Certain Doubts

August 27-29, 2007
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
http://www.knowledgebeliefnormativity.org

Conference Theme
After decades of discussion about the proper analysis of knowledge, epistemologists have started working on questions concerning the value of what they so eagerly have analyzed: knowledge. The rubric of “The Value of Knowledge” covers such questions and topics as:
- Why is knowledge supposed to be more valuable than true belief (the ‘Meno problem’)?
- What sorts of values accrue to knowledge?
- Is there any value to ignorance?
- What, if anything, accounts for forbidden knowledge?

Keynote Speakers
Alvin Goldman (Rutgers University)
Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University)
Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor University)
Duncan Pritchard (University of Stirling)

Call for Abstracts
Abstracts of at most 300 words are invited on any topic that is relevant to the conference theme. Abstracts should be submitted by e-mail or regular mail to the conference organizers by March 31, 2007. Notification of acceptance/rejection: April 15, 2007.

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via Jon’s post below and Gillian Russell at TAR, Greg Restall summarizes and links to Branden Fitelson’s very interesting talk (pdf of Branden’s slides) at the Banff Mathematical Methods in Philosophy workshop. I’ve only seen the slides, but I have some questions about Branden’s argument; I hope Branden or some Banffer will be able to say more about how it works.
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Via Gillian at Thoughts Arguments and Rants, I just learned that “the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is widening its “Inductive Logic and Decision Theory” area to “Formal Epistemology”, with Branden Fitelson and Al Hajek joining Brian Skryms and Jim Joyce as editors.” This is fantastic news!

Also, Branden is editing a special issue of Studia Logica on formal epistemology. Branden is fast becoming the Ernie Sosa of formal epistemology!

Suppose equal weighters are right: when two epistemic peers share all and only the same evidence regarding some claim and disagree (i.e., one thinks the claim is true on the basis of the evidence and the other thinks it false on the basis of the evidence), both should turn agnostic about the claim. Suppose also that the mere possibility of such a disagreement isn’t a reason to turn agnostic. And add one final refinement of the view: that disagreement where it is unknown whether, or that, it is by an epistemic peer with the same evidence doesn’t rationally compel agnosticism.

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About a year ago, Jon blogged here about Allan Gibbard’s Sly Pete example, inspiring quite a discussion in the comments. I’ve finally finished a draft of the paper that, when I gave it as a talk, got Jon thinking about the example. It’s “The Conditionals of Deliberation,” and it’s available here [pdf document]. Sly Pete doesn’t make his first appearance until about half-way through the paper, but once he’s on the scene, he stays in the spotlight pretty much for the rest of the paper. There are lots of variations of the example. It turns out that, on the matter of whether Pete will win if he plays, much depends not only on who is talking to whom (and also on who is thinking about the matter to themselves), but also, in interesting ways, on just what purpose the conditional is being asserted/thought about for. There’s also a bit of Newcomb’s problem in the paper. So, even if you don’t like what I do with this material, at least you know that a couple of the coolest examples of recent philosophy are discussed.

So, why did it take a whole year to get a draft out after having all the ideas together for a talk? It took longer than that! I first gave that paper as a talk more than 4 years ago (at Michigan, with Gibbard present!), and I think I’ve had all the main ideas in my head for more than 5 years. I don’t know why, but for some of my papers, I find it extremely difficult to get myself to write them up. Very frustrating. I think that giving them as talks will spur me on to get these papers written up, but that usually doesn’t seem to work. But who knows? Maybe it would have taken even longer if it weren’t for the talks.

Not too long ago, I received a copy of the new 5th edition of A.P. Martinich’s (ed.) Philosophy of Language anthology, which I understand is fairly widely used. (And if you Google “philosophy of language” martinich spring and/or “philosophy of language” martinich fall, you’ll turn up lots of on-line syllabi for courses that use this very popular book–though these will be older editions, since this new one is just coming out.) In the book’s table of contents, it lists the year in which a selection was published right next to the title of each selection. I was quite surprised by how old the selections tend to be, and how few of them are from the last twenty years – only 4 of the 45 selections are dated later than 1987. I wondered if that said something about the area of philosophy of language in particular (as opposed to other areas of philosophy where anthologies might feature more recent articles, or perhaps where an anthology wouldn’t get to be so widely used if it contained so little recent material), the general nature of anthologies, or just the idiosyncrasies of this particular anthology?

For comparison purposes, I reached for my handy Sosa & Kim Epistemology anthology – a quite widely used book, expecting a marked difference. And I did find a very substantial difference: 22 of the 43 selections (or of the 41 selections, if you count the various small bits of Moore’s famous essays as one selection) are from later than 1987. And S&K is 7 years old now. The fairer comparison would involve how many of the S&K selections were less than 20 years old when the anthology came out (later than 1980), in which case the count is 27 out of 43 (or out of 41).

But whether this reveals something about the areas, or just about these particular anthologies, I don’t know.

(Topics and dates from the anthologies are below the fold.)
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How to fold a t-shirt.

Thomas Grundmann and Hilary Kornblith are organizing a summer school in philosophy at the University of Cologne (Germany) on the above topic. The dates are August 6-10, 2007.

The number of participants is relatively small, and those interested may apply through May 15 at their website for the event, which is:

http://www.summerschoolphilosophy.uni-koeln.de/

Announcing:
An International Workshop on the Question
“Why Formal Epistemology?”
April 28th-29th
University of Oklahoma

The University of Oklahoma Philosophy Department is hosting a two day Epistemology Workshop at the University of Oklahoma, Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29. The working title for the workshop is “Why Formal Epistemology?” The general theme is to address the issue, “In what ways do (or should, or can) Formal Methods shed light on Traditional Epistemological Concerns?”. In other words, how may formal epistemology fruitfully inform and engage traditional issues and approaches, and how should traditional approaches respond to the formalists?.

Participants at the workshop will include Luc Bovens, David Chalmers, Branden Fitelson, Alan Hajek, Jonathan Kvanvig, Adam Morton, Scott Sturgeon, and Paul Weirich.

For more information, see the workshop website here: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/R/Wayne.D.Riggs-1/epistemology/index.html

Registration for the workshop is free, but we ask that anyone who is planning to come, please send us your name and institutional affiliation so that we can know how many people we need to accommodate. You can do this either by email (ouphilstudent@yahoo.com) or regular post at the following address. As a bonus, everyone who registers will be able to post and comment on the official blog (http://ouepistemology.blogspot.com/) of the conference!

Formal Epistemology Conference
Philosophy Department
University of Oklahoma
455 W. Lindsey, Room 605
Norman, OK 73019