Events

• Workshops
• Core Seminar
• Formal Concepts Seminar
• Courses
• Reading Groups

ConceptLab runs a variety of events, from visiting speaker seminars to workshops and larger conferences, as well as various in-house courses and seminars for its members. On this page you will find information about these events.

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Talk by Matthieu Queloz, “The Point of Pragmatic Genealogy”

Time and place: Sep. 19, 2019 10:30 AM–12:15 PM, GM 652

Talk by Agustín Rayo

Workshop on Difficulties in Communicating Online

Workshop on Speech Act Engineering

Talk by Natalia Waights-Hickman

ConceptLab Taking Stock

Talk by Josh Dever

Talks by Vera Flocke and Ethan Brauer

PhD defence by Joost Vecht: “Concept Attributivism”

Formal concepts mini-workshop

Time and place: Mar. 15, 2019 11 AM – 4 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Schedule

11-12.15 Sam Roberts “Sets as Structures”

12.15-13.15 Lunch break

13.15-14.30 Alexander Roberts “Necessity in the Highest Degree”

14.45-16 Stewart Shapiro “Making Truth safe for Intuitionists”

Abstracts

“Sets as Structures”, Sam Roberts

According to standard (ante rem) structuralism, sets are places in a certain structure. It follows that sets have a number of unwelcome features. For example, sets seem to exhibit an asymmetric dependency on their elements and the totality of all sets seems to be inherently potential. But the structuralist must deny this. In this talk, I propose a new form of structuralism. According to it, sets are not places in a certain structure, they are structures themselves. I show how this view overcomes the above problems.

“Necessity in the Highest Degree”, Alexander Roberts

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke was careful not to prejudge which notion of necessity was ‘necessity in the highest degree’, and left it as an open question. In this talk, I will sharpen Kripke’s open question and make significant progress towards answering it. The investigation will involve a study of how different ‘objective’ modalities, such as physical necessity, interact with one another and behave. By studying such interactions, there is much insight to be gained into which notions of necessity are suited to be necessity in the highest degree.

“Making Truth safe for Intuitionists”, Stewart Shapiro

Talk by Per-Erik Milam “Non-Moral Blame”

Time and place: Oct. 23, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, Gm 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Bernhard Nickel: The division of ideological labor

Time and place: Oct. 30, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Stephan Krämer: “Difference-Making in Truthmaker Semantics”

Talk by Kim Phillips Pedersen

Time and place: Nov. 20, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Shaun Nichols: “Referential ambiguity and discretion”

Time and place: Jan. 30, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

ABSTACT: Eliminativist debates exhibit a familiar pattern in the history of philosophy. Eliminativists maintain that K doesn’t exist (where K might be morality, race, belief, etc.) because K is given its content by a false theory. This position is opposed by preservationists who say, in effect, Ks aren’t what we thought they were. Some philosophers maintain that the theory of reference will settle the issue between eliminativists and preservationists. In this talk, I’ll argue that (at least) two conventions regarding reference are available to speakers.  This affords an interpretive flexibility which allows us to make sense of the apparent disagreement between eliminativists and preservationists by charitably interpreting them as assuming different reference conventions.  In addition, once we allow that there are different reference conventions available, I suggest that we can take advantage of this in deciding which reference convention to use in a conversation.

Talk by Stephen Finlay: Defining Normativity

Time and place: Feb. 13, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo
ABSTRACT: This talk seeks to clarify debate over the nature, existence, extension, and analyzability of normativity, by investigating whether different philosophers’ claims are about the same subject or (as argued by Derek Parfit) they are using the terms ‘normative’ and ‘normativity’ with different meanings.  While I suggest the term may be multiply ambiguous, I also find reasons for optimism about a common subject-matter for metanormative theory.  This is supported by sketching a special hybrid view of normative judgment, perspectivism, that occupies a position between cognitivism and noncognitivism, naturalism and nonnaturalism, objectivism and subjectivism.  I explore three main fissures: between (i) the “normativity” of language/thought versus that of facts and properties, (ii) abstract versus substantive, and (iii) formal versus robust normativity.

Talk by Hannes Leitgeb

Time and place: Mar. 7, 2018, GM 652

Workshop: Engineering logical concepts

Time and place: Mar. 8, 2018 – Mar. 9, 2018, University of Oslo

Talk by Fenner Tanswell: Conceptual Engineering for Mathematical Concepts

Time and place: Apr. 17, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652

ABSTRACT: In this paper I investigate how conceptual engineering applies to mathematical concepts in particular. I begin with a discussion of Waismann’s notion of open texture, and compare it to Shapiro’s modern usage of the term. Next I set out the position taken by Lakatos which sees mathematical concepts as dynamic and open to improvement and development, arguing that Waismann’s open texture applies to mathematical concepts too. With the perspective of mathematics as open-textured, I make the case that this allows us to deploy the tools of conceptual engineering in mathematics. I will examine Cappelen’s recent argument that there are no conceptual safe spaces and consider whether mathematics constitutes a counterexample. I argue that it does not, drawing on Haslanger’s distinction between manifest and operative concepts, and applying this in a novel way to set-theoretic foundations. I then set out some of the questions that need to be engaged with to establish mathematics as involving a kind of conceptual engineering. I finish with a case study of how the tools of conceptual engineering will give us a way to progress in the debate between advocates of the Universe view and the Multiverse view in set theory.

Talk by Annalisa Coliva: Is numerical cognition cognition of natural numbers?

Time and place: Apr. 24, 2018 10:15 AM, GM 652

ABSTRACT: In this paper we take issue with what we call the “Standard View” in cognitive studies on numerical cognition.  According to the standard view, there is no distinction in kind between what we call “adult putatively-arithmetical resources” and the system of intellectual resources actually involved in mathematical theories. Moreover, adult putatively-arithmetical resources are considered continuous with what we call “basic putatively-arithmetical resources”. We first criticize this latter thesis, by claiming that these resources aren’t based on numerical representations. We then criticize the former thesis by showing how counting and even more complex abilities, characteristically possessed by most adult human beings, do not suffice for having the concept of a natural number. We close by expounding on the significance of these findings in the context of conceptual engineering and with some recommendations for future empirical research in this area.

Talk by Dan López de Sa: On So-Called Metalinguistic Negotiations

ABSTRACT: Recently, many philosophers, including David Chalmers (2011), David Plunket (2015), and Amie Thomasson (2017), have argued that there are many significantverbal disputes to be had in metaphysics (and philosophy)—as well as elsewhere. And this is because disputes about ‘art’, ‘person’, ‘consciousness’, ‘freedom’, ‘good’, or ‘knowledge’ as well as ‘torture’, ‘democracy’, ‘marriage’, or ‘woman’ can be significant. These words do matter, in the appropriate sense. This is a very important insight into the nature of the disagreement that these significant verbal disputes manifest.

In this paper, we want to distinguish this insight from a common related claim concerning the expression of such disagreement in language. To wit: that many of the disputes in question are to be seen as so-called “metalinguistic negotiations” (Plunkett & Sundell 2013). Not every negotiation about words—not every verbal dispute that expresses a disagreement about how a word should be used—qualifies as a metalinguistic negotiation in their sense.  Whether there exist cases of metalinguistic negotiation proper is, however, an interesting claim in itself, but also something linguistically controversial. This controversy one can simply avoid when vindicating the significance of verbal disputes.

Time and place: May 8, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, University of Oslo, GM 652

Talk by Michael Beaney: Interpretative Analysis And Conceptual Creativity

Time and place: May 15, 2018 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Jean-Yves Beziau

Time and place: May 18, 2018 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, University of Oslo, GM 652

Talk by Sarah Sawyer: “Talk and Thought”

Time and place: May 25, 2018 10.15 AM – 12.00 PM, University of Oslo, GM 652

ABSTRACT: It is commonplace, although not uniform, to talk of linguistic meanings and concepts as if they were either identical or at least so closely related as not to warrant explicit separation. I will outline a view of language and thought that clearly distinguishes the two. I suggest that they track different phenomena and have different explanatory roles. This has implications for a proper understanding of meaning change, conceptual engineering, normativity and truth.

 Talks by Vera Flocke and Patrick Greenough

Time and place:  June 5, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652

 Talk by Eliot Michaelson: Meaning Restrictions

Time and place: June 12, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652

ABSTRACT: Rarely do we utter ‘every F’ to talk about absolutely every F, or ‘some G’ to talk about any G whatsoever. Yet it hardly seems plausible that we typically have in mind the sorts of ultra-specific restrictions that linguists and philosophers have posited are to be found in the logical form of quantifier phrases. The present essay will explore whether there is some viable way of explaining how we can mean restricted quantifiers when we utter sentences containing quantifier phrases like these. I will argue that the most viable option is to accept that quantified thoughts are very often vague, and that it is such vague thoughts that we typically express by means of sentences containing quantifier phrases.

Talk by Gabriel Rabin: Conceptually Engineering Grounding

ABSTRACT: The grounding revolution in metaphysics has arrived. But philosophers use ‘ground’ in many, and sometimes contradictory, ways. Paradoxes and verbal disputes loom. The area is ripe for conceptual engineering. I examine some features of the grounding literature, the roles ground is supposed to play, and recent skepticism about grounding. Particular attention will be paid to the metaphysics of mind. I draw lessons about how we should, and should not, think about grounding. The conclusion is relatively modest: We should not give up grounding. But we should aim for less.

Time and place: June 12, 2018, afternoon, GM 652

Talk by Massimo Renzi

Time and place: Oct. 2, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Andreas Brekke Carlsson

Time and place: Oct. 9, 2018 10:15 AM – 12:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo

Talk by Mark Steiner (Hebrew University), “How to get more out of mathematics than we put in”

Time and place: Oct. 11, 2018 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, GM 652, University of Oslo