MCMP – Ethics and Value Theory
11 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 5 years ago - ★ - 1 ratingMathematical Philosophy - the application of logical and mathematical methods in philosophy - is about to experience a tremendous boom in various areas of philosophy. At the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, which is funded mostly by the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, philosophical research will be carried out mathematically, that is, by means of methods that are very close to those used by the scientists.
The purpose of doing philosophy in this way is not to reduce philosophy to mathematics or to natural science in any sense; rather mathematics is applied in order to derive philosophical conclusions from philosophical assumptions, just as in physics mathematical methods are used to derive physical predictions from physical laws.
Nor is the idea of mathematical philosophy to dismiss any of the ancient questions of philosophy as irrelevant or senseless: although modern mathematical philosophy owes a lot to the heritage of the Vienna and Berlin Circles of Logical Empiricism, unlike the Logical Empiricists most mathematical philosophers today are driven by the same traditional questions about truth, knowledge, rationality, the nature of objects, morality, and the like, which were driving the classical philosophers, and no area of traditional philosophy is taken to be intrinsically misguided or confused anymore. It is just that some of the traditional questions of philosophy can be made much clearer and much more precise in logical-mathematical terms, for some of these questions answers can be given by means of mathematical proofs or models, and on this basis new and more concrete philosophical questions emerge. This may then lead to philosophical progress, and ultimately that is the goal of the Center.
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Episodes
Being a woman in (mathematical) philosophy
April 18, 2019 18:38 - 1 hour - 1.34 GB VideoCatarina Dutilh Novaes (Groningen) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (15 May, 2013) titled "Being a woman in (mathematical) philosophy". Abstract: Why are there so few women in philosophy, and in technical areas such as mathematical philosophy in particular? Philosophy has the worst gender balance of all fields in the humanities, at around 16%-25% worldwide. The presence of women in philosophy is comparable to engineering and physics; it is worse than in mathematics. Is this a problem? And ...
Duality, Logic and Judgment Aggregation
April 18, 2019 18:34 - 1 hour - 979 MB VideoAlessandra Palmigiano (ILLC) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (10 January, 2013) titled "Duality, Logic and Judgment Aggregation". Abstract: In the last decades, logic has facilitated the build-up of a critical mass of results and insights generalizing the original Arrovian problem in Social Choice, and culminating in the formation of judgment aggregation theory. Within this framework, the Arrovian-type impossibility results are obtained as consequences of characterization theorems, which ...
Normativity in reasoning
April 18, 2019 18:28 - 50 minutes - 782 MB VideoJohn Broome (Oxford) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (2 May, 2013) titled "Normativity in reasoning". Abstract: Reasoning is a mental process in the course of which some premise-attitudes of yours give rise to a conclusion-attitude. Some reasoning is active: it is something you do rather than something that happens in you. It is often assumed that active reasoning has to involve beliefs with a normative content. I shall argue that this is not so.
Refutation of Putnam's Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy
April 18, 2019 18:22 - 44 minutes - 693 MB VideoEckehart Köhler (Vienna) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (22 May, 2013) titled "Refutation of Putnam's Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy". Abstract: In 2002, Hilary Putnam shocked philosophers with the story that value terms have “thick” meanings, where facts and values are “entangled”. (“Crime” and “cruel” are especially “thick”.) This phenomenon is easy to explain, since many professionals treat norms factually, e.g. currently “valid” price quotations, whereas a document leaves the d...
What's the Problem with the Boundary Problem?
April 18, 2019 18:16 - 33 minutes - 517 MB VideoDavid Kinkead (Queensland) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (23 April, 2014) titled "What's the Problem with the Boundary Problem?". Abstract: Democracy begins with the people; democratic theory simply presupposes them. But democratic theory is silent on who ought be included amongst the people. It can’t, because any democratic process first requires the identification of some determinate group of agents - the demos - in order to act democratically. So how should the demos be defined? It ca...
The Logic of Love
February 14, 2015 07:10 - 51 minutes - 783 MB VideoAviv Keren (Jerusalem) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (15 January, 2015) titled "The Logic of Love". Abstract: This philosophical work sets the ground for a game-theoretic account of (romantic) love, substantiating the folk-psychological conception of love as 'a unification of souls'. It does so by setting up a universal conceptual framework of cognitive agency, which makes this possible. Building on existing theories, this framework extends the gene's eye view of evolution towards the e...
Minding Norms. Mechanisms and Dynamics of Social Order in Agent Societies
February 12, 2015 02:58 - 47 minutes - 727 MB VideoRosaria Conte (Institute for Cognitive Science and Technology/Rome) gives a talk at the Conference on Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy (11-13 December, 2014) titled "Minding Norms. Mechanisms and Dynamics of Social Order in Agent Societies". Abstract: Despite ubiquity and universality, norms are still awaiting for a general comprehensive theory. In the presentation, a conceptual, theoretical, and computational framework will be proposed to provide a general account of norms, enabling us to ...
The Structural Evolution of Morality
February 12, 2015 01:54 - 51 minutes - 781 MB VideoJason Alexander (LSE) gives a talk at the Conference on Agent-Based Modeling in Philosophy (11-13 December, 2014) titled "The Structural Evolution of Morality". Abstract: One general problem faced by attempts to explain the origins of morality using traditional rational choice theory is that the demands of rationality and the demands of morality often fail to coincide. This can happen in at least three different ways. Sometimes our moral intuitions recommend actions which are identified as ir...
Women in Philosophy: Why Should We Get More of Them, and How Do We Do It?
August 18, 2014 01:30 - 54 minutes - 833 MB VideoHelen Beebee (University of Manchester) gives a talk at the Summer School (27 July - 2 August, 2014) titled "Women in Philosophy: Why Should We Get More of Them, and How Do We Do It?". Abstract: In this talk, I present some data on the underrepresentation of women in philosophy in the UK and elsewhere, consider some of the possible reasons for it, and make some suggestions for small, local changes in policies and behaviour that might just begin to make a difference. I focus in particular on t...
Values and Uncertainties
August 16, 2013 13:25 - 50 minutes - 786 MB VideoEric Winsberg (USF) gives a talk at the MCMP Colloquium (29 May, 2013) titled "Values and Uncertainties". Abstract: There has been a great deal of emphasis, in recent years, on developing methods for quantifying uncertainty in the predictions of global and regional climate models. Such an approach would allow a division of labor between those who discover the facts and those who decide what we should value. And it is in line with a famous defense of scientific objectivity due to Richard Jeffr...
The public and private morality of climate change
May 28, 2013 05:00 - 57 minutes - 892 MB VideoJohn Broome (Oxford) gives a talk (3 May, 2013) titled "The public and private morality of climate change". Abstract: This talk takes up two important topics within the public morality of climate change. First I shall discuss the notion of 'dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system', which regulate much of the public debate. Then I shal discuss the possibility of a solution to the problem of climate change that requires no sacrifices from anybody.