Colloquium Series, Fall 2008

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 334 at 3:30 unless otherwise noted.***

Friday, September 12, 2008
Kant's Neglected Attack on Leibniz' Amphiboly
Andrew Brook (Carleton)
In the much-neglected Appendix on the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection at the end of the Transcendental Analytic in the /Critique of Pure Reason/, Kant introduces a new transcendental activity, transcendental reflection. Its point is to determine to which faculty a representation belongs by examining its relationships to other representations. This enterprise does not look very promising but it yields surprisingly interesting fruit. (1) A strong argument for the necessity of a sensible element in representations results, the first one in the whole Analytic. (2) Identity and difference turn out to be central relationships; seeing identity emerge as central here makes plain how surprising it is that it is not included in the earlier Table of Categories. More generally, the activity of transcendental reflection could ground a whole new line of critical philosophy.

Friday, September 26, 2008 *Note: 4:30 start time*
Logical and Social Opposition
Trudy Govier (Lethbridge)
Opposites may be logical or social, and there are several distinct varieties in each context.  Logically, we often construct false dichotomies, mistaking contraries for contradictories, turning distinctions into disjunctions, erecting bifurcated categorical systems, and neglecting to consider anomalous cases.  Socially, we may base dichotomization and opposition on difference, in some cases constructing oppositional identities. Polarized opposition appears in extreme forms when it results in demonization, or even de-humanization, of the enemy.  My concern here is to offer a description of pathologies of logical and social opposition and begin explore several ways in which they are connected.

Friday, October 3, 2008
Human Flourishing: A New Approach to Equality
Christine Sypnowich (Queen's)
Why do we condemn inequality?  Inequality is a social ill because of the damage it does to human flourishing, wherein some people live well whilst others live badly.  Ultimately, the answer to the question, ‘equality of what?’ is flourishing, since whatever our policies, it is flourishing, or wellbeing, that we hope will be made more equal.  Flourishing is not, however, the focus of most egalitarian theories.  Most egalitarians instead posit goods, income or resources, the instruments of flourishing, not flourishing itself.  The idea of flourishing presupposes that we can delineate, more or less objectively, what counts as a good life as opposed to a bad life, in order to promote the former and discourage the latter.  But most egalitarians are neutralists, insistent that individuals should be free to choose how to live; on this view, political theories which delineate what counts as living well are illiberal.
In this wide-ranging paper I offer a perfectionist account of equality, an account which has historical antecedents from Morris to Beveridge, and which draws on the similar, though less perfectionist, views of Sen and Cohen.  I address the problem of individual responsibility that besets egalitarianism as well as the obvious objection to perfectionism, that it is paternalistic. I argue that ‘egalitarian perfectionism’ is a robust political philosophy that can avoid the weaknesses of theories of equality, on the one hand, and theories of the good life, on the other.

Friday, October 17, 2008
The Varieties of Pragmatism: Precisely characterizing a nebulous but attractive doctrine
Randall Dipert (SUNY Buffalo)
This paper is about pragmatism in general, a view intended to cover Putnam and Brandom, for example, as well as classical pragmatism.  However, I will also talk about Peirce and the messy issue of whether what we understand as his pragmatism is really "just" a consequence of his theory of signs (philosophy of mind) and fallibilism in scientific method, or whether pragmatism is a cluster of metaphilosophical claims.

Friday, November 14, 2008
Parents' Responsibilities, Children's Responsibilities
Amy Mullin (Toronto)
In this talk I am interested especially in the responsibilities that young dependent children (children as young as preschoolers, and as old as teenagers approaching adulthood) have towards their competent and responsible parents.  I choose this age range because I am interested in children who are in the process of moral development but have not yet reached moral maturity.  I will argue that children's responsibilities include cooperation (which involves pursuit of mutuality and requires trust), and gratitude (which, in the context of an ongoing relationships, involves a certain type of reciprocity). I prefer to speak of filial responsibilities rather than filial obligations, in order to avoid using language that suggests that parents have rights to certain behaviours from their children.

Young children's responsibilities towards their parents are rarely discussed; when filial responsibilities are discussed, it is almost always the responsibilities that grown children have towards their aging parents that are at stake. My topic is not so much dismissed as ignored within the existing literature on filial morality, with the exception of a few pages in Blustein.  This omission is all the more surprising given the sheer number of people who have relationships with dependent children, and to whom these relationships are very important.

Since I argue that young dependent children only have these responsibilities towards those parents who are competent and aim at fulfilling their parental responsibilities, I must provide a sketch of the responsibilities parents have towards their young dependent children. However, the focus of my talk will be on the responsibilities of children. In developing my view, I build upon the positive contributions of, and criticize what I see as errors and omissions in, the existing literatures on filial morality and parental responsibility. I draw upon feminist work on relationships between dependents and their caregivers, and recent psychological research about relationships between young dependent children and parents.  This latter research presents evidence that even quite young children are capable of exhibiting the behaviours and attitudes I argue we can expect of them, and are morally required to encourage in them.

Friday, November 28, 2008
Statistical Laws, Ensemble Explanations
Denis Walsh (Toronto)
Our current best theories of evolutionary population dynamics require a class of irreducibly statistical laws of nature that underwrite statistical, non-causal explanations. Knowing that there must be such laws (and explanations) is one thing; understanding what they are is quite another. I canvass a currently popular approach to understanding laws of nature, the ‘natures’ or ‘capacities’ account. While this yields an appealing analysis of causal laws, it seems to offer no prospect of an account of statistical laws. Nevertheless, it can form the basis of an understanding of statistical laws, and their nomological explanations. Capacity laws identify the natures—‘principles of change or stasis’—of material entities. Similarly, ensembles are material entities whose natures—‘principles of change or stasis’—are specified by their statistical structures. Statistical laws play the some role in explaining the behaviours of ensembles that capacity laws play in explaining the behaviours of more familiar material objects.

Friday, December 5, 2008
Synechism and Intersexuality
Shannon Dea (Waterloo)
Abstract to be posted