Immodest Ambitions: Dummett, McDowell, and Brandom on the Promise of Semantics (R. Simonelli)

 

Herder and Naturalism. Philosophy, History, Language, Religion

 

Bernard Bolzano: His Life and Work (P. Rusnock/W. Künne)

Levels of Understanding (W. Künne)

Legenda: Aristotle, Rhetoric and Technology (M. Allard)

Asserting versus Merely Communicating (R. Stainton)

Conférence | Talk

Robert Stainton

(University of Western Ontario)

Asserting versus Merely Communicating

My question pertains to the contrast mentioned in the title, namely what distinguishes full-on assertion of a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes asserting that you have not smoked crack cocaine from merely conveying that thought? Put slightly differently, consider two broad classes of speakings:

A. Asserting, affirming, claiming, stating, declaring, avowing, professing;

B. Giving to understand, implying, suggesting, conveying, intimating, insinuating, hinting.

I am asking about what the difference is between those in the A-Class and those in the BClass. The game plan is straightforward. I begin with several familiar accounts of assertion, in extremely simplified form. Borrowing ideas from Dummett among others, I then sketch an alternative position, in part by comparing assertion to promising. I round out the paper with replies to objections.

Friday, January 30th, 2014

3:00pm

Carleton University

Dunton Tower

Room 2203

Voir l'affiche | See poster

Ful-filling the Copula, Determining Nature : The Grammatical Ontology of Hegel's Metaphysics (J. Reid)

Conférence | Lecture

Jeffrey Reid

(University of Ottawa)

Ful-filling the Copula, Determining Nature : The Grammatical Ontology of Hegel's Metaphysics

Both continental and analytic traditions have tended to associate Hegel's idealism with metaphysics and therefore as divorced from and even pernicious to reality. Hence, contemporary Hegel studies have tended to concentrate on discrete elements of his philosophy while attempting to avoid its metaphysical dimensions and their systematic pretensions.  I seek to show that rather than dwelling in abstraction, Hegel's metaphysics, as presented in his Logics, recount the thought determinations through which being comes to be, for us. Such determining is essentially linguistic, taking place through the grammatical forms of judgement (Urteil) and their outcome in the syllogism. The centrality of these grammatical forms reveals the anthropological goal of Hegel's metaphysics, where the fully determined copula presents itself in the form of humanly knowable being:  nature.  Briefly put, within the economy of Hegel's Encyclopedic system, his metaphysics deduce the scientific knowability of nature.

Friday, January 30th, 2014

3:00pm

University of Ottawa

Desmarais Hall (55, Laurier East)

Room 8161

Hermeneutic Fictionalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (G. Contessa)

Conférence | Talk

Gabriele Contessa

(Carleton University)

Hermeneutic Fictionalism: A Guide for the Perplexed

Hermeneutic fictionalism (about some class of entities (e.g.: numbers, propositions, possible  worlds, moral properties, or aesthetic properties)) is the view that ordinary speakers engage with sentences that seem to refer to or quantify over those entities analogously to how they engage with the contents of works of fiction—i.e. by participating in an elaborate pretence. One standard objection to hermeneutic fictionalism is that pretence is luminous (i.e. one cannot pretend without knowing one is pretending) and that ordinary speakers do not usually see themselves as engaging in pretence when engaging in the relevant discourse. In this paper, I will argue that, contrary to what is usually assumed, one can engage in pretence without being fully aware of that fact that one is doing so.

Friday, September 26th, 2014

3:00pm

Carleton University

River Building

Room 3228

Voir l'affiche | See poster

Meaning, Use and Language: From Cratylus to Philosophical Investigatons (A. Vohra)

Conférence | Talk

Ashok Vohra

(University of Delhi)

Meaning, Use and Language: From Cratylus to Philosophical Investigatons

 

Friday, September 27th, 2013

3:00pm

Carleton University

River Building

Room 3110