Philosophy graduate talks
Philosophy's graduate talks are held on Tuesday's at 6.15 pm in the Old Quad common room.
Philosophy Graduate Colloquium
Date: November 13, 2012
Location: Common Room, Old Quad (Building 150)
Time: 6.00 – 6.30 pm
Talk one: Explaining the Feminist Intuition
Tim Grace
In Autonomy and the Feminist Intuition, Natalie Stoljar
argues in favour of the feminist intuition, which claims that
preferences influenced by oppressive norms of femininity cannot be
autonomous. Stoljar argues that only a strong substantive account of
autonomy – an account of autonomy that places restrictions on the
content of agents preferences – can explain the feminist intuition.
Specifically, Stoljar argues that a normative competence theory is
able to explain the feminist intuition. According to this theory, an
autonomous agent must be able to distinguish between right and wrong;
oppressive gender socialisation undermines this capacity, and so
people who endorse oppressive norms of femininity as a result of this
socialisation are not autonomous. Most discussions of Stoljar's paper
take issue with the normative substance of Stoljar's explanation. In
this paper, however, I will analyse whether the normative competence
theory can adequately explain the feminist intuition. I will present a
few counter-examples to the normative competence theory which show
that Stoljar's proposed explanation cannot account for all the cases
which raise the feminist intuition.
Date: November 13, 2012
Location: Common Room, Old Quad (Building 150)
Time: 6.30 – 7.00 pm
Talk two: What is the New Metaphysics of Science?
Cristian Soto
In recent years there has been a revival of the question of
the nature of metaphysics. There are some eminently theoretical
issues, namely: is there any proper metaphysical knowledge? Does
metaphysics have a particular research framework and a specific
methodology? Does metaphysics merely belong to our anthropologically
minded arts and humanities, or is it instead a form of objective,
truth-conducive theoretical science? In this paper I firstly examine
the idea of a scientific, radically naturalistic metaphysics whose
primary goal consists in the elaboration of a systematic view of
reality based on our best scientific theories. From the standpoint of
this radically naturalistic metaphysics, I secondly examine three
widely accepted, although spurious, metaphysical problems, viz., those
of parthood, persons, and nothingness. Third, I look in detail at the
possibility of assessing the epistemic value of metaphysical theories
in comparison with the evaluation of scientific theories utilizing
different argumentative strategies such as the under-determination of
theories by evidence, the theory change, the cost-benefit analysis,
and the explanatory power. I conclude that if there is any proper role
for metaphysics in the search of the nature of reality, its problems
must be motivated by, and restricted to, our best scientific research
programmes in physical sciences.