Milan Italy November 2010 and dealing with Meinongian ontology

On Thursday November 11 I participate in a symposium dedicated to the Meinongian philosophy of oughts, with my and Vojko's paper Where Do Oughts Come From? The occasion at the Universita degli Studi di Milano, Facolta di Giurisprudenza, is presentation of Emanuele Marini's thesis on Uomo, dovere, etica nella filosofia di France Veber (1890-1975). [You can access this PhD text if you browse some Emanuele Marini related stuff in this blog.] Besides to Emanuele whose knowledge of Slovene language and Veber is excellent, there will be also Venanzio Raspa with his presentation of Meinongian Sollen. Everything will happen in Italian language. After that, I look forward to the Villa Borromeo Verdiglione lecture, before returning home and delivering Dejanskost pripovedi lecture on Monday November 15th at 11:20h room 434 Filozofska fakulteta Ljubljana. This will end a two weeks intensive Meinongian engagement that started with the visit of Seppo Sajama from Finland. (You may wonder what is cooking in the background in terms of further plans. Here is a preliminary announcement: detailed study and presentation of the forthcoming Epistemological Spectrum Henderson and Horgan book in preparation of the Bled May 30-June 3 conference, Brain in a Vat Phenomenology and much more.)
   By the way, I enjoyed my yesterday lecture on the Meinongian roots of analytic philosophy. My insight was that dealing with Meinong is at the very basis of analytic philosophy, the analysis of sentences being proposed in Russell paper On Denoting (1905) in order to supposedly get rid of Meinongian unreal objects. The adequacy surface structure of some sentences, such as The actual king of France is bald, Ponce de Leon was searching for the fountain of youth, is measured by its fitting to the underlying deeper metaphysical structure (cf.: neither the actual king of France nor the fountain of youth exist in the real world). Both Russell and Meinong stick to the direct correspondence theory of truth, differing just in restriction of possible realms to the actual stuff in the case of the first one. We propose truth as indirect correspondence approach to the matter, and following Terry Horgan, a propositional ersatzist metaphysical interpretation of noneist semantics. Some time ago, myself and Vojko Strahovnik proposed, in a similar direction, to counter the competence based performance error of the Meinongian ultimate ontology engagement into revealing the simple truth that these subsistent and impossible worlds are not the ultimate ontological guys but creatures of language and thought. Meinongians get blocked in their ability to recognize this simple fact by their competence based performance error. Actually we think that their error is a quite a natural fact of life and may get explained by this approach of ours. My lecture will be available on the net in a due time on my homepage, besides to other video lectures stuff already available there. Meinongian scorekeeping paper draft may be found under this link: http://www2.arnes.si/~supmpotr/clanki.html
Photo: Professors Paolo di Lucia, Venanzio Raspa, Giuseppe Lorini, Matjaz Potrc at Universita degli Studi di Milano, law department.

Thank you Atkins

In span of eight weeks approximately there is a new me. Trousers shrunk for several units. Thank you Atkins! Now on with the lifetime maintenance.

Seppo Sajama on Veber and Temperance November 3rd

On Wednesday November 3rd, 2010, Seppo Sajama, a philosopher from Finland, will have two sessions in room 434 of Filozofska fakulteta, Askerceva 2, Ljubljana.

At 1440h-1620h Seppo Sajama will explain his views about Slovene philosopher Veber, in a discussion with Prof. Potrc.

At 1850h-2030h Seppo will lecture on Tolerance. Here is a brief outline of that talk:
     TEMPERANCE AND TOLERANCE
 1. Some comments on the word "temperance"
 2. Plato on temperance
 3. Tolerance in the liberal state
 4. Differences between tolerance and temperance
 5. Can temperance be excessive?
 6. Why be temperate?
 7. Is temperance voluntary?
 8. Is ethics subjective?
 9. The naturalistic foundation of ethics
 10. What is a rational plan of life?

Photo: Matjaz and Seppo

A quote of Potrc Particularism and Resultance

Here is the link to an Argentinian book where Prof Potrc is quoted along with such people as Dancy, Kim, Putnam:

 

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Cc0MWD2wjY8C&oi=fnd&pg=PA189&ots=UQE92-sgL8&sig=BZFwgcgIDNfIk4ucFw2w8cRJhE8#v=onepage&q&f=false

A Nietzschean shtick

Mit seinem Adler und mit seiner Schlange lebt der Matjaz hoch in Bergen.

Waterfall

During his autumn stroll hike through wood, Matjaz stopped at a waterfall.

How Does Mind Matter, Reviving Mental Representation in Cognitive Science

Prof. Gerard O'Brien will have two lectures on Wednesday, October 13, room 434, Filozofska fakulteta, Ljubljana. The first lecture will be at 14:40h:

1. How Does Mind Matter?

Nothing could be more obvious than that minds matter. Specifically, nothing could be more obvious than that mental phenomena—beliefs, desires, thoughts, perceptions, and so forth—have a causal impact on behaviour. Yet it has proved notoriously difficult to explain how this can be so. The problem of mental causation takes a number of forms in the philosophy of mind. One of these arises from the widely held thesis that the representational properties of mental phenomena are not determined by the intrinsic properties of brains. In this lecture I will explain how this version of the mental causation problem arises. I will then suggest that the apparent insolubility of this form of the problem stems from the “referential” conception of mental content that dominates the philosophy of mind. Once we recognise we are not obliged to accept this conception, and moreover that there is an alternative conception available, some elbow room is opened up for exploration. I will conclude the lecture by briefly exploring the space created by this alternative conception of mental content.

The second lecture will be at 18:50h, room 434 as well:


2. Reviving Mental Representation in Cognitive Science

Several lines of argument have lately converged to make trouble for representation in the philosophy of cognitive science. The charge, in a nutshell, is that mental representation no longer earns its explanatory keep, and hence that it’s time to discard this troublesome concept. This lecture will begin with a brief explanation as to why mental representation is on the endangered list in cognitive science. It will then proceed by exploring the nature of representation in connectionist models of cognition. The general aim will be to determine whether representation does play an important explanatory role in these models, and hence whether the recent calls to dispense with this concept are justified.