Dear all, Robbie Williams (Leeds) will be speaking at the next meeting of the Moral Sciences Club with a talk titled *Normative reference magnets*. The abstract for this is below:
*David Lewis’s interpretationist metaphysics of meaning is widely supposed to contain essential reference to a metaphysically privileged class of properties—those that carve the world at its fundamental joints. These are supposed to act as “reference magnets”, with the correct (linguistic or mental) interpretation being all else equal the one that assigns the most natural objects of thought or talk to the agent. Metaethicists (for example, McPherson and Dunaway) have suggested that in this metaphysics of meaning we can find the moral realist’s best answer to moral twin earth puzzles. I’ll be arguing that this gets things backward, exegetically and substantively. The true metaphysics of mental content makes normatively significant properties reference-magnetic, in the first instance. Metaphysically privileged properties get to be reference-magnetic derivatively, if at all, through a supposed role in inductive norms on belief. I agree with recent discussion by Pautz, Weatherson and Schwartz that attributes a view of this kind to Lewis himself. I’ll be outlining some attractions of the view—not least, its predictions of metasemantic stability for normatively central predicates, which affords a metaphysically-neutral explanation of moral twin earth data. I’ll also be identifying some presuppositions first-order normative presuppositions that is needs in order to work—and in particular to successfully answer classic inscrutability challenges.* This meeting will be held on Tuesday the 1st from 2.30 until 4.15 in the Barbara White room in Newnham College.The meeting will be followed by tea and coffee in the philosophy faculty. For those who have not yet paid, there is a yearly membership fee of £7.50 for students and £15 for others (alternatively, students can pay a one-off fee for the meeting of £2 and others can pay a one-off fee of £3). These fees can be paid online (at the following link: http://onlinesales.admin.cam.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=75&prodvarid=87) or in cash on the day. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Best wishes, Adam Bales and Daisy Dixon -- Daisy Dixon and Adam Bales Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
