Dear all, (Note: this email contains several important notices concerning our Easter Term meetings, so please read to the end.)
Next week, Dr. Justin Clarke-Doane (Birmingham) will give a talk entitled "Debunking and Indispensability". An abstract is included below. The meeting will be held at 5:15pm on Tuesday, 29 April, in the *Boys Smith Room* (found in the Fisher Building), St. John's College. Following Dr. Clarke-Doane's talk, the MSC will hold three meetings in May: 6 May - Robert Brandom (Pittsburg) 13 May - Ian Proops (University of Texas at Austin) 20 May - Amie Thomasson (University of Miami) Finally, as the end of the academic year draws near, there are several important matters of Club business to be attended to this term. *(1) Club Photo - *On *6 May, *we invite members to join us for the taking of the Club photograph. We will be asking those wishing to be in the photograph to arrive at *4:45pm*. Details concerning location will follow in the weeks ahead. *(2) Annual General Meeting - *On *20 May*, the Club will be holding its AGM. As usual, the business of the meeting will include the approval of the incoming secretary or secretaries. This year, however, the business will also include a discussion concerning a potential change to Club meeting times starting from the 2014-15 academic year. Please note that, in order to accommodate the AGM, the meeting will begin at *5:00pm*. Further details to follow If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact us. We look forward to seeing many of you this term! Best, Kyle Mitchell and Shyane Siriwardena *ABSTRACT:* In an influential book, Gilbert Harman writes, "In explaining the observations that support a physical theory, scientists [must] appeal to mathematical principles. On the other hand, one never seems to need to appeal in this way to moral principles." What is the epistemological relevance of this contrast? I will argue that ethicists and philosophers of mathematics have misunderstood it. They have confused the challenge to empirically justify our beliefs of a kind with the challenge to explain their reliability. One upshot of the discussion is that genealogical debunking arguments are invalid. Another is that indispensability considerations cannot answer Benacerraf’s epistemological challenge. -- Kyle Mitchell and Shyane Siriwardena Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc
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