The seminar is held in hybrid format, in person (Múzeum krt. 4/i Room 224) and online at the following link:

LPS seminar | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams
________________________________________________________

Department of General Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

According to one major philosophical tradition, our personal identity over time is grounded in memory. This view—associated with figures such as Locke, Hume, and Russell—was developed into its most elaborate form by Parfit (1984). He argued that the criterion of our identity over time is psychological continuity, and that memory plays an essential, indispensable role in establishing this continuity.
In this talk, I will examine to what extent Parfit’s reductionist concept of the person and his relational interpretation of personal identity can be maintained in light of different conceptions and theories of memory. I will discuss the objection that Parfit’s criterion is either circular or cannot account for the phenomenological features of episodic autobiographic memories, in particular their autonoetic nature and being immune to error through misidentification (based on Schechtman and Zahavi). Besides, I will briefly address objections to the storehouse model of memory and consider a recent alternative to the causal theory of memory, the simulationist theory.

 Faulhorn Labs, Budapest

We are all familiar with the concept of mathematical proofs, and it seems natural that verifying a proof requires reading it in its entirety. In this talk, I will take a more liberal view of what we mean by proofs and verification. This perspective will lead us to proof systems in which for example verification can be performed in constant time—independent of the number of steps required for the proof. I will explain how and why this idea is important for real-world applications.