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| 4 April (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
Hans Radder
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Faculty of Philosophy
VU University Amsterdam
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Does the Brain ‘Initiate’ Freely Willed Processes? A Critique of Libet-Type Experiments and Their Interpretation
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In the extensive,
recent debates on free will, the pioneering experiments by Benjamin
Libet continue to play a significant role. The claim that these
experiments demonstrate the illusoriness of freely willed actions is
both strongly endorsed and hotly disputed. In this paper, we provide
an analysis and evaluation of Libet’s experiments from a philosophy
of science perspective, which differs from the usual approaches in
philosophy of mind or moral philosophy. Our analysis focuses on
Libet’s central notion of the ‘initiation’ of freely willed
processes by the brain. First, we use the INUS theory and the
manipulability theory of causation to investigate whether the
experiments show any causal relationship between brain activity, on
the one hand, and free decisions or (freely willed) motor activity,
on the other. In addition, we examine three other interpretations of
the notion of initiation (in terms of a necessary condition, a
correlation and a regular succession). We argue that none of these
four interpretations can be supported by the design and results of
Libet’s experiments. Significantly enough, on the basis of these
experiments we cannot even conclude that each free decision, or each
(freely willed) motor action, is always preceded by a readiness
potential. Furthermore, more recent Libet-type experiments cannot
solve these problems either. Our general conclusion is that neither
Libet’s nor Libet-type experiments can justify the claim that the
brain initiates freely willed processes.
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| 11 April (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
Attila Molnár
| Institute
of Philosophy, Eötvös
University, Budapest
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Possible Objects and Their Collisions in SpecRel
with the Aid of Modal Logic
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The
Logic and Theory of Relativity group lead by H. Andréka and I. Németi
created the first order classical theory of the Special relativity,
named SpecRel. Although this axiom system looks very simple, it can
reproduce the main theorems of the special relativity. But, as the group
said, sometimes the classical first-order framework does not seem to be
sufficient to give back the appropriate physical meaning. For example
the main axiom of SpecRel is about that there could be
a photon which crosses certain points. This „could be” indicates some
kind of notion of possibility, which is barely accessible from a
classical first-order logic. This problem becomes more disturbing when
the system SpecRel is expanded by certain dynamical axioms, according to
that for instance for every observer, everywhere any kind of possible collision is realizable.
In the seminar I will present a certain modal axiom system which is able
to handle these issues, moreover, with this axiom system I will attempt
to achieve another goal: to give an explicit and operational definition
to the notion of mass via possible collisions.
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| 18 April (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
Gergely Kertész* and Andrea Komlósi**
| * Department
of
Philosophy
and
the
History
of
Science, Budapest
University of Technology and Economics
** Institute
of Philosophy, Eötvös
University, Budapest
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Miféle
dolog egy negatív ok, ha egyáltalán valami? - Avagy azért száradtak el a
virágok, mert a kertész elfelejtette locsolni őket?
(What kind of a thing is a
negative cause, if it is something at all? - Or did the flowers dry out
because the gardener forgot to water them?)
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A
negatív okozásról való beszéd általánosnak mondható mind a hétköznapi
nyelvben, mind a tudományos diskurzusban. Ugyanakkor a jelenség
magyarázata komoly problémát jelent minden kontrafaktuális szemantikára
épülő okságelmélet számára. Az előadás megvizsgál néhány az irodalomban
felvetett megoldási javaslatokat, majd megmutatja, hogy egy hibrid
elmélet, ami a kontrafaktuális megközelítést az ún. produktív
értelmezéssel kombinálja, jobban összhangban van bizonyos alapvető
metafizikai elköteleződésekkel, mint alternatívái.
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| 25 April (Wednesday)
5:00
PM
Room
226 |
Barry Loewer
| Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University
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| Two Accounts of Laws and Time
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Among
the most important questions in the metaphysics of science are “What are
the natures of fundamental laws and chances?” and “What grounds the
direction of time? My aim in this paper is to examine some
connections between these questions, discuss two approaches to answering
them and argue in favor of one. Along the way I will raise a number of
issues concerning the relationship between physics and metaphysics and
consequences for the methodology of metaphysics.
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