CEU Philosophy Events/ September

Dear Colleague, below please find the details of September 2004 philosophy events at CEU. Budapest Mind Society (BMS) events: (The BMS has been founded and is currently managed by Hong Yu Wong and Istvan Aranyosi) -------------------------------------------- Inaugural lecture by Professor Howard Robinson CEU Department of Philosophy September 17, 2004 (THIS FRIDAY) CEU philosophy department's seminar room (Zrinyi ut. 14, room 412) at 2 pm Abstract: This talk might have either of two titles. It might be called 'The knowledge argument and the conceivability of zombies' or, alternatively, 'Reduction, supervenience and the a priori sufficiency of the base'. The common factor is the question of what kind of relation a physicalist must think there to be between physical and mental states, and whether, and in what way, he could accept the knowledge argument and still hold on to his physicalism. I shall look at the issue of whether the base should entail states that supervene on it (as Chalmers and Jackson 2001 claim) or whether the relation can be contingent. Those who defend the latter view include Block and Stalnaker 1999, and Balog 1999, in their respective Philosophical Review articles. I shall try also to bring out what I take to be features common to the debates on different kinds of physicalism. Balog, K. 1999. Conceivability, possibility, and the mind-body problem. Philosophical Review 108:497-528. Block, N. & Stalnaker, R. 1999. Conceptual analysis, dualism, and the explanatory gap. Philosophical Review 108:1-46. Chalmers, D. J. & Frank Jackson. 2001. Conceptual Analysis and Reductive Explanation. Philosophical Review 110:315-61. ------------------------------------------------------- Second BMS meeting: István Aranyosi Philosophy, CEU "Why Property Dualism drives me Out of My Mind" September 22, 2004 CEU philosophy department's seminar room (Zrinyi ut. 14, room 412) at 5 pm Abstract: Property Dualism has become a more popular doctrine than substanve dualism. I will analyze the coherence of the property dualist view about disembodiment, according to which the conceivability of disembodiment can coexist with its impossibility. Since the argument for such a view draws largely on Saul Kripke's idea of a posteriori necessity, I will also appeal to it, but in order to show that such a view is incoherent. The puzzle that I find can be solved only by rejecting property dualism and adopting either substance dualism or a certain kind of materialism. Chalmers, D. J. 2002. Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? In T. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds.) Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press, pp.145-200. Kripke, S. 1972. Naming and Necessity. In D. Davidson and G. Harman, (eds.) Semantics of Natural Language, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 253--355. -------------------------------------------------- CEU, "Work in Progress Seminar" lecture series: István Aranyosi Philosophy, CEU "Concluding Dualism" September 29, 2004 CEU philosophy department's seminar room (Zrinyi ut. 14, room 412) at 5 pm Abstract: The past twenty years or so of debate around the qualia based objection to materialism have been focused exclusively on either defenses of materialism or of anti-materialism. In this paper I want to inquire into what exactly the most important such anti-materialist arguments have as their conclusion. I will not question the soundness of these arguments, but will assume it. What I am interested in is what more can be said about their conclusions, besides their being negations of materialism. I will analyze the conclusions that follow from the premises of three qualia arguments, David Chalmers' zombie argument (1996), Frank Jackson's knowledge argument (1982), and Stephen White's property dualism argument (1986). I will formulate property dualism in what I think is its most intuitive form, and will try to show that while certainly anti-materialistic, the conclusions of the above mentioned arguments imply weaker kinds of property dualism than the intuitive one. After that, I will offer an argument for property dualism whose conclusion conforms to the intuitive understanding of property dualism. Finally, I will offer a classification of property dualisms according to their closeness to the intuitive and strongest version, a classification that has not been offered so far in the literature, as a result of the exclusive focus on the materialism/antimaterialism issue, which obscured and made philosophers fail to recognize more fine tuned distinctions within the property dualist doctrine. Chalmers, D. J. 1996. The Conscious Mind. In search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press. Horgan, T. and J. Tienson, 2001. Deconstructing new wave materialism. In B. Loewer and C. Gillett (eds.), Physicalism and Its Discontents, Cambridge University Press, pp. 307-318. Jackson, F. 1982. Epiphenomenal qualia, Philosophical Quarterly, 32: 127-136. White, S. 1986 Curse of the Qualia, Synthese, 68, 333-368. NOTE: paper available online at: http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/03/Istvan_Aranyosi/Concluding%20dualism… ------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone welcome! With best wishes, Istvan ********************* István A. Aranyosi Department of Philosophy Central European University Zrinyi u. 14, 1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +3(0)670-576-1081 Fax: (36-1) 327-3072 Homepage: http://www.personal.ceu.hu/students/03/Istvan_Aranyosi/