July 25, 2009
Fictionalism Conference at Manchester
By S. Matthew Liao
FICTIONALISM
15-17 September 2009
Chancellors Hotel and Conference Centre, University of Manchester
Tuesday 15 September
2-3.15 John Divers (Leeds) If You Don’t Succeed, At Least Pretend To: The Explanatory Poverty of Modal Fictionalisms
3.45-5 Mary Leng (Liverpool) Mathematical Fictionalism and Constructive Empiricism
5.30-6.45 Daniel Nolan (Nottingham) There’s No Justice: Ontological Moral Fictionalism
Wednesday 16 September
10-11.15 Jonas Olson (Stockholm) Getting Real about Moral Fictionalism
11.45-1 Mark Balaguer (California State, Los Angeles) (title TBA)
2-3.15 Anthony Everett (Bristol) Meinongian Fictionalism Reconsidered
3.45-5 Jussi Suikkanen (Reading) Saving the Moral Fiction: The Content Challenge
May 1, 2009
Stockholm June Workshop in Philosophy 2009
Metaphysics and Normativity
June 4, 9.30 – 17.00
Stockholm University, room B497
Speakers
KENT HURTIG (UPPSALA):
‘The Scope of (External) Reasons’
JENS JOHANSSON (STOCKHOLM):
‘Temporalism about Death’s Badness’
NED MARKOSIAN (WESTERN WASHINGTON):
‘Rossian Minimalism’
JONAS OLSON (STOCKHOLM):
‘Getting Real about Moral Fictionalism’
STEPHAN TORRE (OXFORD):
‘Eternalism and the Open Future’
Organizers: Jens Johansson and Jonas Olson
Attendance is free of charge, but please email the organizers if you plan to attend.
jens.johansson@philosophy.su.se
jonas.olson@philosophy.su.se
November 21, 2008
Hare on Obligation and Regret
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Caspar Hare from MIT will be giving a talk this Monday at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar on “Obligation and Regret When There is No Fact of the Matter About What Would have Happened If You Had Not Done What You Did.” Here is an abstract of his talk:
This paper is about conditional under-specification and the objective ought. Moral: sometimes there is a difference between what there is most reason for you to do and what a fully informed, benevolent observer would want you to do.
A copy of Caspar’s talk can be found here, and he would welcome any comments/suggestions.
December 5, 2007
If I may be allowed a chance to make a brief announcement, I am delighted to say that my new monograph, Hegel’s Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right, is hot off the press. It is published by Edinburgh University Press and distributed in the United States by Columbia University Press.
For a taster:
October 28, 2007
Prepunishment in the Garden
By Saul Smilansky
There is an excellent discussion on prepunishment going on in the Garden of Forking Paths blog. Normally I wouldn’t refer to discussions there as free will is a distinct topic, but this discussion is more on prepunishment and punishment in general than strictly on free will; and the discussion is really illuminating (but it takes a while to get going and the thread is long, so you need to be patient). Other Ethicsetcetniks involved are Neil Levy and Thom Brooks (and sorry if I’ve missed anyone else). The link is:
June 18, 2007
My future self or myself in the future
By Nick Shackel
In discussing issues such as, for example, whether prudential reasons can be accounted for in terms of desire based reasons, we sometimes contrast our present self with our future self. It’s possible that some arguments turn on whether my present and future selves are distinct or whether talk of these selves is just a misleading way of speaking of me now and in the future. 4 dimensionalism (4D) accounts for persistence through time in terms of temporal parts, and if it is true then my future self is not identical to my present self, but both are temporal parts of me, whilst I am a space time worm that is the fusion of all my temporal parts (for short, a maximal space time worm). Jim Stone has recently offered a refutation of 4D in Analysis. Here is my condensed version of his argument:






















































