Disambiguating the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Émilie du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics

Justin Steinberg (Cornell University)

Abstract: Several ambiguities haunt Émilie du Châtelet’s deployment of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) in her Foundations of Physics [Institutions de physique] (1740). The first concerns its modal scope. The second concerns its explanatory role. And the third concerns what kinds of reasons it demands/certifies. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of du Châtelet’s PSR that reveals the consistency and univocity of her account, while making sense of the passages that generate these ambiguities. Against the epistemic reading of du Châtelet’s PSR that has gained currency in recent scholarship, I argue that du Châtelet’s PSR is in fact distinguished by its metaphysical robustness.  

Moral Belief and Communicability

Katie Coyne (University of California, Berkeley)

Abstract: In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant develops the notion of “moral belief” in the context of a broader distinction between opinion (Meinen), belief (Glauben), and knowledge (Wissen). “Moral belief” refers to those beliefs whose warrant is supplied, in some sense, by morality. The two instances of “moral belief” which Kant discusses in the first Critique are belief in the existence of God and the existence of a future world. Kant claims that moral belief is not “communicable,” and suggests that this is at least part of why moral belief does not amount to knowledge (Wissen).

In this talk, I will address the following question: why is "moral belief" not communicable? In the first part of the talk, I will consider the interpretative suggestion that moral belief is not communicable because its objects are not possible objects of theoretical cognition (Erkenntnis). I offer two considerations against this interpretative suggestion. First, it fits poorly with some text which is included in Kant’s discussion of moral belief. Secondly, Kant’s mature view seems to be that a judgment need not amount to cognition in order to make a claim to universal communicability; judgments of beauty make such a claim, despite the fact that they do not involve the use of concepts (which is to say—despite the fact that they do not involve cognition). In the second part of the talk, I will gesture towards a positive account of why moral belief is ‘incommunicable,’ with an eye towards explaining why the universal communicability associated with judgments of beauty is not appropriately applied to moral belief. I suggest that the reason why moral belief is incommunicable is that the actual availability of the ‘evidence’ for moral belief—a sense of morality’s unconditional authority—is dependent on an act of will. 

Title TBA

Hannah DeBrine (University of California, Berkeley)

The Soul's Mirror: Eros in Phaedrus and Alcibiades

Megan Wu (University of California, Berkeley)

TBA

Janum Sethi (University of Michigan)

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Anselm Ramelow (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology)

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Julia Borcherding (Cambridge)

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Vanessa de Harven (UMass Amherst)

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Karolina Hübner (UCLA)