Dear all, The Moral Sciences Club's next meeting will be held on Tuesday 16th May. We are delighted to welcome Dr Rachel Fraser (Peterhouse), who will be giving a talk entitled 'The Pragmatics and Epistemology of Narrative'. Here is the abstract:
Epistemologists interested in testimony have, for the most part, explored the epistemic dimensions of very simple, one sentence assertions (‘simple testimony’). But our testimonial lives are richer than this picture suggests: much of what we tell each other comes packaged as narrative. This matters: the phenomenology typical of reading or hearing narrative is very different to the phenomenology typical of simple testimony - when we read or hear narrative, we often feel immersed in the story-world, or feel like the events being described are happening to us in ways rarely associated with simple testimony. Drawing on the work of cognitive scientists on how narrative is processed, I argue that the difference between narrative and simple testimony shows up at the epistemic as well as the phenomenological level, and sketch a variety of ways in which the epistemic behaviour of beliefs based on narrative testimony exhibit epistemic behaviour not characteristic of beliefs based on simple testimony. The upshot is this: narrative cannot be treated as a mere afterthought by epistemologists of testimony, but must be treated seriously in its own right. 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. Please note that we will have our Club Photograph and Annual General Meeting the follow week (23rd May). The AGM will begin at 2:15. Please email us by Tuesday 16th if you would like to include a motion for the AGM. 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.
