https://hdl.handle.net/2123/996 Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:16:47 GMT 2026-06-04T20:16:47Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1322 Rationality, reasoning and regulation: the case of group agents Pettit, Philip; Steele, Katie Note: The audio file features Philip Pettit's paper, entitiled "Rationality, reasoning and regulation: the case of group agents," followed by commentary from Katie Steele, then discussion. Abstract for Pettit's paper: Rationality involves susceptibility to certain agency-related constraints and desiderata. This susceptibility is implemented sub-personally in animal agents but the implementation is intentionally reinforced by the reasoning and regulation that human animals pursue. What, then, of artificial agents: not silicon-based robots but socially constructed organizations? It turns out that rationality is hard to implement sub-personally with such agents; that reasoning plays a natural and important part; and that regulation is a necessary supplement, as with individual subjects. Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1322 2006-12-04T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1325 Mental Causation and the Determination Relation Menzies, Peter Stephen Yablo's influential article "Mental Causation" made an interesting new move in the philosophical debate about the exclusion problem about mental causation. He observed that (i) determinables are not excluded from causal influence by their determinates; and (ii) the relation of mental properties to their underpinning neural properties is analogous to, if not identical with, the relationship of determinables to determinates. In this paper I argue that Yablo's observations do not have the force that he thought they had. Nonetheless, his observations point in the direction of a more satisfactory way of answering the exclusion problem in terms of contrastive causation. Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1325 2006-12-04T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1324 Remembering together: is there a social ontology of memory? Sutton, John In analysing certain integrated collectivities as group subjects or institutional persons, Philip Pettit stresses that such collectivities engage in a social form of self-regulation by collectivizing reason in the service of rational unity over time. This is an additional and distinct sign of collective intentionality -- of the existence of a genuinely plural subject -- over and above the mutual awareness among group members of any shared beliefs, intentions, and goals. Do either of these signs of collective intentionality extend to the case of memory? Consideration of this question is aided by some initial explorations of: memory's role in the self-regulating individual mind; the distinctive nature of groups which engage in shared activities of remembering; the role of memory in the kinds of discursive dilemma which, for Pettit, effective social integrates tend to resolve by collectivizing reason; whether or not there can ever be stark discontinuities between a group's memory and the memories of its members; and the relative contributions of mutual awareness and of the urge towards rational unification in grounding the normative commitments of groups and their members. Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1324 2006-12-04T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1323 Self-organizing collections and collective agents Ismael, Jenann Advances in understanding self-organization over the past few decades have led to the temptation to extend it to a model of human cognition. The extension is supported by new insights in situated cognition and success in reproducing quite complex behaviors in robots without any centralized control. Dennett has been a vocal proponent of the extension, repeatedly invoking analogies with self-organizing systems and denying the existence of a self, conceived as an inner locus of information and control. I arguei argue that there is a difference between self-organizing collections and collectives. Only the latter are agents. And this difference is crucial for our understanding of selves. Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1323 2006-12-04T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1241 Truth Price, Huw In this lecture, renowned philosopher Huw Price explores the concept of 'truth'. The Culture Wars have given way to the Truth Wars, but this is just a new name for an ancient conflict. From Plato to Nagel, Protagoras to Rorty, philosophy's two great families have have been feuding over the same patch of muddied ground for a hundred generations. Absolutists versus relativists, realists versus idealists, platonists versus pragmatists: the slogans swing to and fro, but both sides are well-entrenched, and the frontlines rarely move. In this talk Price introduced this conflict through the eyes of Simon Blackburn, whose new book Truth: A Guide For the Perplexed (Penguin, 2005) offers an engaging mix of embedded journalism and irenic road-mapping. However, Price argued that Blackburn's peace plan has a fatal flaw andoffered an alternative peace proposal, which has the advantage of being sufficiently even-handed to be rejected by both sides. Huw Price is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow and Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney, where he heads the Centre for Time in the Department of Philosophy. He was formerly Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Wed, 24 May 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1241 2006-05-24T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1242 Death Ismael, Jenann We don't like to think about death. In fact, we do everything we can to avoid it. Is it something to be feared? Why? Who does death harm? What kind of a loss is involved in the loss of a human life? Does the finitude of life render it, as Tolstoy thought, meaningless? Or is it rather the other way around? How is an attempt to make life meaningful affected by the fact that we don't know when we will die? Would immortality be desirable? Joining the University of Sydney from the University of Arizona, QEII Research Fellow Jenann Ismael will explore one of life's most grave concerns, 'death'. Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1242 2006-06-08T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1079 Entropy, Interventions and Causation Frisch, Mathias Possible connections between thermodynamics and the causal asymmetry Contains one audio recording (mp3) Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1079 2006-07-20T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1083 Folk Physics, Intervention and the Concept of Cause Hitchcock, Chris Our interventions in the world are guided by our folk physical theories of how the world works. For example, we know that we can move an object by pushing it with a stick, but not by pushing it with a rope. Nothing could seem more natural. Yet recent research on primates suggests that this kind of reasoning is far from trivial. Making use of an account of theoretical concepts due to Hempel and Carnap, I argue that one of the central roles of our concept of cause is to mediate inferences between interventions and folk physical theories. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation notes Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1083 2006-07-19T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1074 Elusive Causation Maslen, Cei David Lewis claimed that knowledge is elusive. "That is how knowledge is elusive. Examine it, and straightway it vanishes..." He argued that epistemology robs us of our knowledge: "Maybe epistemology is the culprit. Maybe the extraordinary pastime robs us of our knowledge. Maybe we do know a lot in daily life; but maybe when we look hard at our knowledge it goes away." The aim of this paper is to answer the question: might causation be elusive in a similar sense to that in which knowledge has been claimed to be elusive? Might there be pastimes that rob us of causation too? I will argue for a contextual account of causation and present detailed mechanisms for fixing truth values from the context. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and two sets of presentation notes/slides Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1074 2006-07-19T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1073 Memory and Temporal Awareness Fernandez, Jordi Memories have content in that they can be correct or incorrect. In addition, memories have an interesting phenomenological feature: If a subject remembers some event, then that event is presented to her as taking place in the past. The aim of this paper is to determine how we should construe the content of memories to account for that ‘feeling of pastness’ in memory. Three proposals will be considered and eventually rejected. According to some of those proposals, a reference to the temporal location of a remembered event is built into the content of the relevant memory. I will propose an alternative view. According to it, when a certain event is presented to us in virtue of having a memory experience, the content of that experience is that it was caused by a true perceptual experience of the event in question. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and two sets of presentation notes/slides Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1073 2006-07-23T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1080 Projectivism and Experiences of Temporal Properties Chuard, Philippe Among the many ways in which, it seems, we can be conscious of time, there is the sensory perception of certain temporal properties. Many of perceptual experiences seem capable of representing properties such as (i) the succession of events and (ii) their duration. Accounting for the representational content of such experiences is one of the central issues that make up what I‚ll call the problem of temporal perception. How does the problem arise and who is it a problem for? In the first part of this paper, I‚ll try to clarify the relationship between perceptual experiences of temporal properties and the main accounts of the metaphysics of time. The problem of temporal perception is in fact quite independent from the issues that oppose A-theories and B-theories of time. For one thing, succession and duration are B-properties, the existence of which is recognized by both A-theories and B-theories. For another, it may be that perceptual experiences typically mis-represent temporal properties&emdash;in which case, an account of such experiences will have little to do with the true metaphysics of time. The problem of temporal perception arises in fact because of the following two assumptions: Temporal Resemblance: perceptual experiences represent the temporal properties of events partly in virtue of their own temporal properties. No Specious Present: perceptual experiences represent events as present, but a single experience cannot represent non-simultaneous events as being all present. In the second part of the paper, I‚ll attempt to defend a particular account of experiences of temporal properties: a simple-minded version of Projectivism, according to which experiences represent the temporal properties of events in virtue of their own temporal properties. Interestingly, most alternative accounts of temporal experiences are usually motivated in reference to the many difficulties allegedly plaguing such an account. In particular, it is often argued that such a version of Projectivism cannot account for various aspects of the phenomenology of experiences of time. Thus, the argument goes, an account of experiences of temporal properties needs to be supplemented with an appeal to memory (Mellor), internal clocks (Le Poidevin), or some relation of co-consciousness (Dainton). After some clarifications of the simple-minded version of Projectivism to be defended in this paper, I‚ll show how it can resist the various phenomenological objections raised against it. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1080 2006-07-22T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1081 Art, Time and Consciousness Haines, Simon Philosophical conceptions of time seem to fall into two groups, “flow” (river, arrow) and “block”: both of them spatialised. Kant was an important exception, and modern subjectivist thinking about time, or about the consciousness of time, seems to have taken its lead from him. But art (poetry, anyway: music and the plastic arts raise different time issues) seems always to have represented time as consciousness, or at least as an important element in it. Two groups again: “big-time”, apocalyptic poets like Dante and Virgil, and “small-time”, ordinary-life poets like Homer and Shakespeare. Modern (post-Kantian?) poetry wants to find big-time meanings in small-time lives. Maybe if we could blend philosophy’s block/flow conceptions and poetry’s big/small representations of time we might get a richer sense of the relation between time and consciousness. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1081 2006-07-22T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1082 The Dimensionality of Time Weinstein, Steven Many philosophers have concluded that Kant was wrong about space, the form of outer experience - that the space of our experience is not necessarily Euclidean. Be that as it may, one can nevertheless ask whether he was right about time, the form of inner experience. Is time necessarily one-dimensional? In this talk I will explore whether and how one might make sense of the possibility that the mind, or its physical embodiment, is extended in more than one time dimension. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1082 2006-07-23T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1072 Two bits of Nous from 1979 Ismael, Jenann; Price, Huw Tram drivers know where their vehicles are bound, and don't have to decide to take them there, rather than somewhere else; the tramlines take care of it. Bus drivers know where their vehicles are headed, too, but without the benefit of the rails. In this talk we explain how this difference offers both bad news and good for bus drivers. It make them less noble, less god-like creatures than their tram-driving cousins, for their epistemic perspective is necessarily degenerate in comparison; but degeneracy sets them free. We propose that this discursion on public transport throws important new light on the foundations of interventionist causation: roughly, it suggests that the causal perspective is an inevitable by-product of an epistemic degeneracy. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation notes Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1072 2006-07-19T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1075 Memory and Temporal Phenomenology Ismael, Jenann In the general project of trying to reconcile the objective view of the world with the subjective view, analytic philosophy in recent years, has been almost solely focused on sensory phenomenology. But there is at least as a big a gap between the view of time presented in physics and the view of time presented in the experience of the subject. In physics, there is an almost complete assimilation of time to space. Time is just one dimension in a four-dimensional manifold of events. We experience time, however, as something dynamic. I'll be exploring prospects for understanding of the phenomenology of flow without falling into the incoherent idea that time itself moves. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1075 2006-07-22T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1085 Roundtable discussion Chalmers, David David Chalmers will chair a discussion of issues arising from the conference. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1085 2006-07-23T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1071 Time is the Simplest (and Strongest) Thing Callender, Craig What is the difference between time and space? This paper proposes an answer: the temporal direction is that direction on the manifold of events in which our best theories can tell the strongest, most informative "stories." Put another way, time is that direction in which our theories can obtain as much determinism as possible. I make two arguments. The first is a general one defending the idea that strength determines what is temporal. The second is a more specific technical illustration of the first: understanding 'strength' as having a well-posed Cauchy problem, I show that for a wide class of equations, namely, linear second-order partial differential equations, the desire for strength does indeed distinguish the temporal direction. After assessing how general the second argument is, the paper explores the ramifications of this theory for various problems in the philosophy of time. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation slides Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1071 2006-07-21T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1076 The Subjectivity of the Present Callender, Craig Perhaps the most compelling argument for the tensed theory of time ˜ and in particular the idea of a global monadic present or now ˜ has always been that it is the best explanation of temporal experience. Most detensers admit this, but suggest that other arguments outweigh these considerations. However, it is time detensers rise and fight back on the experiential front as well. Fascinating recent work in the psychology of time perception suggests that the subjective present behaves in surprising ways. The best explanation of these phenomena, I argue, is not that we are responding to a global mind-independent present; rather, the best explanation refers to a (tenseless) temporal integration mechanism in our brains. Coupled with evidence that the subjective present is highly contingent on environmental variables, varies from person to person, and the difficulty of reconciling a global monadic present with our background theories, this argument seriously undermines one‚s confidence that our experience of the present is an experience of time rather than a feature of experience in time. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation slides Sun, 23 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1076 2006-07-23T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1078 Causation and Reductive Explanation Corry, Richard One of the most powerful tools in science is the method of reductive explanation, where we explain the behaviour of a complex system in terms of the behaviour of the parts from which it is composed. In order to employ this method we observe the behaviour of the parts in isolation and use this information to tell us how the parts will contribute the behaviour of the whole. Clearly then, the method assumes that something in what we learn when we observe the parts in isolation remains true when the parts are part of a larger whole. In particular, since all but the most trivial complex systems will involve causal interactions between their component parts, we must assume that something about these causal relations remains constant from one situation to another. Nancy Cartwright points out that we certainly donÇt assume that it is the behaviour of the parts that remains constant from one situation to another. Not only would such an assumption be false, it would trivialise the notion of reduction. Standard analyses of science try to avoid this kind of problem by turning their attention from actual behaviour to laws of nature, dispositions, and counterfactual truths. But we will see that these approaches cannot make sense of reductive explanation either: the facts they point to will either not remain constant from one situation to another, or else they will be useless in predicting the behaviour of complex systems. In response to this kind of problem Cartwright introduces the notion of a causal capacity and suggests that it is a systemÇs capacities that remain constant from one situation to another. However, I will argue that although Cartwright is on the right track, when it comes to understanding reductive explanation, her notion of capacities is no better off than the standard analyses it was set to replace. I will argue that what is assumed to be constant in reductive explanation are component causal influences. These influences sit somewhere between CartwrightÇs capacities on the one hand and the dispositions and counterfactuals that appear in standard analyses on the other. I finish by considering whether standard counterfactual, interventionist, or agency analyses of causation have the resources available to make sense of these component causal influences. If they do not, then it would seem that they cannot capture a notion of causation that is fundamental to scientific practice. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation slides Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1078 2006-07-20T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1077 The Specious Present Dainton, Barry William James characterised the specious present as 'the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible'. The doctrine that our conscious awareness is not instantaneous, but rather spans a short interval, is rooted in phenomenology. We can directly perceive change and persistence – e.g., a bird swooping, a tone droning – or so it seems; since change and persistence take time, how we could directly apprehend them unless our consciousness also extends through time? However, the doctrine of the specious present strikes some philosophers as highly problematic, even paradoxical. If these philosophers are right, it is hard to see how our consciousness can be as it seems. Hence the importance of this topic. The fact that there are very different conceptions of the specious present – not to mention a lack of consensus concerning how the term itself should be employed – complicates matters considerably. I will survey the main options and try to impose some order on the situation. I will go on to argue that one conception of the specious present is considerably less problematic than the alternatives; this conception is largely, but not completely, Jamesian in character. I will conclude by considering some implications of accepting the specious present in this form for our understanding of time itself. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation slides Sat, 22 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1077 2006-07-22T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1084 Intervention and Contrastivity Schaffer, Jonathan Jim Woodward has suggested that that interventionism presupposes a conception of causation that is contrastive for both cause and effect. I will discuss the extent to which contrastivity is presupposed in the notions of intervention and causation. Contains one audio recording (mp3) Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1084 2006-07-20T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1013 Nonlocal causation in Maxwell theory Weinstein, Steven Maxwell's equations were the inspiration for special relativity and the principle of relativistic "causality", whereby spacelike-separated events are understood to be causally independent. In this talk, I will show that one of Maxwell's equations actually implies a form of nonlocal causation - causation between what are nominally causally independent events - and show that this sort of causation, while not susceptible to an interventionist or counterfactual analysis, is crucial for many everyday attributions of causal connectedness Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation notes Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1013 2006-07-21T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1007 Causal Asymmetry and Culpability Kutach, Doug In developing an adequate explanation for causal asymmetry it is important to distinguish two importantly different applications of the concept of causation. One role for causation is in prediction. Knowledge of causal generalities allows us to predict how likely various effects will follow, given some alleged cause. In this prediction-permitting role, facts about causation can be empirically checked, e.g. whether this particular planetary probe will land on Venus. Another role for causation is assigning culpability for certain facts, i.e. the chunks of physical stuff that are responsible for the effect occurring. Although we humans sometimes have strong intuitions about how causal responsibility is properly allocated, there is no independent or objective check on whether our intuitions are correct. The asymmetry presumably present in manipulation, influence, and control involve a mixture of both roles. I will try to sort out what the distinction means for our understanding of causal asymmetry. Contains one audio recording (mp3). For additional information please go to http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/Douglas_Kutach/index.html#CausationSydney2006 Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1007 2006-07-20T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1006 Two Varieties of Causal Anti-Realism Weslake, Brad Agency theories of causation have often been criticised for not being sufficiently realist about causation. In my view recent agency theories have not been dialectically effective in addressing this charge. On the one hand there are those such as Huw Price and Peter Menzies, who have appealed to analogies with mind-dependent properties such as secondary qualities (Menzies and Price) and perspectives (Price), have emphasised the experience of agency, and have aimed for reductionòencouraging (despite their disavowals) the view that the agency theory amounts to a kind of subjectivism. On the other hand there are those such as Judea Pearl and Jim Woodward, who in reaction have distanced themselves completely from the centrality of agency (Pearl), or who have sought refuge in non-reductionism, hoping the question of realism can thereby be evaded (Woodward). In this paper I describe a minimal agency view of causation, and place it with respect to issues of realism and anti-realism. I argue that it is confusion over two forms of anti-realism, encouraged by inessential aspects of the mind-dependent analogies, that has seen Pearl and Woodward shy away from endorsing the anti-realist elements in the agency theory. Contains one audio recording (mp3) and one set of presentation slides Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 GMT https://hdl.handle.net/2123/1006 2006-07-19T00:00:00Z