Dear all, Our first Serious Metaphysics meeting will take place this coming Wednesday 22nd Jan, beginning at the new time of 11am, in the philosophy board room. Our speaker is David Etlin (Munich) who will be giving a talk entitled "Vague Desire: the Sorites and the Money Pump" (abstract below). The meeting will as usual last 90 minutes.
This term's programme can be found on our website at http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/SMG I look forward to seeing you there! Best wishes, Matthew Simpson _Vague Desire: the Sorites and the Money Pump_ David Etlin, University of Munich "The similarity between the sorites paradox of vagueness and the money pump of decision theory has been noted by Dummett (in "Wang's Paradox"), but the connection has not been widely recognized or developed. We argue that on one plausible philosophical theory of linguistic meaning, the Gricean intention based account (as developed in Schiffer's "Meaning"), the paradox of vagueness turn out to be a puzzle about intransitive preferences. Given this, one can solve the sorites paradox by diagnosing the appealing but mistaken principle connecting preference and choice leading to the money pump. We argue for a resolution of the money pump having consequences not only for diachronic principles of rational choice, but also the standard synchronic principle of rationalizable actions. Our approach to vagueness helps overcome worries about the arbitrariness of rejecting instances of the sorites step, and also supports a treatment of vague expressions that don't immediately lend themselves to soritical reasoning." -- Matthew Simpson PhD Student in Philosophy University of Cambridge Mail: Robinson College, Cambridge, CB3 9AN
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