Details for the next gathering of the Political Philosophy Reading Group:
Reading: Book 2 of Plato’s Republic.
Date: Tuesday October 30
Time: 3 – 4pm
Location: Old Quad, First Floor Common Room, University of Melbourne
Archive for the 'Events' Category
Title: Taking the Non-Identity problem seriously: Implications for Compensation and Reparation.
Speaker: Tim Newton-Howes
Date, Time: Tuesday 23/10/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: If someone commits an injustice against you today, you are justified in demanding restitution from the perpetrator as their victim. This is not too controversial. It is not, however, clear what justice demands when the original victim, and the original perpetrator are no longer alive. Many claim that the descendents of victims should receive the restitution that their ancestors were owed, or some slight variation on that. The most serious objection to this is the problem of Non-Identity. Because future people are dependant on current people for their existence, it can be claimed that no future person can be harmed by a current injustice, and without harm, they are not a victim, nor can they be owed any kind of restitution. This is the Non-Identity problem for historic injustice.
Restitution can roughly be divided into two kinds, compensation and reparation. This presentation will give a more complete account of the distinction between reparation and compensation because it has not been sufficiently explored in the literature in the context of historic injustice. How issues of non-identity bears on this issue will then be explored. I will show that Non-Identity for interpersonal injustices is very likely to defeat both compensation and reparation claims, however, for transgenerational entities it is possible for reparations to be justified. The conclusion, that compensation at least can be unjustified, might be uncomfortable, however issues of non-identity legitimately draw focus to the justification for what is being claimed, who is claiming it, and their justification for making such a claim. This is what I will argue for.
Details for the next gathering of the Political Philosophy Reading Group:
Reading: Book 2 of Plato’s Republic. Thrasymachus’s argument at the end of Book 1 and discussion of how successfully Socrates refute it.
Date: Tuesday October 23
Time: 3 – 4pm
Location: Old Quad, First Floor Common Room, University of Melbourne
A new political philosophy reading group is starting. It will be held on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, starting October 9.
To inquire, contact Clare McArdle: claremca [at] bigpond.com
Details for the first gathering:
Reading: Book 1 of Plato’s Republic
Date: Tuesday October 9
Time: 3 – 4pm
Location: Old Quad, First Floor Common Room, University of Melbourne
Title: Epistemic humility versus professional diligence – Boundary issues in medical ethics?
Speaker: Kerstin Knight
Date, Time: Tuesday 11/9/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Title:
Speaker: Daniel Nellor
Date, Time: Tuesday 28/8/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: J. David Velleman’s ‘Love as a Moral Emotion’ is an attempt to show that love need not conflict with morality, as the latter is defined by Kant. He does this by moving away from a definition of love in terms of desire, and presenting it instead as a kind of appreciation, akin to Kantian respect. In this paper I argue that this distinction is wrongly conceived, that love is both appreciative and conative, and further that the phenomenon Velleman points to as distinguishing love from respect – vulnerability – is inherently involved in respect as well. I claim that the Kantian picture of an autonomous, rational self distorts our experience of love, and that we do better to understand love as revealing a pre-existing vulnerability that calls into question not only the Kantian picture of love, but of respect and of the self as well.
Title: Self-love and Moral Motivation in the Works of Joseph Butler
Speaker: Judy Chambers
Date, Time: 21/8/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: This paper claims that Butler distinguishes the issue “Why be moral?” from the issue of sceptical doubt about the possibility of psychological altruism. It proposes that Butler’s defence of psychological altruism rests on his unique conception of self-love. It argues that Butler uses three different types of self-love throughout his works; one as a rational principle, another as a selfish drive, and a third as an affection or moral emotion. It proposes that moral self-love, which is experienced as an unintended by-product of reflecting on virtuous motivation and action, promotes psychological altruism in moral agents. Thus, revisting Butler’s works allows us to contribute to the contemporary, empirically-informed philosophical debate on altruism.
Title: What is Abductive Scientific Realism?
Speaker: Cristian Soto
Date, Time: 14/8/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: In this talk I will examine the current debate on metaphysics of science and I will outline a new approach, which I call abductive scientific realism. First of all, I will briefly describe the current state of the metaphysics of science debate in order to demarcate the realist approaches from the anti-realist ones. Secondly, I will examine the metaphysics of science of scientific realism, describing its core metaphysical commitments and the central counter-arguments to this view, viz., the pessimistic meta-induction and scientific theory change. Thirdly, I will present the response to these problems offered by both epistemic and ontic structural realism, examining the metaphysics of structures and elaborating some problems that structural realists apparently face. And, fourth, taking the partial results of the recent discussion between scientific realists and structural realists into consideration, I will develop three arguments for abductive scientific realism, namely: (i) a radical, naturalist approach to the role and limits of metaphysical research; (ii) an ontology of mixed physico-mathematical facts; and (iii) an outline of a theory of the nature of laws of nature and their role in scientific explanation. I will conclude that these reasons offer enough evidence to think of abductive scientific realism as a compelling philosophical position in the current debate on metaphysics of science.
Title: Why be Inconsistent when you can be Arbitrary?
Speaker: Michael Hughes
Date, Time: 7/8/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: The lottery and the preface paradoxes challenge the assumption that rationality requires logical consistency within an agent’s belief system. Most philosophers have thought that the paradoxes support one of two conclusions: either (1) we must deny that a high evidential probability is sufficient for justified belief, or else (2) inconsistency is sometimes permissible. A third option was suggested by Gilbert Harman (1986) and recently defended by Igor Douven (2008) that it is rational in lottery-like situations to make an arbitrary choice about what to believe. In this talk, I shall review the main considerations and challenges faced by each solution. Then, in response to Douven’s claim that arbitrariness is conducive to our epistemic goal in lottery-like situations, I will argue that there is no non-question begging way to establish that one of these solutions is more conducive to the achievement of our epistemic goals than its alternatives.
Title: A Framework for Semantic Information
Speaker: Simon D’Alfonso
Date, Time: 24/7/2012, 5:15pm
Location: Old Quad Common Room, Melbourne University
Abstract: In this talk I present a summary of my thesis research, which develops an account of semantic information. After an introductory overview of information, I shall outline the main points and results of the following chapters:
- Quantifying Semantic Information
- Agent-Relative Informativeness
- Environmental Information and Information Flow
- Information and Knowledge
