Colloquia, Fall 22-Spring 23

Why Communicative Intentions?

"Pregnancy and Democratic Equality​"

"Pregnancy has been an ineliminable element of human reproduction for the entirety of human history. But this aspect of human existence is one that political philosophy in the liberal tradition has largely overlooked. This is not surprising because that tradition focuses on understanding relationships of authority between competent adults. The nature of human reproduction may thus appear to be off-stage for the questions that primarily animate the tradition. I argue, however, that this is a mistake. Restrictive abortion laws prevent citizens from relating to one another as equals, in the way that the liberal tradition suggests they should. And this is so even if we conceive of fetuses as citizens, as I suspect we should."​

"The Categories of Causation​"

Abstract: This talk will be an exercise in what J. L. Austin called "linguistic phenomenology". In it, I attempt to classify the various categories of causation, understood broadly as a matter of one thing's acting on, or doing something to, another. My guide to this investigation is the linguist Beth Levin's (1993) comprehensive survey of English verb classes, which I show how we can use to isolate a formal dimension of lexical meaning that is revealing of general conceptual categories, including those of different kinds of causal process. Further, I argue that this approach is superior to one that treats the verb 'to cause' as our primary means of talking about causation. To the contrary, we speak about causation in an enormous and diverse range of ways, including many where this word would find no ordinary application. Reflection on the variety of ordinary causal talk sheds light on the different forms of causation that our words can be used to describe.

"Problems for Impartiallity​"


Abstract: Philosophers widely accept a principle of *impartiality*: benefits or harms to one person matter morally just as much as similar benefits or harms to any other person, no matter when or where those people may live. Its denial has been called "outrageous", "reprehensible", and "ethically indefensible". But impartiality has weird and paradoxical consequences for reasoning about moral value and risk in the very long run, when the well-being of potentially vast populations is at stake. I will explore some of these consequences.

"The Epistemic Evaluation of Salience and Attention​"

Abstract: In this talk, I argue that a set of ostensibly independent, recent problems in epistemology reveal a core set of limitations on the evaluative tools it offers. To overcome these limitations, we need to develop tools that let us evaluate salience and the distribution of attention from a distinctively epistemic perspective. I take steps towards developing such a framework, by arguing for a norm of flexible relevance on the salience structures which determine how we distribute our attention, and I show how this norm can accommodate some of the more particular epistemic evaluations we want to make.

"Probability from Symmetry​"

Abstract: At the heart of the ‘classical’ approach to probability is the idea that the probability of a proposition quantifies the proportion of possible worlds in which it is true. This idea has a proud history, but it has fallen on hard times. I aim to rejuvenate it. Firstly, I show how the metaphysics of quantity together with the physical laws might yield well-defined relative sizes for sets of physically possible worlds. Secondly, I argue that these relative sizes are apt to play the credence-guiding and frequency-explaining roles of probability.