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Epistemology Brownbag: Nevin Climenhaga

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Date: Tuesday, September 25th, 2018

Time: 12:30-2:00 PM

Location: Kresge 3438

Title: (Epistemic) Probabilities are Degrees of Support, not Degrees of (Rational) Belief

Abstract:

 I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts – e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us – we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The probability of A given B is the (mind-independent) degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if they had B as their evidence. My central argument is that degrees of support can correctly model good reasoning in cases of old evidence where degrees of belief cannot. I consider ways to revise orthodox degree-of-belief Bayesianism in order to account for this kind of case, and argue that such revisions end up unable to account for reasoning about probabilities conditional on evidence that it is impossible not to possess.

PhLing: Michael Glanzberg (Northwestern)

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Date: April 14 2017

Time: 1:30-3:30

Location: Kresge 3354

Title: The Cognitive Roots of Adjectival Meaning

Abstract: In this paper, I illustrate a way that work in cognitive psychology can

fruitfully interact with truth-conditional semantics.  A widely held view takes

the meanings of gradable adjectives to be measure functions, which map objects

to degrees on a scale.  Scales come equipped with dimensions that fix what the

degrees are.  Following Bartsch and Vennemann, I observe that this allows

dimensions to play the role of lexical roots, that provide the distinctive

contents for each lexical entry.  I review evidence that the grammar provides a

limited range of scale structures, presumably dense linear orderings with a

limited range of topological properties.  I then turn to how the content of the

root can be fixed.  In the verbal domain, there is evidence suggesting roots are

linked to concepts.  In many cases for adjectives, it is not concepts but

approximate magnitude representation systems that fix root contents.  However,

these magnitude representation systems are approximate or analog, and do not

provide precise values. I argue that the roots of adjectives like these

provide a weak, discrimination-based constraint on a grammatically fixed scale

structure.  Other adjectives can find concepts to fix roots, which can support a

well-known equivalence class construction which can fix precise values on a

scale.  I conclude that though adjectives have a uniform truth-conditional

semantics, they show substantial differences in the cognitive sources of their

root meanings. This shows that there are (at least) two sub-classes of

adjectives, with roots fixed by different mechanisms and with different degrees

of precision, and showing very different cognitive properties.

Epistemology Brownbag: Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (UBC)

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Date: Wednesday, February 22

Time: 12-1:30 PM

Location: Kresge 3438

Title: “Positive Epistemic Norms”

Abstract:

If you’re considering a question, you have three choices: believe, disbelieve, or suspend judgment. Of these three, suspension tends to enjoy, implicitly or even explicitly, the privilege of a perceived ‘default’ status. Epistemologists are quick to emphasise respects in which judgments can be too hasty, or when a combination of attitudes would be irrational. Descartes starts his Meditations with the worry that some of his beliefs may be wrong—so he shifts into suspension, until he can certify his methods as trustworthy. Descartes’s project is familiar, and by and large, analytic philosophy has mostly worked in that paradigm. Until you have enough evidence, play it safe, and suspend judgment.
I will suggest that the neutrality often attributed to suspension is often unwarranted. Suspension is not epistemically best by default. Failure to believe—undue skepticism—can be just as epistemically erroneous as can hasty belief—undue gullibility. (What if Descartes were motivated by the idea of not letting any truths get past him?) I’ll work towards this case from three perspectives: the epistemology of the a priori; the epistemology of testimony; and pragmatic encroachment. The aim is a reorientation of epistemology, away from emphasising negative, restrictive norms, and towards positive ones. I aim to vindicate in a more serious way the natural thought that we often ought to believe things.