The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that James Shaw (Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh) will deliver a talk on Thursday, February 17th, 2022, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not part of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Philosophy Program or are not on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.
Title: Kripkean Necessities, Imaginative Kripke Puzzles, and Semantic Transparency
Abstract: Kripke (1980) famously argued that some a posteriori statements are necessary when true. I begin by exploring an unusual technique to try to learn these necessities merely through imagination that I call “Semantic Imaginative Transfer”. I explore an idealized instance of this technique which I suggest leads to an imaginative variant of Kripke’s (1979) puzzle about belief. I note that on some widespread assumptions (including that propositional idiom can be maintained in the face of Kripke puzzles), the idealized example restricts the space for accommodating Kripkean necessities to two families of views: familiar, broadly Guise-Theoretic approaches to propositional attitudes, and unconventional and largely unexplored views embracing semantic transparency principles. I briefly review some of the history of transparency principles, make some conjectures as to why they went out of fashion following the work of semantic externalists (including Kripke), and make a plea for exploring the consequences of their adoption. Along the way I note the significance of doing so: the transparency principles render Kripkean necessities a priori.
Our speakers will be Karen Lewis (Columbia), Sam Berstler (MIT), Ray Buchanan (Texas/Austin), and Elmar Unnsteinsson (UC Dublin and U of Iceland). We will post titles and abstracts for their talks, along with a schedule of who is speaking when, soon.
If you are not a faculty or student at CUNY, you will have to RSVP for the event at this URL, no later than Monday, November 14th:
https://forms.gle/KN3YJNaCs5yHPtBP7
Please also be prepared to show proof of vaccination when you enter the building.
This conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Saul Kripke’s masterpiece, Naming and Necessity, by showcasing new work on a range of topics on which it has had a lasting influence. These topics include, but are not limited to: the nature of names and natural kind terms; the failure of the description or cluster/description theories; the distinction between metaphysical necessity and epistemic apriority; empty names; the metaphysics of essence and origin; the nature of modality and possible worlds; conceivability and the epistemology of modality; the role of philosophical intuition; and the mind-body problem.
Dates: 12th and 13th December, from 9am to 5pm.
Venue: The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, New York.
Format: hybrid
Registration: for both online and in person attendance, please register by the 28th of November, 2022 at https://forms.gle/Jbr3uaFx1ZwRxJpZ7.
Speakers:
Organisers:
Lectures:
Romina Birman, Paul Boghossian, Michael Devitt, Hartry Field, Melvin Fitting, Daniel Isaacson, Carl Posy, Robert Stalnaker
Reminiscences:
James Burgess, David Chalmers, Mircea Dumitru, Margaret Gilbert, Antonella Mallozzi, Oliver Marshall, Yiannis Moschovakis, Stephen Neale, Gary Ostertag, David Papineau, Graham Priest, Teresa Robertson Ishii, Nathan Salmon, Larry Tribe, lakovos Vasiliou, Timothy Williamson
For more information contact kripkecenter@gc.cuny.edu
To this day, many theorists regard the commodity theory and the credit theory as the two main rival accounts of the nature of money. Yet cryptocurrency has revolutionized the institution of money in ways that most commodity and credit theorists could hardly have anticipated. Assuming that cryptocurrency is a new form of money, the question arises whether the commodity and credit theories can adequately account for it. This talk argues that they cannot. It first offers an interpretation of the commodity and credit theories according to which these theories uphold differing claims about the origin of money, the ontology of money, and the function of money. It then argues that thus understood, neither theory can accommodate cryptocurrency. Finally, it proposes a novel hybrid hylomorphic account of money which draws on aspects of both the commodity and credit theories, and it argues that this hybrid account can accommodate cryptocurrency.
Interviewer: Graham Hubbs (University of Idaho)
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and thought-provoking interview series: “In Conversation: Exploring the Philosophy of Money and Finance”. The series kicks off with a selection of esteemed contributors to the recently published book, The Philosophy of Money and Finance (OUP, 2024).
Each interview will be followed by a live debate, encouraging active audience participation. The sessions (interview plus debate) will be 30 minutes long.
chair: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome)
organization: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome); Joakim Sandberg (University of Gothenburg); Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
info: phinancenet@gmail.com; lwarenski@gc.cuny.edu ; emiliano.ippoliti@uniroma1.it
Philosophers tend to assume that money has only an instrumental relation to state legitimacy. This discussion explains how money raises state legitimacy issues of its own. Assuming a credit/debt theory of money, the state can be seen as an active participant in a credit economy of its own making. Insofar as a state issues or recognizes a money as a means of ruling people’s lives, it is subject to promissory requirements of redemption. This has significant implications for its legitimate and equitable management of a modern economy, the centerpiece of a social compact.
Interviewer: Richard Endörfer (University of Gothenburg)
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and thought-provoking interview series: “In Conversation: Exploring the Philosophy of Money and Finance”. The series kicks off with a selection of esteemed contributors to the recently published book, The Philosophy of Money and Finance (OUP, 2024).
Each interview will be followed by a live debate, encouraging active audience participation. The sessions (interview plus debate) will be 30 minutes long.
chair: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome)
organization: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome); Joakim Sandberg (University of Gothenburg); Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
info: phinancenet@gmail.com; lwarenski@gc.cuny.edu ; emiliano.ippoliti@uniroma1.it
This talk examines the instruments suggested by the key policy document driving sustainable finance in the European Union, the Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth. It uses a reflexive law approach coupled with insights from epistemology. The chapter first discusses the Action Plan and the concept of reflexive law (which focuses on such epistemic instruments as disclosure, reporting, and labelling). It discusses a number of challenges the plan faces (about, e.g., investor ignorance, long-termism, scenario analysis, accounting standards). It then introduces an alternative to reflexive law (called “epistemic law”), and argues that disclosure, reporting, and labelling improve by taking into account insights from epistemology and social science concerning the form and content of information. The talk’s recommendation is, in a slogan, to provide different information, and to provide information differently.
Interviewer: Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and thought-provoking interview series: “In Conversation: Exploring the Philosophy of Money and Finance”. The series kicks off with a selection of esteemed contributors to the recently published book, The Philosophy of Money and Finance (OUP, 2024).
Each interview will be followed by a live debate, encouraging active audience participation. The sessions (interview plus debate) will be 30 minutes long.
chair: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome)
organization: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome); Joakim Sandberg (University of Gothenburg); Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
info: phinancenet@gmail.com; lwarenski@gc.cuny.edu ; emiliano.ippoliti@uniroma1.it
The author argues that the credit system may improve distributive justice, but only indirectly, via job creation and government spending. The reason for this is that cheap credit on commercial terms is only available to people in the upper half of the wealth distribution. By contrast, the forms of credit available more widely are too expensive to make taking out credit a realistic option to escape poverty for most. However, credit can improve distributive justice indirectly, if entrepreneurs and corporations borrow for purposes that create jobs, or states spend borrowed funds on programs that address poverty or inequality. For these reasons, the author suggests that improving access to credit is less important from the perspective of distributive justice than how the credit system interacts with the tax system and labor laws.
Interviewer: Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new and thought-provoking interview series: “In Conversation: Exploring the Philosophy of Money and Finance”. The series kicks off with a selection of esteemed contributors to the recently published book, The Philosophy of Money and Finance (OUP, 2024).
Each interview will be followed by a live debate, encouraging active audience participation. The sessions (interview plus debate) will be 30 minutes long.
chair: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome)
organization: Emiliano Ippoliti (Sapienza University of Rome); Joakim Sandberg (University of Gothenburg); Lisa Warenski (CUNY Graduate Center and University of Connecticut)
info: phinancenet@gmail.com; lwarenski@gc.cuny.edu ; emiliano.ippoliti@uniroma1.it