University of Connecticut Logic Group

Abstract: There is a strong tendency in recent epistemology to understand epistemic normativity as fundamentally telic, appealing to variants of idea that belief aims at the truth. In this paper I distinguish two types of telic normative evaluation, “heterotelic” on the model of archery shots, and “autotelic” on the model of dance moves or acts of friendship. I think most epistemologists writing about epistemic normativity assume without question that epistemic evaluations are heterotelic. In contrast, here I use the case of suspension of judgment to argue that at least some epistemically evaluations are autotelic rather than heterotelic. Then I go on to consider sympathetically the radical possibility that epistemical normativity is most fundamentally autotelic rather than heterotelic.

Join us in the Logic Colloquium for a talk by Matthew Chrisman (Edinburgh):

“Alienation from Normativity (and Logic?)”

Abstract: Robust realists and quasirealist expressivists have both been accused, in different ways, of being committed to an alienated stance towards fundamental oughts, reasons, and values. Either normative facts obtain completely independently of our cares and concerns, in which case, why do we care about them as much as we do? Or their reality is something more like a projection from or construction out of our ways of normative thinking, in which case why should we care about them as much as we do? Sometimes this looks like philosophical bedrock in metaethics. But in this paper I want to explore the possibility that inferentialism offers a way past the impasse. In the first instance, this is by suggesting that normative terms can be viewed analogously to logical terms in getting their meaning neither from what they refer to nor from what attitudes they primarily serve to convey. But I also want to propose a way of thinking of normative/logical facts and normative/logical thinking as reciprocally related to each other in a way that rejects both the realist’s commitment to the explanatory independence of normative/logical facts from normative/logical thinking and the expressivist’s commitment to starting our explanation of normative/logical facts with an account of normative/logical thinking. 

All welcome!

https://logic.uconn.edu/calendar/

“Transparency and Sociality of Belief”

Abstract: A prominent view holds that our beliefs are transparent, in the sense that one should, and normally will, answer the question “Do you believe p?” by seeking to settle the corresponding question about whether p. Transparency is held to be a normative requirement and also crucial to understanding the distinctively authoritative and secure nature of knowledge of one’s own beliefs. In this paper, we argue that the transparency requirement, as well as our authoritative and secure self-knowledge of our beliefs, should be explained by something else: the social role belief. We hold that to believe p transparently is to be prepared to contribute p to shared reasoning with others, and to self-ascribe the belief that p transparently is to make explicit that one would contribute p to shared reasoning. We conclude that understanding our normative epistemic relationships to other people is fundamental to explaining distinctive features of knowledge of our own beliefs.

Join us in the Logic Colloquium for a talk by Filippo Ferrari (Bologna)!

Join us in the Logic Colloquium for a talk by WooJin Chung (Seoul National University).

Details t.b.a.

https://logic.uconn.edu/calendar/