2nd Workshop
2nd Nagoya Meta-Philosophy Workshop 2.0
Date: 15:00 to 17:55pm, Jun 27, 2024; 2024年6月27日(木) 15:00~17:55pm
Venue: Liberal Arts and Sciences Main Building SIS2, 4th Floor; 名古屋大学 東山キャンパス 全学教育棟中棟4階SIS2教室
Program:
15:00 to 15:55pm (including Q & A)
Computability, Circularity, and Notations
Zhao Fan (Graduate School of System Informatics, Kobe University)
Abstract: It is widely accepted that a successful analysis of computability was achieved in the 1930s, most notably due to the work of Alan Turing. Accordingly, Turing does not merely formalize the concept of computability, he also analyzes it. Gandy famously appraises that Turing’s analysis of computability is a “paradigm of philosophical analysis” [Gandy 1988]. Recently, several philosophers have raised serious concerns about Turing’s analysis of computability. Notoriously, Rescorla argues that Turing’s analysis of computability involves a “subtle but persistent circularity” [Rescorla 2007]. Even worse, Quinon contends that any conceptual analysis of computability would be circular [Quinon 2020]. Rescorla, Quinon, and others appeal to the phenomenon of “deviant encodings” – i.e., encodings that enable Turing machines to “solve” unsolvable problems. In a recent paper, Shapiro, Synder, and Samuels [2022] propose a solution to the problem of “deviant encodings”, drawing on the insights from Kripke’s notion of buck-stopper. In particular, they argue that the unary notation is a buck-stopper. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the problem of deviant encodings and offer a critical examination of Shapiro, Synder, and Samuels’s solution.
16:00 to 16:55pm (including Q & A)
Trust Me, Vulnerability Ain’t Risk
Matt Jope (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh)
Abstract: Many philosophers of trust endorse the idea that trusting others essentially makes us vulnerable to risk—the risk of betrayal. This claim has an almost platitudinous status in the literature, being both pervasive and, with one recent exception, unargued for. A question the claim raises is how exactly we ought to understand the relevant notion of risk. Should we interpret the claim in terms of objective risk or evidential risk? I first consider the objectivist position, showing that one recent defence of it depends on an unargued for hidden premise which we have no reason to accept. I then cast further doubt on the objectivist position by providing a range of cases of genuine trust without objective risk. Next, I move to consider the evidentialist position, arguing that while at first glance this seems like a more intuitive view, it too faces a range of problems concerning the role trust plays in acquiring testimony and the ways in which trust is gradable. Finally, in light of the failure to capture a sense in which trust essentially involves risk, I argue that we ought to explore the possibility that there can be vulnerability without risk. I first show that there are plausible cases of ‘mere vulnerability’ which involve neither objective nor evidential risk. I then argue that this notion of mere vulnerability without risk is a better way to understand what is essentially involved in cases of trust, and offer an error theory for why so many philosophers have missed this important point.
17:00 to 17:55pm (including Q & A)
What is Disjunctivism in General?
Yudai Suzuki (Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Chukyo University)
Abstract: Disjunctivism has been proposed and developed in the philosophy of perception and epistemology, and later, a stance with the same name emerged in the philosophy of action. Just as there are different versions of disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception and epistemology depending on what issues are at stake, there are also different versions of disjunctivism in the philosophy of action depending on the themes being addressed. The main concern of my talk is to find a common structure in disjunctivism that spans these various themes. In the philosophy of perception and epistemology, the indistinguishability of good cases and bad cases is a major issue, and in the philosophy of action, indistinguishability is often a problem as well, though not in all cases. For example, intentional actions (good cases) and accidental bodily movements (bad cases) can be distinguished by the agent (the agent can tell whether they did something intentionally). Thus, it may be difficult to find a structure of disjunctivism that applies universally across all themes, yet I still wish to attempt this.