Dagmar Pichová: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Role of Epistemic Authority in Early Modern Scientific Debates
Dagmar Pichová (Masarykova univerzita) Émilie Du Châtelet and the Role of Epistemic Authority in Early Modern Scientific Debates Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce. ABSTRACT: The work of French philosopher and scientist Émilie Du Châtelet has been intensively studied in recent decades, following the growing interest in rediscovering women scholars in the history of philosophy and science. In my lecture, I propose to analyze the role of epistemic authority in the texts of Émilie Du Châtelet and the epistolary debates she was involved with. I will also focus on the tension between Du Châtelet’s (self)representation as a female epistemic authority, a femme savante aspiring to achieve a position in the scientific community, and a femme du monde, a high-ranking aristocratic woman who respects the roles attributed by traditional galanterie.
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Tomáš Koblížek: The impact of populist hate speech and misinformation: Insights from the analytic philosophy of language and cognitive science
Tomáš Koblížek (FLÚ AVČR) https://dap.flu.cas.cz/cz/lide/tomas-koblizek The impact of populist hate speech and misinformation: Insights from the analytic philosophy of language and cognitive science Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce. ABSTRACT: The conventional view of the effects of hate speech and misinformation, as employed in political populism, focuses exclusively on the direct effects of this type of speech: the spread of hate and the propagation of false beliefs. In this talk, I will focus on the so far underexplored side effects of the populist discourse, which I will divide into two types: linguistic and cognitive. These are cognitive harms (disinterest in politics, impaired attention, cognitive biases, weakened tendency to verify facts, etc.) and linguistic harms (normalisation of lies, hate speech, conspiratorial discourse). I will show why the side effects of populism must be taken into account if we want to investigate the severity of this phenomenon.
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Richard Moore: Social Attention in Humans and Great Apes: A Key Difference and its Possible Origins
Richard Moore (University of Warwick) Social Attention in Humans and Great Apes: A Key Difference and its Possible Origins Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce. ABSTRACT: In this talk I argue for a small but fundamental difference between humans and other great ape species: our willingness to use others as sources of information about the world. I will argue that this difference explains both our capacity for high fidelity information, and our superior understanding of informative pointing. I then consider the possible origins of this difference. I start this talk by considering the question of when it is appropriate to assume that uniquely human cognitive traits are a product of adaptations in the hominin lineage, and when alternative, non-adaptationist explanations should preferred. I’ll argue that while adaptationism is a highly successful explanatory strategy in the biological sciences, often this strategy has been abused in studies of cognitive development. When this happens, appeals to adaptation are often less a way of explaining human origins than they are of avoiding giving explanations of cognitive development. I illustrate my case with reference to two skills identified as central to human cognitive uniqueness – pointing and imitation, which are sometimes argued to […]
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Marc Slors: Collective intentionality, large-group collaboration and embodied we-feeling
Marc Slors (Radboud University) Collective intentionality, large-group collaboration and embodied we-feeling Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce. ABSTRACT: Collective intentionality is influentially employed to explain the emergence of large-scale collaboration by Tomasello and his followers. In this talk I will criticize this explanation and draw some philosophical conclusions from this critique. Crudely put, Tomasello considers the adoption of norms, conventions, and institutions to be motivated by the shared belief that these are beneficial to the group’s thriving and surviving. I will argue that in the case of societies larger than hunter-gatherer groups this collective version of a Humean belief-desire psychology is an implausible overintellectualization, as the required global group-level motivations are much too complex to entertain. As an alternative, I propose to explain at least very many norms, conventions and institutions in terms of psychological tendencies—such as strong reciprocity, basic trust, and overimitation—that are the product of group-level natural and cultural selection. On this alternative explanation, large-scale collaboration is the product of local concerns on the one hand, and norms, conventions and even institutions that are grounded in collective embodied habits on the other. I will highlight two philosophical consequences of this view: (i) collective intentionality is a description of the resulting […]
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Tomáš Etzler: Čína císaře Si
Tomáš Etzler Čína císaře Si ABSTRAKT: Čínský prezident Si Ťin-pching nastoupil k moci v Říši středu před dvanácti lety. Jak nástup nejmocnějšího čínského vůdce od dob Mao Ce-Tunga zemi změnil? Jak změnil práci zahraničních novinářů? Stane se Čína skutečně supervelmocí 21. století? O těchto i jiných otázkách bude debatovat na půdě Filozofické Fakulty Univerzity Hradec Králové Tomáš Etzler.
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Josef Šlerka: Generativní AI jako simulátor lidí
Josef Šlerka (Univerzita Kralova) Generativní AI jako simulátor lidí ABSTRAKT: ChatGPT a další modely přináší pro humanitní vědy zcela nečekanou možnost obohatit svoje výzkumné metody o možnosti simulace. Tím ovšem vykročí zcela mimo svůj obvyklý metodologický rámec. Jaké důsledky toto vykročení přináší? A jak vůbec vykročit? To jsou dvě základní otázky, které se pokusíme v přednášce spojené s malým workshopem zodpovědět.
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Alice Murphy: Aesthetics and Agency in Experiments
Alice Murphy (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) Aesthetics and Agency in Experiments ONLINE PŘEDNÁŠKA! Zoom link: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/92122588367 ABSTRAKT: We place agency front-and-center in the aesthetics of science, in particular, in the aesthetics of experiments. We consider how elements of experimental design serve to generate aesthetic experiences in those carrying out the experiment. Our argument is grounded in an analogy between experiments and games (as understood by Suits and Nguyen): both involve artificial practical environments designed to give participants an aesthetic experience of their own agency. We apply the account to Newton’s optical work, and contrast this with contemporary experimental practices, where significantly more ‘experimental distance’ holds between the experimenter and the result. Taking the agency of experimental practice seriously enables a richer account of the role of aesthetic values, sensibilities, and judgments in science. Based on joint work with Adrian Currie and Kirsten Walsh.
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Vladislav Suvák: Sókratovský dialóg ako žáner
Vladislav Suvák (Prešovská univerzita v Prešove) Sókratovský dialóg ako žáner ABSTRAKT: Zámerom prednášky je pozrieť sa na sókratovský dialóg ako na literárny žáner. V nadväznosti na práce Michaila Bachtina venované románom Dostojevského sa pozrieme na sókratovský dialóg a menippovskú satiru ako na bezprostredných predchodcov európskeho románu. Pokúsime sa o charakteristiku základných rysov sókratovského dialógu a Bachtiniove úvahy doplníme o poznámky, ktoré sa opierajú o texty a fragmenty sókratovských autorov, s kterými Bachtin pracuje minimálne alebo s nimi nepracuje vôbec. Sústredíme sa na niekoľko bodov: (1) na dialogickú povahu pravdy a ľudského premýšľania o pravde; (2) na základné postupy rozvíjajúce diskusiu (synkrisis a anakrisis); (3) na ideologický charakter sokratovského dialógu; (4) na sujetovú situáciu, ktorá posilňuje charakter diskusie. Výsledkom našich exkurzov po textoch sókratovských dialógov by mohlo byť lepšie porozumenie tomu, čo vlastne sledujú sókratovskí autori svojím písaním.
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Ivan Koniar: O definícii autonómnych zbraňových systémov
Ivan Koniar (Katolícka univerzita v Ružomberku) O definícii autonómnych zbraňových systémov ABSTRAKT: Prednáška sa zameria na prebiehajúcu diskusiu o definícii autonómnych zbraňových systémov. Táto diskusia bude predstavená pomocou dvoch prístupov k definícii autonómie: (1) autonómia ako vzťah človek – stroj a (2) autonómia ako komplexnosť rozhodovacích schopností stroja. Cieľom je kriticky zhodnotiť súčasný stav diskusie o definícii autonómnych zbraní a analyzovať kľúčové otázky súvisiace s jednotlivými prístupmi k definovaniu takýchto zbraní. Tvrdím, že v súčasnom diskurze ani jeden z prístupov neposkytuje dostatočný základ pre definovanie autonómnych zbraňových systémov.
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Tomasz Żuradzki: Who are the worst off? Well-being and time
Tomasz Żuradzki (Jagiellonian University) Who are the worst off? Well-being and time Přednáška proběhne v anglickém jazyce. ABSTRACT: A seminal presentation of prioritarianism states that “Benefiting people matters more the worse off these people are” (Parfit 1997). However, there is no agreement on who counts as ‘the worst off’. The dimension on which I concentrate in this paper is the dynamic aspect, that is, different ways one can conceptualize someone (or a group) as the worst off over time. While some assume that expected benefits matter more the worse off the recipient is in the world such-as-it-is (input prioritarianism, see Segall 2016), others argue that what matters is the distribution that is relatively the best (in comparison with other possible distributions resulting from other possible interventions) for those who are worse off in that distribution while ignoring the situation of the worst off in the world such-as-it-is (output prioritarianism, see Eyal, Herlitz 2023). Moreover, some argue that a decision-maker should categorize the worst off by referring only (or primarily) to their entire lifetime, others that only (or primarily) to some part of their lifespan. The first view (Adler 2019), which is dominant among philosophically oriented scholars (as […]
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