee
9:55 Welcome
10:00–12:00 Adam Smith
Speaker: Ryan Patrick Hanley (Boston College)
Commentator: Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois Chicago)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Immanuel Kant
Speaker: Marcia Baron (Indiana University Bloomington)
Commentator: Kyla Ebels–Duggan (Northwestern University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 German Romanticism
Speaker: Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University)
Commentator: Owen Ware (University of Toronto)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, November 11
9:30–10:00 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaker: Andrew Huddleston (University of Warwick)
Commentator: Claire Kirwin (Northwestern University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Simone De Beauvoir
Speaker: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
Commentator: Susan J. Brison (Dartmouth University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Contemporary
Speaker: Simon May (King’s College London)
Commentator: Alecxander Nehamas (Princeton University)
6:30–7:30 Reception