Dear all, The Moral Sciences Club's first meeting of the new term will be held on Tuesday 2nd May. We are delighted to be welcoming Professor Michael Martin (UCL), who will be giving a talk entitled 'Variation and Change in Appearances'. Here is the abstract:
‘Is circular’ and ‘is oval’ appear to be contrary predications applied to the same object; as do ‘is immense’ and ‘is small’. Yet (1) and (2) do not appear to be contradictory statements. So, when do appearances conflict with each other, and how can this be marked in our judgements about appearance? In 1953, GE Moore argued that the possible truth of (2) shows that there must be multiple sense of ‘looks’. Moore’s example prefigures by thirty years a much-cited discussion by Christopher Peacocke about trees and apparent size with which Peacocke illustrates a contrast between sensational and representational properties of experience. I argue that Moore’s argument for different senses of ‘looks’ is unsound. And hence that we need a different explanation of how we mark the contrast between appearances which conflict and those which do not. I close the paper by sketching such an account. As always, 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.
