Friday, July 9, 2021

Skepticism Lecture Series: Session VII

Session VII: Thursday, 15th July 2021, 12:00-13:30 Central Time (United States and Canada) (= 11:00-12:30 Mountain Time Zone = 17:00-18:30 GMT).

Speaker: Kim Davis (Durham University)

Title: “Transcendental Arguments and Conceptual Development.”

Abstract: Transcendental arguments (TAs) against scepticism are out of fashion. Stroud’s persistent criticisms seem to show that the most we can hope for are modest TAs which articulate what we must believe to be the case, even if the truth of that belief cannot be proven. In this talk I will argue that the traditional starting point of TAs in subjective experience needs to be replaced by a double-headed approach if TAs are to reach conclusions concerning the truth of interesting metaphysical claims. The first strand of the approach is to clarify the critical concept of thought’, as potentially diverging from reality, as key to the sceptic’s position. The second analyses the necessary conditions of the possibility of the key concept. I will argue that the critical concept of thought is possible only through reflection on disruption in a previously unarticulated harmony between how things are thought to be and how they really are, and that this in turn requires the actual existence of – not just the belief in – an epistemically objective realm of ontologically independent items. This a-priori argument is given support from recent empirical work in conceptual development on the process of creating new conceptual resources not entirely grounded in antecedent ones.

To join the Zoom meeting, go here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82476774473.

Information about past and future sessions can be found here:

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