Philosophy and History of Science Seminars 11-12

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19th Oct

Igal Kvart

Rational Assertibility, the Steering Role of 'Know', and Pragmatic Encroachment

5pm

9 Woodland Road, Common Room

21st Oct

Alan Chalmers

Atomism

1-2pm

26th Oct

Alan Chalmers

Pascal and Boyle

5pm

9 Woodland Road, Common Room

**

9th Nov

Toby Meadows

Infinitary Proofs for Semantic Truth

5pm

9 Woodland Road, Common Room

**

10th Nov

Toby Meadows

A Philosopher's Guide to Forcing - what is a generic set?

9-11am

9 Woodland Road, Common Room

**

16th Nov

Sylvia Wenmackers

Infinitesimal Probabilities and Stratified Belief

5pm

9 Woodland Road,
Common Room

*

7th Dec

Paul Busch (York)

Unsharp Quantum Reality

5pm

9 Woodland Road, Common Room

*

14th Dec

Staffan Angere

Preliminary notes on a theory of structure

5pm

9 Woodland Road,
Common Room

Speaker

Title

Abstract

Igal Kvart

Rational Assertibility, the Steering Role of 'Know', and Pragmatic Encroachment

In this paper, I lay out an account of the pragmatics of 'know', and use it to argue against pragmatic encroachment into the semantics of 'know'.  In the past couple of decades, there have been a couple of major attempts to establish the thesis of pragmatic encroachment. Contextualism and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism offered accounts of knowledge in which standard and/or stakes play a major in the semantics. These accounts were propelled first and foremost by examples that seemed to require a pragmatic component in the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions in order to be accounted for. The pragmatic account I propose explains the admittedly pragmatic character of the examples in question within the pragmatic field, obviating the need for pragmatic encroachment into the semantics. The main pragmatic components I employ are that of rational assertibility as well as the pragmatic role of the use of 'know' in deliberation that resorts to practical inference. This pragmatic account is fundamentally different than the Gricean approach. It account for the intuitions associated with the paradigmatic examples, and offers new insight about the methodology of using intuitions as semantic evidence.

Paul Busch

Unsharp Quantum Reality

See Paul Busch's recent paper with Gregg Jaeger, available here or here.