Gareth Evans Memorial Lectures

Hilary Term 2011

Professor François Recanati (Institut Jean-Nicod)

Title:	Mental Files and Identity
Abstract:	Mental files serve as individual or singular concepts. Like singular terms in the language, they refer, or are supposed to refer. What they refer to is not determined by properties which the subject takes the referent to have (i.e. by the information stored in the file), but through relations to various entities in the environment in which the file fulfills its function. Files are based on acquaintance relations, and the function of the file is to store whatever information is made available through the relations in question. I offer a typology of files. The most important distinction is between proto-files and conceptual files. In contrast to proto-files, conceptual files can host not only information derived through the specific relation on which the file is based, but also information about the same object gained in some other way.
	In this framework identity comes into the picture twice. (i) Identity is presupposed when two pieces of information occur in the same file. Such ‘presumptions of identity’ ground the linguistic phenomenon of de jure coreference, which takes place when two singular terms, or two occurrences of a singular term, are associated with the same file. (ii) Judgments of identity work by linking two distinct files, thereby enabling information to flow freely between them. This corresponds to de facto coreference. (Linking is not merging ; identity judgments have the effect of merging files only when the files belong to a very specific category, that of ‘encyclopedia entries’ — a type of conceptual file based on a higher-order relation rather than on a specific acquaintance relation.) In the last part of the talk I will discuss, and attempt to rebut, two objections to the mental-file account. According to the first objection, the account is circular ; according to the second objection, de jure coreference cannot be accounted for it in terms of identity of the associated mental files because de jure coreference is not a transitive relation.
Details:	The Hilary Term 2011 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture will take place at 5pm on Tuesday 25 Jan 2011 (Week 2) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Previous Lectures:

Trinity Term 2010

Professor Ronald Dworkin (NYU)

Title:	Truth in Interpretation
Abstract:	The lecture will defend a theory about the possibility and character of truth in interpretation across all its genres: literature and art, history, law, psychodynamics, sociology, philosophy and conversation.
Details:	The Trinity Term 2010 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 18 May 2010 (Week 4) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Hilary Term 2010

Professor Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University, New York and University College, London)

Title:	Self-Consciousness
Abstract:	Self-consciousness is something more specific than consciousness. An umbrella characterization of a self-conscious state is that it is one in whose content the subject features as an element, and features as himself. I distinguish two varieties of such self-consciousness, and discuss their significance and relations. One variety of self-consciousness can be called perspectival self-consciousness. I propose an account of the nature of perspectival self-consciousness, and consider its relations to: Gallup’s mirror test for self-consciousness; Shoemaker’s conception of immunity to error through misidentification; to the possession of a conception of many minds; to some of the Sartre’s ideas on what it is to conceive of oneself as an object; and to the mirror-neuron phenomena. A second variety of self-consciousness can be called reflective self-consciousness. I offer a characterization of this too, its epistemological significance, and consider the ways in which perspectival self-consciousness and reflective self-consciousness have to cooperate if a thinker is to attain certain epistemic goals. I conclude with some reflections on the bearing of the metaphysics of subjects of consciousness, and the metaphysics of their properties, on the explanation of epistemic and conceptual phenomena.
Details:	The 2010 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 2 Mar 2010 (Week 7) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Hilary Term 2009

Professor Elliott Sober (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Title:	Parsimony Arguments in Science and Philosophy
Abstract:	Parsimony arguments are advanced in both science and philosophy. How are they related? In this lecture, I'll describe the justifications that attach to two types of parsimony argument that occur in science. In the first, parsimony is a surrogate for likelihood. In the second, parsimony is relevant to estimating how well a model will predict new data when fitted to old. I'll then consider how these two justified forms of argument might apply to the mind/body problem.
Details:	The 2009 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 10 Feb 2009 (Week 4) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Trinity Term 2007

Professor John McDowell (Pittsburgh)

Title:	Avoiding the Myth of the Given
Abstract:	Not Available
Details:	The 2007 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 8 May 2007 (Week 3) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Trinity Term 2006

Professor Richard Heck (Brown University)

Title:	Composing Thoughts from Senses
Abstract:	Not Available
Details:	The 2006 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 23 May 2006 (Week 5) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Trinity Term 2005

Professor Stephen Yablo

Title:	Non-Catastrophic Presupposition Failure
Abstract:	My topic will be the problem of presupposition failure. The claim will be that there is no such problem - more like an opportunity of which natural language takes extensive advantage. The last two sentences are a case in point. The first was, "My topic will be the F"; the second was, "There is no F." If the second sentence is true, then the first suffers from presupposition failure, hence it should strike us as compromised or undermined. That it doesn't shows that presupposition failure need not always have the result that (as Strawson puts it) "the whole assertive enterprise is wrecked." I will sketch a theory of how catastrophe is avoided in such cases, and speculate on the larger philosophical implications.
Details:	The 2005 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 31 May 2005 (Sixth Week) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.

Michaelmas Term 2004

Professor Tim Scanlon (Harvard)

Title:	Means and Ends
Abstract:	The paper examines the idea that we should treat others as ends in themselves, and never merely as means, and it attempts to identify the sources of the moral appeal of these ideas. Do they offer a general characterization of moral wrongness? Or a way of identifying a particular sort of wrong? The paper distinguishes these two aims and draws also on the distinction between wrongness and the meaning or significance of an action.
Details:	The 2004 Gareth Evans Memorial Lecture took place at 5pm on Tuesday 16 November 2004 (Sixth Week) in the Gulbenkian Lecture Theatre, St Cross Building, Manor Road.