Dear all, The Moral Sciences Club's next meeting will be held on Tuesday February. We are delighted to welcome Dr Matti Eklund (Uppsala), who will be giving a talk entitled "Variance Theses in Ontology and Metaethics". Here is the abstract:
The concepts we commonly use are only some of all the possible concepts there are. The properties and relations we pick out by the concepts we commonly use are only some of all the properties and relations there are. It is not a given that the concepts we have and what they pick out are somehow objectively better for theoretical and other purposes than alternatives would be. One area where this has been investigated to some extent is in discussions of ontology. The so-called doctrine of quantifier variance states that there are different possible existence concepts, none of them privileged. A certain kind of ontological realist says that there is an existence concept that is privileged over others: but it need not be the existence concept we actually employ. The parties to this debate hold that the significance of ontological questions depends on its outcome. In the first part of the talk I provide an opinionated overview of some moves in this debate concerning ontology. In the second part, I go into more uncharted territory: I consider parallel moves when it comes to ethics. Might there be concepts that are alternatives to the concepts good, right and, ought? What might be at issue between us and a community that instead uses some such alternative concepts to guide their actions? Might the analogue of quantifier variance or the analogue of ontological realism be the correct view in metaethics? I see these questions as raising deep issues about normativity and in the talk I go through how. If I happen to have time, I will also make some remarks on how the issues raised in the case of ethics generalize. The meeting will be held at 2:30 until 4:15, in the Barbara White Room at Newnham College, and will be followed by tea and coffee. For those who have not yet paid, there is a yearly membership fee of £7.50 for students and £15 for others, or a one-off fee of £3 (£2 for students). These can be purchased online at: http://onlinesales.admin.cam.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=75&prodvarid=87 -- Matt Dougherty, James Hutton, and Li Li Tan 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.
