December 21st: Barry C. Smith (University of London; Birkbeck College) “Philosophical Approaches to Verbal Communication” Several distinct philosophical approaches to verbal communication will be outlined and their respective conditions of explanatory success will be assessed.

November 15th: João Sàágua “Does Indirect Speech Reports Report Direct Information?”
The indirect speech idiom (“x said that p”) is supposed to create opacity (Quine) and also to be improper to contribute to the theory of meaning (Lepore and Cappelen). In this talk I will endorse the paratactic solution (Davidson) to the opacity problem and argue in favour of a particular kind of indirect speech in order to filter out what was said by the reported utterance (self). If a case can be made for the latter claim, then a specific kind of indirect speech can be mobilized as a methodological helper for the theory of meaning (pace Lepore and Cappelen).

October 25th: Dina Mendonça “What is Mixed about Mixed Feelings”
This paper explores the notion of “mixed feelings” in an attempt to clarify some of the traits of needs of coherence the emotional world requires. The first part of the paper sets up the background for the following discussion, indicating why and how “mixed feelings” are interesting and revealing for emotion theory. After showing its virtues for child development, for ethical dilemmas, and aesthetic experience, the paper discusses in more detail various examples in order to point out how it is not clear what is mixed in the experience of “mixed feelings” and to avoid the simplistic vision that “mixed feelings” are a matter of emotional valence.
The second part provides a series of ways in which feelings are mixed. It begins by explaining shortly the pattern of emotion, which aims to capture the dynamic nature of emotional life, and functions as the interpreting tool to disentangle the some of the ways feelings can be mixed. Then, given the scheme of the different “mixtures”, the paper focuses on discussing if, and why, feelings should be “unmixed”, and why they matter. The analysis will consider the relevance of the presence of mixed feelings, check the type of consequences, which are normally associated with such experience, and discuss if mixed feelings need to be “solved”.
Finally, the paper concludes by enumerating some of the issues for future research, given the topology of “mixed feelings” presented, and pointing out some of the virtues for a theory of emotion of taking mixed feelings into account.

June 21st: Jorge Gonçalves “Conditions on a Theory of Consciousness”.
The problem of the present communication is: how can we understand consciousness in a scientific natural vision of the world? I hold that we need first to clarify what we mean by the term “consciousness” and what would count as a scientific explanation. I analyze several functionalist and materialist explanations to prove that they don’t explain the phenomenal aspect of consciousness. I defend that from a metaphysical point of view only some version of property dualism can give an account for phenomenal consciousness. From a scientific point a view phenomenal consciousness must be studied crossing the data from neurology, behaviour, and phenomenology. With this data we can construct a science of consciousness and may be have a metaphysical understanding.

May 24th: Luiz Baptista “What is Said”
The Gricean distinction between “what is said” and “what is implicated” has become hugely influential in Philosophy of Language, especially regarding the debates about the Semantics/Pragmatics distinction. However, Grice’s notion of “what is said”, besides being underspecified, faces serious problems, the most serious being the lack of a coherent account of the cases in which someone says something without meaning it. A case can be made, then, for the inapplicability of that notion to semantic and pragmatic studies.

April 19th. João Fonseca The Process of Discovery in Contemporary Neuroscience
According to Carl Craver, neuroscientific practice, and specially neuroscientific explanation, should be considered as the description of multi-level mechanisms, where different fields/scientific areas contribute at different levels of a multilevel explanation in what he calls the “mosaic unity of science”.
In this talk I explore Craver’s insights in order to shed light into the topic of discovery in current neuroscience. The main idea is that, in a mechanist scenario, there are several constraints in the process of discovery. In a sense, a mechanism acts as a framework where the scientist tries to ‘place’ a certain entity or process in order to discover if that entity or process is relevant within a large-scale mechanism accepted by the scientific community in order to bring credibility to that entity or process. This almost sociological process of discovery relates to what Khun described as discovery in ‘normal science’.
I will illustrate this idea with two case studies: the discovery of the role of Nitric Oxide and astrocytes (glia cells) in the more inclusive mechanism of Long-Term-Potentiation, which, in itself, is part of a more wide and general mechanism of memory and learning.

Title: "George is the bearer of ‘George’. An Argument Against Nominal Descriptivism"
By: Stefano Predelli, University of Notthigham
Date: 2nd March 2007

Abstract: As has often been noted, it is ‘trifling’ to tell someone that George is the bearer of ‘George’. This has occasionally been cited as evidence in favour of nominal descriptivism, the theory that ‘being called ‘George’’ is part of the meaning of ‘George’.
In this presentation, I present two versions of nominal descriptivism: according to the first, being called ‘George’ is part of the character for ‘George’; according to the second, being called ‘George’ is part of the content of that name. I then argue that both versions of nominal descriptivism are inadequate, independently of the traditional Kripke-inspired modal arguments against the latter.

Title: "Who Says We Can’t Do a Molecular Biology of Consciousness?"
By: John Bickle, University of Cincinnati
Date: 29th January 2007

Abstract: Virtually every philosopher and cognitive scientist studying consciousness denies that molecular neurobiology will fully explain any of its features. Even physicalists seem to think that we’ll need the more “global” experimental tools and theoretical resources of cognitive and systems-level neuroscience to find the “neural correlates of consciousness.” However, some recent discoveries suggest otherwise. Here I survey in detail experimental results suggesting that agonistic activities at distinct subunits of GABAA receptor proteins are dissociable molecular mechanisms for conscious awareness, arousal state, and anxiety level. These experiments use genetically engineered mice with mutations at single amino acid residues of GABAA receptor subunits, subunit-selective and nonselective anesthetic and anxiolytic drugs, and a variety of behavioral tests commonly used to measure these features of conscious states in rodents. These results fit the “intervene cellularly/molecularly and track behaviorally” account of reduction-in-practice (reviewed briefly here) that I’ve developed in recent publications. The upshot is that “ruthless” psychoneural reductionism’s assault on consciousness has already begun. And a metascientific analysis of these experimental practices and results even calls into question arguments by Levine, Chalmers and other anti-reductionists about consciousness.

Title: “Incontinence, Fast and Frugal Heuristics, and Probability Matching”
By: António Zilhão, University of Lisbon
Date: 28th April 2006

Abstract: I will begin my talk by arguing that Davidson's famous description of the possibility conditions of incontinent action is cognitively implausible. However, I will claim that the intuition according to which there are both continent and incontinent actions is sound and explanatorily useful and that therefore it deserves to be preserved in empirical theorizing. In order to substantiate the soundness claim, I will dedicate the first part of my talk to the exposition of what I take to be a
cognitively plausible description of the conditions of possibility of such a phenomenon. In particular, my proposal will draw on the establishment of an essential contrast between explicit processes of deliberative reasoning and fast and frugal heuristics, and it will assume that our mind is modular in nature. As a means to substantiate the explanatory usefulness claim, I will try to show how a concept of incontinence defined along the lines developed in the first part of the talk can be used in order to account for an intriguing cognitive phenomenon described in the relevant literature - the seemingly incomprehensible exhibition of probability matching behaviour by cognitively competent human agents.

Title: "Saying the Same Thing"
By: Isidora Stojanovic (CNRS)
Date: 31st March 2006

Abstract: It is widely believed that in indexical languages, there is a sharp distinction between linguistic meaning and what is said. I will discuss a series of cases that put this distinction in jeopardy, and will suggest that it is best to identify what is said with linguistic meaning.

Title: "Pressuposition Failure and Assertoric Inertia"
By: Anne Bezuidenhout, University of South California
Date: 3rd March 2006

Abstract:   According to the semantic conception of presupposition, a proposition P is a presupposition of a sentence S just in case S is neither true nor false unless P is true. It follows from this conception that presupposition failure – the falsity of the presupposition – leads to truth-value gaps. Strawson (1950, 1952) seemed to endorse this semantic conception of presupposition. However, in Strawson (1971) he acknowledges that utterances of sentences will sometimes be judged true or false even in the face of presupposition failure (PF). For example, ‘I had breakfast with the king of France this morning’ is judged false, rather than truth-valueless, even though the existential presupposition associated with the definite description is false. Borrowing a term from Yablo (2004), I will say that this is a case of non-catastrophic PF.

Strawson’s own inclination was to explain such cases by appeal to a notion of topichood or aboutness, and he has been understood to have proposed the following principle: All and only topical noun phrases carry presuppositions. There has been a renewed interest in this problem of non-catastrophic PF and in Strawson’s Principle. Atlas (2004) and von Fintel (2004) have both questioned this principle. However, Atlas thinks that some aspects of Strawson’s views can be salvaged while von Fintel offers a radically new account, which appeals to the notion of an “independent foothold for rejection”. Others, such as Horn (1989), Lasersohn (1993) and Yablo (2004) have also suggested alternative explanations.

I argue that none of these accounts is quite right. I think we can begin to get the correct perspective on matters if we accept the theory of presupposition, recently proposed by Abbott (2000), according to which presuppositions are non-assertions, or, to use a phrase coined by Horn (2002), according to which they are assertorically inert. They are inert in the sense that they are background propositions, not part of the main point that the speaker wishes to vouch for. Since they are backgrounded, it is not surprising that sometimes we can tolerate the falsity of such presuppositions. The main point of the utterance may still survive and be truth-evaluable. The chief problem facing this line of argument is to explain how, if presuppositions are assertorically inert, their falsity can ever wreck the assertive enterprise. I will try to delineate the circumstances under which false presuppositions are non-catastrophic.

Title: "Speech Rhythm, Literacy and Phonemes"
By: São Luis Castro, University of Oporto
Date: 15th July 2005

Abstract:   What do we hear when we listen to speech? The acoustic stream can be perceived in many ways, of course, but, if the listener knows the language, words will certainly come to mind.  If he does not know the language, though, or if the speech is meaningless, what will come to mind? Sequences of phones, or the music of speech, or both combined, depending on attention and intention? And if the listener is literate, will he segment the acoustic stream in a way that reflects written language as well as speech? These questions address the issues of phonological development and phonological representation, which lie at the core of the language faculty. Typically, these issues have been dealt with by taking into consideration literacy acquisition, but largely ignoring the suprasegmental, or prosodic, aspects of speech. Here, I will consider both, focussing first on the effect of orthography on rhyme judgement, and then on speech rhythm (duration and intensity of successive syllables). The tentative conclusion that knowledge-based (orthography) and stimulus-based factors (rhythm) shape different types of phonological representations (respectively, explicit vs. implicit) will be discussed.

Title: "Mental Tools"
By: Luiz Carlos Baptista, IFL
Date: 13rd May 2005

Abstract: Abstract: The anthropologist Gregory Bateson proposed the following puzzle for his students: imagine a blind man using his cane to orient himself while walking on the street. Where is the “boundary” between his mind and the external world? The artefact he uses – his cane – clearly plays an important role in his cognitive processes, namely perception. Should it be considered part of his mind? Bateson used this example to argue that the concept of “mind” may be context-dependent. According to him, we should say that the blind man and his cane constitute a cognitive system in its own right, with different characteristics from those presented by the individual without the help of that artefact. We find in this argument an especially clear example of one of the more fertile areas of research in Cognitive Sciences in the last twenty years, involving notions such as “cognitive technologies” and “cognitive artefacts”. Cognitive technologies may be defined as systematic means of production, storage, retrieval, organization, and/or transmission of representations. In my presentation, I will discuss some of the current issues in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Sciences regarding cognitive technologies and ideas such as “extended minds” and “distributed cognition”, as well as evaluate some of the main criticisms of these views.

Title: "Can we know that modus ponens is valid?"
By: Concha Martínez, University of Santiago de Compostela
Date: 29th April 2005

Abstract: My purpose in this talk is to analyse the difficulties involved in obtaining a justification for logic. The purpose of this research is to determine to what extent the view of logic as model is compatible or not with the objectivity of logic, and whether that would imply logical realism or, on the contrary, it could go with a certain type of anti-realism about logic. The basic idea of the view of logic as model (Corcoran 1973) is that before the first logical system was developed by Aristotle, there existed a large amount of proofs. The logician's task consisted (and consists) in developing models to account for the underlying logic for mathematical practice. Mathematical practice is supposed to play the role scientific facts play in the case of natural science. In the case of natural sciences, once a model is built, it is tested by checking how well it works in explaining and predicting scientific facts. The analogy goes that logical systems (language, deductive mechanism and semantics) are mathematical models used to explain and predict mathematical practice. Notice that in other fields where mathematical models are used it is absurd to think that one could use the model to maintain, for instance, that the stars fail to follow the model. The problem with the view of logic as model is that if the source of objectivity is mathematical practice, there is no reason whatsoever to force the mathematician, who never comes to a false statement by applying what the logician takes to be an incorrect rule, to abandon her practice. The situation seems to imply that if logical statements have truth values at all, they are dependant on the mathematician. If that were so, the view of logic as model would imply that logical discourse is not objective.

Title: "On Explaining Idiolectal Error"
By: Nellie Wieland, University of California – San Diego
Date: 5th April 2005

Abstract: It is a problem for any theory of language to explain just what counts as a linguistic error, deviation, or instance of incorrect use.  This is particularly the case for a theory of language that takes the idiolect as its primary object of study. Here I describe several possible answers (from Barber 2001; Smith 2001) to the question of what an error is within the prevailing idiolectal approach to the study of language. I conclude that these responses are not robust enough to distinguish error from similar linguistic phenomena such as deliberately using an expression in a new way or changing one's mind about the meaning of an expression, and these remain serious explanatory inadequacies. I suggest that linguistic theory needs a nuanced explanation of error, but that this may be impossible to provide in the current climate of divorcing the study of language from epistemology.

Title: "The Adequacy Thesis and minimalist explanations of truth"
By: Cory D. Wright, University of California – San Diego
Date: 4th April 2005

Abstract: Abstract: Over the last fifteen years, Paul Horwich has claimed that his minimal theory is adequate for explaining all the facts about truth (the 'Adequacy Thesis').  Incidently, Horwich's view has proven to be one of the most important philosophical theories of truth to date, and continues to be of focal interest.  The sort of explanations about truth that his theory generates notoriously don't explain very much---which is fine, insofar as the phenomena to be explained is sufficiently insubstantive to call for just such a minimalist analysis.  Of course, since that's the very issue under scrutiny, the minimalist can't appeal to Horwich's Adequacy Thesis as a reason for thinking that the explanandum is insubstantive.  So minimalists need a second-order argument as to why minimal explanations are adequate in the first place.  However, if correct, the Adequacy Thesis shouldn't be difficult to justify---and that would ruinously indicate that, indeed, substantivists really have overinflated the study of truth when something much more minimal would suffice.  In this talk, I motivate a few reasons for thinking that it's not correct, and canvass a couple of candidate facts that Horwich's version of minimalism should be able to explain but can't. Finally, I go on to offer a more general diagnosis in about what's wrong with the sort of explanations that such a view offers.