2024-2025
- 8 novembre/ november 8 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Robin McKenna (University of Liverpool)
Où/Where : Salle/Room: DS-1950, Pavillon J.-A. De Sève, 320 Rue Sainte-Catherine Est
Résumé/Abstract : The slogan “Do Your Own Research” (DYOR) is often invoked by people who are distrustful, even downright sceptical, of recognized expert authorities. While this slogan may serve various rhetorical purposes, it also expresses an ethic of inquiry that valorises independent thinking and rejects uncritical deference to recognized experts. This paper is a qualified defence of this ethic of inquiry in one of the central contexts in which it might seem attractive. I use several case studies of patient activist groups to argue that these groups often engage in valuable independent research that advances biomedical knowledge. In doing so they demonstrate the value of “lay expertise” and the epistemic as well as political necessity of not simply deferring to recognized experts. I also give some reasons why patient activist groups often produce valuable biomedical knowledge:
they are examples of what I call “research collectives”. Research collectives are research communities that differ from the traditional research communities we find in universities and research institutes in that their members typically lack formal relevant scientific credentials and training. But they are similar in that they have internal structures—training procedures, norms of discussion, venues for holding discussions—that facilitate the production of knowledge. I finish by suggesting that future research into the differences and similarities between research collectives and traditional research communities is required.
- 1er novembre/ november 1st 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Mariam Thalos (University of Tennessee)
Reasoning in Context
Où/Where : Salle/Room: 738, Pavillon Leacock, 855 rue Sherbrooke Ouest / Leacock 738, 855 Sherbrooke Street West
Résumé / Abstract : The concept of intelligence has been difficult to get one’s arms around. Surprisingly, the same can be said also of the notion of reasoning. This talk aims at shedding some light on certain aspects of human reasoning – reasoning for practical life. This will put us in a better position to make some comparisons between (some aspects of) human reasoning, and what Large Language Models (LLMs) are doing – they look to be doing quite different things. Reasoning, at least as humans do it, involves architecture that Computer Science has apparently abandoned for the current generation of AI models. By articulating an account of the machinery required for reasoning, we will be able to pose questions about how human reasoning operates collective settings as well as in individual settings.
- 13-14 septembre / September 13-14, 8:50 @ 5:10
2024 Canadian Society for Epistemology Annual Meeting and Book Launch Party
Celebrating Three New Books
PhilEvents:
https://philevents.org/event/show/126066
Où / Where: Concordia University, Room LB-362
2023-2024
- 6 – 7 mai /May 6 – 7 2024 10:00 @ 16:20
Colloque de fin d’année des boursiers et boursières du GRIN / GRIN Fellow’s Conference
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5215, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
- 5 avril/ April 5 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Annemarie Jutel (Te Herenga Waka / Victoria University of Wellington)
La fonction sociale du diagnostic / The social function of diagnosis
Quand/When : 5 avril/ April 5 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5215, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Le diagnostic ne renvoie pas seulement à un événement clinique ou au fait de mettre des mots sur un trouble d’ordre physique. Il exprime aussi ce qui, à un moment donné, fait consensus au sujet de ce qui est important dans une société, et ceci a des conséquences majeures. Dans cette présentation, Annemarie Jutel envisagera dans une perspective critique les concepts de diagnostic, de processus diagnostique et d’effets du diagnostic, afin de proposer une analyse à plusieurs niveaux de la manière dont ils influencent notre représentation de ce que sont la santé, l’expérience de la maladie, et la pathologie. La distance critique que son analyse sociologique instaure fournira de nouvelles pistes explicatives pour ceux qui appréhendent diagnostic sous l’angle théorique, mais aussi pour ceux qui le pratiquent, le posent ou le reçoivent. Mieux comprendre la fonction sociale du diagnostic permet d’expliquer à la fois son importance, mais aussi les raisons pour lesquelles il ne peut pas réellement tenir ses promesses.
- 25-26 avril / April 25-26
Le premier colloque annuel L’agentivité dans tous ses états / The first Annual Laval Everything Agency Conference
Où / Where : Université Laval, Ville de Québec, Canada
Organisation: Artūrs Logins (Université Laval) and Catherine Rioux (Université Laval)
The conference aims to bring together researchers working on theoretical aspects pertaining to agency: philosophy of action, philosophy of emotions, epistemology, normativity broadly construed, meta-ethics and ethical theory in connection to agency, political philosophy, political science, foundational issues in artificial intelligence, and philosophy of biology. In addition to the keynote talks, there will be eight slots for papers selected through the call for papers.
- 22 mars/ March 22 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Maxime Doyon (Université de Montréal)
Apprentissage perceptuel et agentivité / Perceptual Learning and Agency
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5215, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé: Cette présentation porte sur la notion d’apprentissage perceptuel, que philosophes et scientifiques définissent usuellement comme impliquant un changement durable au niveau de nos capacités et/ou dispositions perceptuelles à la suite de la pratique ou d’expériences répétées (E. Gibson 1963). Bien que la phénoménologie ait traditionnellement montré peu d’intérêt pour la question de l’apprentissage perceptuel, mon objectif dans cet exposé est de montrer comment elle peut tout de même contribuer à la discussion en cours sur la nature et la portée de l’apprentissage. En puisant des idées et des outils conceptuels dans le répertoire classique et plus contemporain, j’esquisserai les contours d’une nouvelle approche de la question de l’apprentissage perceptuel et je défendrai deux thèses. Premièrement, je soutiendrai que l’acquisition d’habiletés motrices et la formation d’habitudes ne sont pas de simples phénomènes physiologiques, mais d’authentiques instances d’apprentissage perceptuel. La prise en compte de l’incarnation de nos habiletés perceptives m’amènera à altérer légèrement la définition traditionnelle de l’apprentissage perceptuel et à considérer toute une série de nouveaux cas. Deuxièmement, je maintiendrai que ces transformations corporelles montrent que l’apprentissage perceptuel peut avoir une fonction encore sous-estimée ou méconnue dans la littérature scientifique et philosophique contemporaine. En plus de libérer des ressources cognitives (Connolly 2019) et d’accroître notre pouvoir de discrimination (Jenkins 2023), je soutiendrai que l’apprentissage perceptuel peut avoir un impact tangible sur l’agentivité en montrant comment les habiletés et habitudes motrices peuvent faciliter la façon dont nous naviguons le monde.
Abstract: The presentation focuses on perceptual learning, which philosophers and scientists alike standardly take to involve long-lasting change in our perceptual capacities and dispositions that results from practice or experience (E. Gibson 1963). Although phenomenology has traditionally shown little interest in the question of perceptual learning per se, my aim in this talk is to show how it can contribute to the ongoing discussion over both the nature and scope of perceptual learning. By drawing insights and conceptual tools from both the classical and more contemporary repertoire, I will sketch out a new account of perceptual learning and defend two theses. It will be argued, first, that both skill acquisition and the formation of motor habit are not just physiological phenomena but real instances of perceptual learning. Taking into consideration the embodiment of our perceptual skills will bring me to slightly alter the traditional definition of perceptual learning and consider an array of new cases. Secondly, I will argue that these bodily transformations shows that perceptual learning can have a yet under-appreciated function in the contemporary scientific and philosophical literature on the topic. In addition to freeing up cognitive resources (Connolly 2019) and enhancing our discriminatory power (Jenkins 2023), I will contend that learning can impact agency by demonstrating how skilled behaviour facilitates the way we navigate the world.
- 6 février/February 16, 2024 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Mathias Girel (École normale supérieure)
La production d’ignorance: avec ou sans intention?
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5125, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé/Abstract: Les études de l’ignorance (Ignorance Studies/Agnotologie) qui se sont développées au cours des deux dernières décennies ont abordé des thèmes et domaines extrêmement différents, allant du rapport aux produits toxiques à l’ignorance dans les rapports culturels et sociaux. Il semble difficile aujourd’hui de les rassembler sous une rubrique unique, tant les styles et les présupposés méthodologiques sont différents. La présente conférence s’attachera à comparer deux grandes approches qui s’opposent méthodologiquement sur de nombreux points: celles qui font figurer des motifs stratégiques et intentionnels dans leurs explications et estiment qu’ils sont irréductibles, et celles qui s’attachent davantage à des motifs structuraux. Tout en reconnaissant les spécificités de chaque approche, la conférence montrera sur quels points cette opposition frontale reste par bien des aspects stérile.
- 10 novembre/november 10th, 2023 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Gabriele Contessa (Carleton University)
Public Trust in Science and the Justification Dilemma
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5505, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé/Abstract: Over the last couple of decades, a growing number of academics and commentators have become increasingly concerned about expanding pockets of mistrust of science among the publics of liberal democracies. In order to address these concerns, however, we need an adequate account of public trust in science. In this talk, I argue that the dominant individualistic approach to public trust in science, which takes public trust in science to be a trust relationship in which individual citizens are the primary trustors, is inadequate and that it should be replaced with what I call a social approach, which takes groups to be the primary trustors. I present a dilemma for the individualistic approach. If we set the bar low enough for ordinary people who trust science to be justified in their trust, then we must conclude that many cases of mistrust of science are also justified; but, if we set the bar so high that most cases of mistrust are not justified, then no ordinary people can have justified trust in science. The social approach takes the second horn of this dilemma. It maintains that, individually, most of us are not justified in trusting science (except, possibly, in a derivative sense) but that, nevertheless, some of us are part of a community that is collectively justified in trusting science. Our focus should therefore not be on how to persuade those who do not trust science to trust it but in building communities that are collectively justified in trusting it.
- 6 octobre/october 6, 2023 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Artūrs Logins (Université Laval)
Inquiry and Reasons
Où/Where : Salle/Room: W-5505, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé/Abstract: Knowledge, certainty, and understanding are all plausible candidates for constituting aims of genuine inquiry. However, a mere pluralist account of aims (and corresponding norms) of inquiry that lacks a more fundamental theoretical motivation is somewhat arbitrary. The aim of this paper is to provide further motivation for a pluralist approach. The key aspect of our proposal is to focus on the possession of sufficient reasons to believe as an overarching aim of theoretical inquiry.
- 22 septembre/september 22, 2023 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund University)
Goodness and Numbers
Où/Where : Room Leacock 927, McGill University (855 Sherbrooke St W).
Abstract/Résumé: You can save either David or Peter and Mary. Is there a compelling reason to save more people rather than fewer? Taurek (1977) (in)famously denied it. One might attempt to establish that is better if more people survive. This would settle the issue for consequentialists, but even non-consequentialists might find it relevant to the question at hand. The standard worry, however, is that such an axiological claim can only be established by aggregating gains and losses of different persons. As opposed to intrapersonal aggregation, interpersonal aggregation might seem illegitimate. Frances Kamm’s Aggregation Argument is meant to overcome this difficulty. I consider how her argument is dealt with by Iwao Hirose and Weyma Lübbe, and what is wrong with it from Taurek’s own perspective. But then I suggest that this perspective is untenable: while Taurek correctly analyses the concept of ‘better’ in terms of fitting attitudes, he accounts for fittingness in terms of the wrong kind of reasons. Still, even so, the Aggregation Argument fails, but a closely related argument may well be acceptable. That argument takes into consideration that different persons’ lives, unless they dramatically differ, typically are incommensurable in value – on par, rather than equally good.
2022-2023
- 07 octobre 2022 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette (Université de Neuchâtel)
Responsabilité et histoire — Les défenses d’abord
Où: Salle/Room: W-5215, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé : Cette présentation introduit l’approche des questions de responsabilité morale qui passe d’abord par les défenses, une approche déjà en marche chez Peter Strawson (1964). Plutôt que demander si, par exemple, le déterminisme supprime la responsabilité morale, on demande s’il donne une défense – une justification, une excuse ou une exemption. J’appliquerai cette méthode à une question d’histoire personnelle : dois-je être responsable de mon caractère pour être responsable de mon action ?
- 4 novembre 2022 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Benoît Gaultier (University of Zurich)
Sur la nature (et la rationalité) de la foi (non religieuse)
Où: Salle/Room: W-5215, 5e étage Pavillon Thérèse-Casgrain (W), UQAM (455, Boulevard René-Lévesque Est)
Résumé: Les débats épistémologiques contemporains se sont largement concentrés sur les normes de la croyance. Tandis que d’autres attitudes doxastiques se trouvent aujourd’hui faire l’objet d’un regain d’intérêt, telles par exemple la suspension de jugement et la certitude, d’autres demeurent largement négligées. Parmi ces attitudes, la foi, entendue en un sens non nécessairement religieux — c’est-à-dire l’attitude visée par des expressions comme “il faut que tu aies davantage foi en tes chances !”, “j’ai foi en tes capacités” ou “je sais que la victoire de l’Olympique de Marseille est très improbable, mais j’y crois”. La littérature récente consacrée à cette attitude s’est beaucoup concentrée sur les questions de savoir si, et en quel sens, la foi ainsi comprise requiert qu’on croie à la vérité de la proposition concernée (au sens ordinaire auquel on croit que notre voisin joue encore du saxophone dans son salon) ainsi que sur la question de savoir quelles sont les autres conditions qui doivent être satisfaites pour qu’une attitude soit une attitude de foi. Dans cette présentation, je reviendrai sur ces deux questions. J’explorerai en particulier la relation qu’entretiennent la foi et l’espoir puis, sur la base de l’analyse de la nature de la foi que j’aurai menée, dirai quelques mots de sa rationalité.
- 6 janvier 2023 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Daniel Munoz (UNC Chapel Hill)
Values as Vectors
Où: Salle/Room: Leacock 808, McGill University (855 Sherbrooke St W)
Abstract/Résumé: I defend a new kind of value theory that represents values not as single numbers or intervals, but as many-dimensional vectors. With vectors, we can elegantly define Chang’s concept of parity, deepen Rabinowicz’s fitting attitudes account of betterness, and rigorously model failures of transitivity, such as in cases of ‘sweetening’. The result is a fresh and flexible framework for the stranger side of ethics, based not on sui generis value relations, but the familiar idea of multidimensional value. (Note: this talk won’t presuppose any formal background.)
- 6 janvier 2023 @ 14:00 – 17:00
Miriam McCormick (University of Richmond)
Belief as Emotion
Où: Salle/Room: Leacock 808, McGill University (855 Sherbrooke St W)
Abstract/Résumé: In this work, I argue that beliefs are emotions. As such they contain both cognitive and non-cognitive elements. This view helps to solve puzzles in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and philosophy of religion. Further, there are clearly ethical components to how we conduct our doxastic lives, and thinking of beliefs as emotions helps us to understand the ethics of belief. Indeed, in Believing Against the Evidence: Agency and the Ethics of Belief (Routledge2015), I suggest that we should think of beliefs as much more like emotions than philosophers tend to. In my new book, I will more fully develop this idea and its implications.
- 31 mars 2023 @ 10:00 – 12:00
Garrett Cullity (Australian National University)
Reasons-Responsiveness and Morality
Où: Salle/Room: Leacock 808, McGill University (855 Sherbrooke St W)
Abstract/Résumé: An attractive way to conceive of morally good motivation and action is as proper responsiveness to morally relevant reasons. A kind person sees the helpfulness of an action as counting in its favour, and an honest person sees the deceptiveness of an action as counting against it, in the same sense of “counting in favour” or “against” that an action’s being pleasant or painful to you yourself counts for or against it. Supporting this view requires showing that it makes good overall sense of the structure of moral thought and experience. It also needs to be supported by an account of what it is to be responsive to reasons—an account that is broad enough to accommodate the kinds of moral goodness that we find in cases of innocent error, fluency, inarticulacy, and akrasia. In this talk, I set out an account of responsiveness to reasons that encompasses these four kinds of cases, then draw out some other helpful implications of this account.