Boole Lectures in Philosophy
Semester 2, 2024-25
For Semester 2, 2024-25, we are pleased to present the following series of lectures as part of the Boole Lectures in Philosophy:
- January 21st 2025, 1300-1500, "Shtepps" (The Hub): Kenneth Shockley (Colorado State): Environmental Harm, What Could it Be?
- Abstract: Can coral reefs, and not just the polyps or the living things that depend on those reefs, be harmed by climate change? As many of the features of the environment do not have interests or well-being, it does not seem possible to harm them. Appeals to environmental harm are often taken to be mistaken, or to involve an illicit form of projection or moralizing. In this paper I suggest that the attitude toward the object harmed is part of the very nature of environmental harm. I argue that a fitting-attitude approach to harm, according to which harm is appropriately attributed to features in the environment to the extent that it is appropriate to have an attitude of concern for the object harmed, provides a sound foundation for environmental harm.
- February 26th 2025, 1500-1700, CACSSS Seminar Room: Cian Dorr (New York University): The Multiplicity of Meaning
- Abstract: : In this talk I will defend the view that almost invariably, when one asserts something, one simultaneously asserts enormously many very similar things. More generally, a wide range of familiar "intentional" relations - including asserting, meaning, believing, knowing, expressing, and referring to - work in a similarly pluralistic way: almost always, anything that stands in one of these relations to an item of the appropriate sort stands in the same relation to enormously many items very similar to that one. I will argue for this thesis by sketching how the pluralist view solves several otherwise intractable problems, including the Liar Paradox as well as some less familiar puzzles about variation of meaning across nearby possible worlds.
- March 26th, 2025, 1500-1700, CACSSS Seminar Room: Lukas Meyer (University of Graz) - Title TBA
All are welcome!
For more details (including abstracts of the talks and other information), please check our Social Media channels: https://linktr.ee/ucc_philosophy