Colloquium Series, WINTER 2011

There may be one or two additions to this schedule. Abstracts will be posted as available. Note that this is an academic philosophy colloquium series. For the University of Waterloo Public Lecture Series in Philosophy, see here.

If you'd like to be on the mailing list announcing these events, please contact:

vbrett@uwaterloo.ca

See here for past events, colloquia, and speakers.

***Talks are in Hagey Hall 373 at 3:30 unless otherwise noted.***

Friday, January 21, 2011
Wendy O'Brien-Ewara (Waterloo)
Simone de Beauvoir and the Problem of the Other's Consciousness
Readings of the works of Simone de Beauvoir have tended to situated her writings either in the context of feminist theory or within the historical development of existentialism. While these approaches have offered important insights into her philosophy, neither have taken into consideration her own characterization of her work. In a 1979 interview with Jessica Benjamin and Margaret Simons, Simone de Beauvoir declared that the problem that preoccupied her across her lifetime, "her problem", was the "the problem of the other's consciousness." (Simons, 1999,10) Despite this claim, to date  there have been no studies that take Beauvoir at her word and investigate her writings as prolonged investigation of this problem. In this paper, I take up this challenge placing Beauvoir squarely in the tradition of French Hegelianism, arguing for the advantages of reading her work in this context.

Friday, February 4, 2011
Marguerite Deslauriers (McGill)
Aristotle’s Objections to Socratic Proposals on Women
Plato represents Socrates in Republic V as proposing that women in the guardian class should be trained for the same tasks as men, and ‘held in common’ by men – that is, that women should live independently along with men, and not belong to individual households.  Aristotle develops several criticisms of these proposals in Politics II.  This paper considers those criticisms as part of the project of Politics II, which is to ask what, in the best city, people should have in common.  Because Aristotle identifies what we have in common with ways in which we are equal, this amounts to asking in what ways we should be equal.  Both Socrates and Aristotle treat the question of equality as important insofar as certain forms of equality will, or will not, promote unity in the city.  I argue that Aristotle’s objections to Socrates are (i) that Socrates misunderstood the kind and the degree of unity that his proposals for equality would promote, and (ii) that Socrates misunderstood the importance of unity based on inequality for living well.  The positive account of inequality and unity that emerges from Politics II is then one in which inequality is a necessary condition for living well (where living well includes noble action and not only material well-being), and inequality must include inequalities in virtue.

Friday, February 18, 2011
Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern)
A Deflationary Account of Group Testimony
Is group testimony an irreducible source of knowledge?  Both negative and positive answers have been given to this question.  According to a reductionist account, a group’s testimony that p is epistemologically reducible to the testimony of all or some of the individuals that comprise the group.  The standard reductionist theory is the summative view, according to which a group testifying that p can be understood in the minimal sense that all or some members of the group would testify that p were the relevant opportunity to arise.  In contrast, a non-reductionist or non-summative account of group testimony maintains that the testimony of a group is irreducible to that of all or some of its member.  In particular, such a view holds that in some very important sense, the group itself is the source of the knowledge, where the epistemological status of the testimony in question is over and above, or otherwise distinct from, the testimony of any of its individual members.  In this paper, I raise problems for existing accounts of group testimony and then develop my own deflationary account, according to which the epistemic status of a group’s testimony is reducible to that of one or more individuals, though not necessarily ones who are members of the group in question.  Thus my view is unlike any existing account of group testimony in the literature since it is both reductionist and non-summative in nature.

Scientific and Technological Literacy Series
*NOTE: Day/Time - Thursday at 4:00 p.m. in HH 373
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Carla Fehr (Iowa)
The Epistemology of Ignorance and Theories of Women’s Intelligence
The epistemology of ignorance is the study of barriers to the development and dissemination of knowledge.  This study is often conducted with attention to the material and political context of the knower, the object of knowledge and those who may be impacted by particular knowledge claims. My goal is to use the epistemology of ignorance as a theoretical lens to examine theories of intelligence differences between men and women that have been used to support persistent gender inequalities. I argue that in this case, ignorance is maintained by practices that undermine the epistemic authority of those who hold dissenting views and practices that raise doubts about the appropriateness of public debate regarding this topic.

Scientific and Technological Literacy Series
Friday, March 11, 2011 - 3:30 p.m. in HH 373
Carla Fehr (Iowa)
The Public Understanding of Science when Scientists are the Public:  Research on Women in Science and Engineering
In this paper I explore the implications of a research program, ISU ADVANCE, for current models of the public understanding of science.   ISU ADVANCE is a program designed to test strategies for improving the representation of women faculty in science and engineering.  The study of the public understanding of science is often framed in terms of progressing from old models, which see public resistance to science as due to a knowledge deficit, to new models, which focus on how the uptake and use of scientific knowledge is mediated by the social contexts of different lay communities.   However, proponents of both of these kinds of models tend to focus on cases in which researchers are in positions of greater epistemic and institutional authority than members of the public.  In the case of ISU ADVANCE, these authority relations are turned upside down.  In this case, the public consists of scientists, engineers and university administrators, all in positions of significant institutional authority.  ISU ADVANCE demonstrates the importance of incorporating elements of both the old and new models of the public understanding of science in order to develop knowledge that is useful for this authoritative scientific public.

Friday, March 18, 2011
Ori Friedman (Waterloo, Dept. of Psychology )
Everyday Intuitions about Knowledge
Justified true beliefs are usually instances of knowledge. However, philosophers find exceptions to this formulation of knowledge in "Gettier" cases, in which a person with a justified true beliefs is viewed as lacking knowledge. In this talk, I review recent research in which my collaborators and I have investigated how adults and young children (both groups not trained in philosophy) attribute knowledge to protagonists in Gettier cases. Our findings are surprising. We find that: many adults view Gettier case protagonists as possessing knowledge; this tendency to attribute knowledge may depend on gender; and compared with adults, young children's knowledge attributions show some similarities to those of philosophers' attributions.

Friday, March 25, 2011
Monique Deveaux (Guelph)
When is Sufficiency Not Enough? Revisiting Sufficiency and Priority Views in Light of Inequality’s Harms
Two influential anti-egalitarian views contend that economic egalitarianism misperceives what is sometimes morally troubling about differences in welfare distributions. It is not inequality per se that is problematic, but rather, not having enough resources for a good life  (the doctrine of sufficiency), or the lower absolute level of welfare associated with being worse-off (the priority view).  Relative differences in income and assets, or in standard of living, are largely irrelevant, according to these views. In this talk, I challenge some of the key assertions of sufficientarianism and prioritarianism in light of research by social epidemiologists demonstrating the independently harmful effects of income inequality on health and social well-being in advanced industrialized states. I ask whether this data should lead us to question the benign view of inequality taken by leading exponents of sufficiency and priority (Harry Frankfurt and Derek Parfit), as well as the sharp distinction they draw between inequality and patterns of wealth and poverty.  If it is true that inequality and poverty cannot be so easily disaggregated in real-world circumstances, and that substantial divergences in welfare have negative consequences beyond the harms entailed by scarcity, then sufficientist and prioritarian views may rest upon a sociologically false view of inequality.  This may in turn drastically limit their normative usefulness for addressing the problems associated with increasing inequality in societies such as Canada.

PGSA Conference 2011 (Philosophy Graduate Student Association)
Fri., Apr. 1, 2011 & Sat., Apr. 2, 2011
Keynote Address: Diana Raffman (Toronto) - Apr. 2, 2011 at 3:30 p.m. in HH 373
Psychological Hysteresis and the Dynamic Sorites Paradox
For a complete list of speakers see - http://artsweb.uwaterloo.ca/~pgsa/index.html

Scientific and Technological Literacy Series
*Note: Day/Time - Monday, April 11, 2011 - 4:00 p.m. in HH 373
Heather Douglas (Tennessee)
How to Weigh Evidence
This talk will address how to weigh complex sets of evidence, from multiple disciplines, that are often divergent in their implications.  Weight of evidence in this context means assessing “where the weight of evidence lies,” rather than how much one piece of evidence supports a particular hypothesis in traditional confirmation theory.  How to perform such assessments is crucial to the optimal use of science in public policy, but remains contested.  I will argue that explanations are central to weight of evidence efforts, and that explicating and then utilizing explanations (particularly to make novel predictions) can make weight of evidence efforts rigorous, while remaining sufficiently flexible.   Without explanations, it would be unclear what the set of evidence to be weighed should be.  With explanations, we can see both why competing experts weigh the evidence differently, and how we might settle disputes concerning where the weight of evidence lies.   Finally, taking explanations as the central conceptual tool in weight of evidence analysis allows us to see where more formal techniques, like causal nets or expert elicitation, fit in the process.

Scientific and Technological Literacy Series
*Note: Day/Time/Location - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 - 4:00 p.m. in AL 105
Heather Douglas (Tennessee)
Politics and Values in Science
Concern over the politicization of science has been on the rise over the past decade.  The problem of dueling experts in the public eye has not abated, and solutions for stabilizing sources of reliable expertise are elusive.  Some call for increased emphasis on separating science and politics.  Some call for more value-free science or a restoration of scientific integrity.  But what these slogans should actually mean remain ill-defined.  In this talk, I will provide some conceptual structure to this murky terrain, delineating first the proper role for values in science, articulating a better ideal than the value-free ideal.  I use this new ideal to provide guidance in the assessment of public scientific experts.   While this ideal for the role of values in science illuminates some aspects of the politicization of science, I will show how by itself  it is inadequate to address the full range of politicization concerns.  For that, we need to consider both the social community of science and the reasons why we pursue science.