We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 12 at 4.30pm (CET), Marco Santambrogio (University of Parma) will give the talk On the Creation of Some Abstract Artefacts as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room Multiuso FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
How are abstract artefacts—assuming they exist—brought into being? Focusing on such examples as the chess queen, the senate of a constitutional state, and the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, it is argued that these entities are created through speech acts of stipulation, which are governed by a principle first introduced by Frege in Begriffsschrift. According to this principle, sentences initially used to make a stipulation can subsequently be used to make true assertions. This principle not only accounts for the creation of stipulated entities, but also explains why sentences such as “Sherlock Holmes is a detective”—unprefixed by locutions like ‘fictionally’ or ‘in the story’—can truthfully report what holds in Conan Doyle’s stories. Although such sentences ascribe properties of flesh-and-blood human beings to abstract objects, no category mistake is involved, it is argued, since predicates like ‘being a detective’ undergo a meaning transfer (in Geoffrey Nunberg’s sense). Finally, a classification of stipulative speech acts is offered within a Searlean framework.
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 12 at 4.30pm (CET), Marco Santambrogio (University of Parma) will give the talk On the Creation of Some Abstract Artefacts as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room Multiuso FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
How are abstract artefacts—assuming they exist—brought into being? Focusing on such examples as the chess queen, the senate of a constitutional state, and the fictional character Sherlock Holmes, it is argued that these entities are created through speech acts of stipulation, which are governed by a principle first introduced by Frege in Begriffsschrift. According to this principle, sentences initially used to make a stipulation can subsequently be used to make true assertions. This principle not only accounts for the creation of stipulated entities, but also explains why sentences such as “Sherlock Holmes is a detective”—unprefixed by locutions like ‘fictionally’ or ‘in the story’—can truthfully report what holds in Conan Doyle’s stories. Although such sentences ascribe properties of flesh-and-blood human beings to abstract objects, no category mistake is involved, it is argued, since predicates like ‘being a detective’ undergo a meaning transfer (in Geoffrey Nunberg’s sense). Finally, a classification of stipulative speech acts is offered within a Searlean framework.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 5 at 4.30pm (CET), Lorenzo Rossi (University of Turin), jointly with Johannes Stern (University of Bristol), will give the talk Supervaluational Truth and Quantifiers as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
The talk will be chaired by Léon Probst.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room 0.5 FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
Quantification has long been both a stumbling block and a testing ground in semantics. Building on Frege, Tarski developed the modern model-theoretic semantics for first-order logic (FOL), but many quantifiers (because of the Compactness and Löwenheim–Skolem Theorems) cannot be expressed within FOL. Mostowski and Lindström extended Tarski’s framework to capture quantifiers such as “finitely many” and “most”, giving rise to Generalized Quantifier Theory (GQT), now a standard tool in formal and natural language semantics. Still, challenges remain, especially where semantic indeterminacy arises. We focus on three sources of indeterminacy: (P) presupposition failure, (V) vagueness, and (L) semantic paradoxes. To address them, we propose a general framework for quantifier semantics in the presence of indeterminacy, and we develop two formal systems that (a) meet key desiderata for handling P, V, and L, and (b) recover a substantial fragment of GQT.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
We are pleased to announce that on Friday, December 5 at 4.30pm (CET), Lorenzo Rossi (University of Turin), jointly with Johannes Stern (University of Bristol), will give the talk Supervaluational Truth and Quantifiers as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
The talk will be chaired by Léon Probst.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room 0.5 FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
Quantification has long been both a stumbling block and a testing ground in semantics. Building on Frege, Tarski developed the modern model-theoretic semantics for first-order logic (FOL), but many quantifiers (because of the Compactness and Löwenheim–Skolem Theorems) cannot be expressed within FOL. Mostowski and Lindström extended Tarski’s framework to capture quantifiers such as “finitely many” and “most”, giving rise to Generalized Quantifier Theory (GQT), now a standard tool in formal and natural language semantics. Still, challenges remain, especially where semantic indeterminacy arises. We focus on three sources of indeterminacy: (P) presupposition failure, (V) vagueness, and (L) semantic paradoxes. To address them, we propose a general framework for quantifier semantics in the presence of indeterminacy, and we develop two formal systems that (a) meet key desiderata for handling P, V, and L, and (b) recover a substantial fragment of GQT.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
We are pleased to announce that on Wednesday, November 26 at 5.00pm (CET), Ulrich Meyer (Colgate University) will give the talk Brute Facts as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room A23 Red Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
This paper defends brute facts against recent attempts at resuscitating the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Michael Della Rocca, Gordon Belot, Shamik Dasgupta, and others.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
We are pleased to announce that on Wednesday, November 26 at 5.00pm (CET), Ulrich Meyer (Colgate University) will give the talk Brute Facts as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room A23 Red Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
This paper defends brute facts against recent attempts at resuscitating the Principle of Sufficient Reason by Michael Della Rocca, Gordon Belot, Shamik Dasgupta, and others.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
Hallo Liste,
vor einiger Zeit, am 12.07.2018 wurde über die Liste der Beitrag "Die zwei
Seiten der Aufklärung" verteilt. Er ist heute noch unter diesen Link
<https://lists.philo.at/hyperkitty/list/philweb@lists.philo.at/message/QSXD2…>
einsehbar.
Manche Leute haben mich darin für manche unglückliche Formulierung
geschollten, etwa den Versuch, den Begriff "Analyse" durch "Auflösung oder
Zersetzung" erklären zu wollen, was wohl unglückliche Konotationen hatten,
die ich schlicht nicht bedachte.
Mir ist aufgefallen, dass das Theme, welches ich hier behandelte,
näherungsweise auch durch seriöse Autoren behandelt wurde, nämlich unter
dem Titel "Kant and Hume on Morality
<https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-hume-morality/>".
Ich zitiere aus dem Artikel direkt die Stelle, die mich persönlich am
meisten interessiert:
*"Hume offers three main arguments for this claim in *A Treatise of Human
Nature
*. (...)According to the first argument, 'reason alone can never be a
motive to any action of the will' (T 2.3.3.1). Abstract (or demonstrative)
reasoning, [...], cannot influence the will, but only assist us in our
pursuit of an end we already have. (...)A second argument, which builds on
the first, aims to show that reason 'can never oppose passion in the
direction of the will' (T 2.3.3.1). The only thing that can oppose an
impulse to action generated by one passion is a contrary impulse. (...)The
third argument claims that a passion is an 'original existence', not an
idea, or a mental copy of another object. Contradiction to truth and reason
'consists in the disagreement of ideas, consider’d as copies, with those
objects, which they represent' (T 2.3.3.5). Therefore, a passion cannot be
contrary to truth and reason."*
Hume offeriert uns also drei Argumente, wieso Moral von unsere moralischen
Empfindungen und nicht von unserer Vernunft her rührt:
1. Vernunft alleine kann unsere Handlungen nicht motivieren.
2. Das einzige, was einen emptionalen Impuls entgegen gesetzt werden kann,
ist ein anderer emotionaler Impuls. Dieser kann aber durch Bewegungen der
Vernunft ausgelöst werden.
3. Ideen oder Theorien sind Versuche, die Wirklichkeit mental abzubilden,
während Leidenschaften eine orginale Existenz haben. Aus diesem Grunde
können Leidenschaften nicht wahr oder falsch sein.
Ich kenne nur das simplere Argument aus Humes Abhandlung über die Ethik,
die im Grunde nur das Argument (1) wiedergibt.
(Der Standpunkt, den Hume hier vertritt, könnte man mit Worten wie
"Zweckrationalismus" oder "Voluntarismus" bezeichnen. Nach dieser Lehre
setzt der Wille, oder eben die Leidenschaften, die die Willen bewegen, ein
bestimmtes Ziel und die Vernunft erschöpft sich in der Auswahl der Mittel,
dieses Ziel zu erreichen.
Das Gegenteil wird als Intellektualismus bezeichnet. Demzufolge erkennt der
Intellekt, was erstrebenswert ist, und der Wille folgt.)
Was mir aufgefallen ist, ist, dass Humes Argumentaton doch nicht so evident
ist, wie man sich wünschen könnte.
Die Behauptung, dass nur Gefühle unser Handeln motivieren ist eine
psychologische Theorie. Sie wird nicht weiter begründet oder bewiesen, der
Leser bleibt auf seine Introspektion verwiesen.
Das zweite Argument ist praktisch übernommen aus der von Spiniza
entwickelten Psychologie in seinem Buch "Ethik auf geometrischen Wege".
Das dritte Argument ist zwar richtig, setzt aber auch einige psychologische
Hypothesen voraus, welche man einfach schlucken muss.
Ein Anhänger des sog. "Intellektualismus" könnte behaupten, dass der Wille
den Verstand folgt, wenn diese das Gute erkennt. Sobald das Gute erkannt
sei, werde es angestrebt. Dies sei trivialerweise so, weil das Gute eben so
definiert ist. Es könnte sehr wohl sein, dass der Verstand bei der
Erkenntnis des Gutens mittelbar, über den Umweg von Leidenschaften die
aktiviert werden, auf den Willen wirkt. Das bedeutet aber nicht, dass der
Ausgangspunkt nicht die Erkenntnis des Guten gewsen ist.
Ein Standpunkt, der so ähnlich auch Kant in dem Link in den Mund
interpretiert wird.
Wobei man, frei nach Nietzsche, dieses gesamte Vokabular, mit "Ideen",
"Wille" und "Verstand" als getrennte mentale Instanzen, durchaus in Frage
stellen sollte. Vielleicht funktioniert der menschliche Geist in Wahrheit
doch anders.
Wie dem auch sei, das sind die Gründe, die Hume für seine Version des
"Zweckratonalismus" gibt, dann scheint dieser mir nicht auf so gefestigten
Boden zu stehen.
Mir scheint sich die Frage auf folgendes zu reduzieren: "Ist es,
wünschenswert zu sein, eine objektive Eigenschaft, die genauso rational
erkannt werden kann wie z. B. physikalische Eigenschaften, oder ist es eine
subjektive Affektion in Bezug auf eine Sache?"
Ich frage mich, welches mögliche Kritierium zur Beantwortung dieser Frage
es wohl geben könnte.
Freundlich Grüßen der, wie immer,
Ratlose.
P.S.: Ich muss entschuldigen, dass man dieser Mail die Eigenschaft ansieht,
"mit heißer Nadel gestrickt" worden zu sein. Ich beabsichtige aber auch
nicht, einen Episten zu verfassen, sondern eine Diskussion anzuregen.
Are you passionate about metaphysics, philosophy of physics, logic, or philosophy of mind?
The Master in Philosophy (MAP) at the University of Italian Switzerland might be the best way to pursue your academic ambitions!
The MAP is a 2-year English-taught Research Master focused on preparing students for applying to the most demanding PhD Philosophy programmes worldwide.
* Study with outstanding professors<https://www.usi.ch/en/education/master/philosophy/professors> in small interactive classes
* Programme<https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/31545> with a clear disciplinary focus on four core areas: metaphysics, philosophy of physics, logic, or philosophy of mind
* Individual tutors, chosen among the master's professors, provide regular meetings, feedback, and academic guidance
* Excellent PhD placement record<https://www.usi.ch/en/education/master/philosophy/career-prospects>
* Generous merit-based scholarships and student assistant positions
During our open day on November 17, you will have the opportunity to experience a day as a student of the MAP. You will be able to attend lectures, speak with our current students, and take an informal (and free) lunch with the Director and the staff of the master.
The lectures of the open day are from the courses Metaphysics (Profs. Claudio Calosi and Fabrice Correia) and Seminar in Contemporary Philosophy (Prof. Peter Simons).
Registration is mandatory. To register and know more about the schedule of the open day, visit: https://join.usi.ch/en/master-meetings
For more information about the MAP, visit usi.ch/map<http://usi.ch/map> or send an email to map(a)usi.ch<mailto:map@usi.ch>
We are pleased to announce that on Thursday, November 6 at 4.30pm (CET), Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp) will give the talk The Translucent Mind as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia Fall 2025 organised by the Institute of Philosophy (ISFI) at USI.
The talk will be chaired by Byron Simmons.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room Multiuso FTL Building (USI west campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining online, please write to events.isfi(a)usi.ch.
Here is the abstract of the talk:
Some of our mental states are translucent: we can't fully elaborate some parts of their content, by which I mean we can't make some of the represented properties more determinate. More generally, mental states come on a spectrum when it comes to whether and how much we can elaborate some parts of their content. I argue that translucency is an overlooked but extremely important feature of mental states and I give case studies of this importance in the case of translucent beliefs, translucent emotions, translucent memories and translucent desires.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/32641
Hallo Waldemar,
du kannst dir vorstellen, dass ich sowohl linke wie rechte Politik lese
und doch kritisch sehe. Wenn du dem Karl den ersten Absatz mit der
Orangenkiste vorgelesen hättest wäre er an die Decke gesprungen, ich
kannte diesen "Gottesnichtbeweis" nicht. Ob der Rest des Artikels mich
überzeugte oder nicht, ist mir unerheblich. Gerade habe ich einen Absatz
in Wikipedia geändert, und zwar in Bezug auf Monoblock-Klimageräte, die
eine korrekte Obrigkeit verbieten würde.
Hier ist der Orangenkistenbeweis:
https://taz.de/Skrupellosigkeit-in-der-Politik/!6097088/
Tschüs bis bald mal wieder
Joseph
