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The Forum is open to everyone, including students, visitors, and faculty members from all departments and institutes!

The 60 minute lecture is followed by a 10 minute break and a 30-60 minute discussion. The language of presentation is English or Hungarian.
The scope of the Forum includes all aspects of theoretical philosophy, including:
  • logic and philosophy of formal sciences
  • philosophy of science
  • modern metaphysics
  • epistemology
  • philosophy of language
  • problems in history of philosophy and history of science, relevant to the above topics
  • particular issues in natural and social sciences, important for the discourses in the main scope of the Forum.

Location




1 October 4:00 PM  Room 208
Postponed to 17 December!
Attila Tanyi
Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm
 
Reason and Desire: the Role of Pleasure
The paper begins with a well-known objection to the idea that reasons for action are provided by human desires. The objection holds that since desires are based on reasons (first thesis), which they transmit but to which they cannot add (second thesis), they cannot themselves provide reasons for action. In the paper I investigate an attack that has recently been launched against the first thesis. It invokes a counterexample: hedonic desires, i.e. desires for the pleasure that attaining the object of the desire brings. The aim of the paper is to defend the thesis by bringing the alleged counterexample under its scope. I first point out that reference to hedonic desires as a counterexample presupposes a particular understanding of pleasure, which we might call desire-based. In response I draw up two alternative accounts, the phenomenological and the tracking views. Although several objections can be raised to both accounts, I argue in detail that they are not as implausible as their opponents claim them to be.


8 October 4:00 PM  Room 208
Miklós Lehmann
Department of Social Science
Faculty of Elementary and Nursery School Teachers' Training
Eötvös University, Budapest
Mentális reprezentációk: kísérlet a fogalom tisztázására
(Mental representation: an attempt to clarify the concept)

Az elmúlt néhány évtizedben számos vita zajlott a mentális reprezentációk természetét illetően. Ezek a viták a reprezentációk több aspektusát érintették, melyek mind tartalmában, mind hordozójában, mind pedig a realitással való kapcsolatában vizsgálat tárgyává tették azok különböző – vélt, valós, valamint lehetséges – tulajdonságait. A viták különlegessége, hogy több tudományterület határát érintik; és bár a kognitív tudomány (csupán a közelmúltban kialakult) diszciplínája magának követeli e sajátos érintkezési területet, a más tudományágakra jellemző, többé-kevésbé határozott kritériumrendszer itt még nem alakult ki. Úgy tűnik tehát, hogy a reprezentáció eredetileg filozófiai kérdése több tudományág párhuzamos fejlődésének következtében kiterjedt, s ezáltal szükségessé vált a kérdés új interpretációja.

A szeminárium egyik korábbi alkalmával már szó esett a realista-antirealista szemléletmódok elméleti lehetőségeiről (Márton Miklós: A mentális antirealizmus esélyei, március 12.). Jómagam arra próbálok rávilágítani, hogy a mentális reprezentációk körüli viták számottevő része a fogalom túlságosan széles körű és meghatározatlan alkalmazásából ered. De vajon ki lehet-e küszöbölni ezeket a határozatlanságokat, és lehetséges-e a fogalom olyan interpretációja, amely integratív módon alkalmazható egy több diszciplínát érintő területen?

 


15 October 4:00 PM  Room 208
Márta Újvári
 Institute of Sociology and Social Policy
Corvinus University, Budapest
The Bundle Theory of Substances and the Leibniz Principle
The appeal of the bundle theory (BT) is considerably weakened by its commitment to the strong version of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (PII). Recently, Casullo has attempted to defend BT by replacing BT’s commitment to strong PII by ‘a much weaker empirical claim’ that turns on the existence of the so-called landmarks. Landmarks have the following distinctive features: (1) all other things have their spatio-temporal location by virtue of standing in certain relations to the landmarks; (2) the landmarks do not have their spatio-temporal location by virtue of standing in certain relations to any other things.
As opposed to Casullo I show that one cannot both use landmarks to the defense of BT and deny, at the same time, the analytical entailment between BT and strong PII. For the point is that there is no direct support to (BT) by the landmarks; the latter can be relevant to the credibility of BT only via strong PII. The relevance is this: strong PII is sometimes not false in virtue of landmarks being individuated by some of their pure properties. Individuation via pure properties is in complete consonance with strong PII. So, since strong PII is not universally false, no inference can be made to the universal falsity of BT. In my solution I rely on Prior’s distinction between the strong and the weak senses of modality admitting the modal status of being not always (universally) false.