Below you find a calendar of the Science & More seminars, a description of the next upcoming meeting, and a list of past and future events. Everybody is welcome to join! All times are local Turin time.
Next Seminar
Maciej Tarnowski (University of Warsaw): Belief as an epistemic possibility of knowledge
Tuesday 10 December, 12:00--13:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo
In this talk, I will revisit the idea first championed by Wolfgang Lenzen (1979), according to which belief can be defined in knowledge terms as “an epistemic possibility of knowledge”. Though this approach has been in recent years supported e.g. by Robert Stalnaker (2006) and Sven Rosenkranz (2021), it did not receive widespread support among many epistemologists due to strong commitments such equivalence seems to entail, such as upholding the KK thesis or related "strong belief" thesis (according to which believing that p entails believing that one knows p). I will investigate these commitments by analyzing the minimal epistemic modal logic that allows for defining belief along the lines of this thesis. I will demonstrate that such a logic does not lead to strong commitments the thesis is thought to imply, and is useful in dealing with traditional Moorean/anti-expertise epistemic paradoxes and expressing epistemic externalist intuitions in cases of skeptical pressure.
Future Seminars
TBA
Past Seminars
Michal Sikorski (Marche Polytechnic University): A Consensus-based Checklist for Assessing Scientific Objectivity
Wednesday 27 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Aula 18, Palazzo Nuovo
We will present a newly developed consensus-based checklist for assessing the objectivity of scientific procedures. We begin by discussing why until now a philosophical study of objectivity remained purely theoretical and had a negligible impact on scientific practice. Then we will motivate our project, describing how scientific objectivity relates to other well-understood notions such as reliability and methodological quality, and why it is worth studying separately. Next, we introduce and motivate the conceptualization of objectivity that served as the basis for our checklist: ``a procedure becomes more objective when it is demonstrably more resilient to actions and decisions that have the potential to influence its outcome'' (van Dongen and Sikorski 2021). We then describe the latest development in our project: a consensus-based study using Delphi methodology. In the study, we utilize the expertise of the participating scientists to translate the conceptualization into a practicable checklist for assessing the objectivity of scientific procedures (e.g., experiments) based on the corresponding paper. We will describe the methodology of the study and the features of the developed checklist. Finally, we will explain how the checklist can be used in scientific practice and how it complements the tools currently available to psychologists and other scientists, and present our plans to validate the checklist in future studies. The talk is based on joint work with Noah van Dongen.
Matteo Baggio (University of Turin): Knowledge from falsehoods: afterthoughts and new perspectives
Tuesday 26 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo
This paper explores the widely accepted Counter-Closure Principle (CC), which posits that, necessarily, if an agent (S) believes a conclusion (q) solely based on a competent inference from a premise (p), and S knows q, then S must also know p. While the principle seems intuitively uncontroversial, recent critiques have challenged its plausibility, particularly with regard to whether p must meet all the conditions required for knowledge. Focusing on cases where p is false—so-called "knowledge from falsehoods" (KFF)—this paper thoroughly examines the issue. Existing explanations for why KFF cases may still count as knowledge often rely on internalist theories of warrant. However, I argue that a new counterexample undermines these internalist approaches. In response, I suggest adopting an externalist perspective on warrant, as it offers a more compelling explanation for why CC fails.
Jan Sprenger (University of Turin): Conditionals between Logical and Semantic Theorizing
Wednesday 13 November 2024, 12:00-13:00, Palazzo Nuovo, Aula 18
Are semantic theories essentially a theory of how the human mind operates, or do they have a normative component? This talk uses theories of conditionals as a case study for a methodological reflection on this question. Traditionally, conditionals have been studied primarily by logicians and philosophers of language, but currently, they are also investigated by formal epistemologists, computer scientists, linguists and psychologists of reasoning. These groups approach conditionals in different ways, they have different ideas of what counts as data in favor of a specific theory, etc. I will highlight these differences and analyze whether semantic theories can and should give weight to normative considerations about valid hypothetical reasoning.
Jaakko Kuorikoski (University of Helsinki): Abduction without Explanation
Thursday 7 November 2024, 16-18h, Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo, second floor
This paper reviews recent, broadly Bayesian attempts at vindicating inference to the best explanation and critically discusses proposed Bayesian measures of explanatory power and the experimental evidence presented in their favor. The key argument aims to establish that evidential and explanatory are nevertheless distinct and that while especially the simulation-based Bayesian reconstructions of IBE succeed in highlighting interesting and effective inductive methods, they do not utilize specifically explanatory measures. Finally, it is argued that the distinction between explanatory and evidential virtues is not purely a terminological matter, as this has important implications to the proper domain of apparent IBE, as shown by recent arguments for the incoherence of IBE.