Program

10h-10h55: Emmanuel Picavet (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne): At the interface between objective references and subjective assessments: what place for institutions?

Abstract: In this talk, we'll look at the question of responsibility within the margins of subjective appreciation around common references with an objective basis. Is this only an individual matter? Certainly not, if only because of direct or indirect conflicts of appreciation that pose problems from an institutional point of view. However, the role of institutional intervention is trickier to negotiate than that of epistemic communities or interpersonal dialogue. It is often understood in terms of a quest for clarity or clarification, but the institutionalgame around clarity is anything but clear. It involves its own stakes, calling for special epistemic and moral vigilance. Based on a few examples, we'll try to lay the groundwork in this direction.

11:00-11:55: Stéphane Lemaire (Université de Rennes 1): Revising/constructing responsibility

Abstract: The classical approach to responsibility analyzes its concept on the basis of a number of intuitions and their coherence. The revisionist approach, on the other hand, identifies the concept of responsibility on the basis of its role in the practices that refer to it. In the first approach, an individual is responsible for a fault when he or she is the one to whom it is appropriate to call to account, to act in response to the fault that has been produced, etc., assuming that the notion of appropriate does not itself refer to the notion of responsibility. Recent advocates of these approaches (Vargas, McGeer) have often taken the indirect approach of admitting, following Strawson, that our practices of assigning responsibility are broadly acceptable. The advantage of this approach is that it prevents the attribution of responsibility from varying too much according to contingent and irrelevant circumstances. I would like to suggest that a more radical revisionism that rejects the Strawsonian framework is conceivable, and that it might also overcome the above-mentioned problem.

Lunch

14h-14h55: Marie van Loon (University of Vienna) and Benoit Gaultier (University of Zurich): How is blameable underperformance possible?

Abstract: We often judge that subjects underperformed when they believed or acted as they did. And we often blame them for their underperformances. Surprisingly, the question of how underperformances of a certain variety we commonly attribute to subjects are possible has not received any attention in the literature - which goes, a fortiori, for the question of how blameable underperformances of this variety are possible. In this paper we indicate a series of conditions that are necessary for a performance to be a blameable underperformance of the variety in question and argue that only occurrences of "personal weakness", practical and doxastic, can make the satisfaction of these conditions possible, and so can make blameable underperformance of this variety possible.

15h-15h55: Simon-Pierre Chevarie-Cossette (Université de Neuchâtel): Answering for one's beliefs

Abstract: According to response theory, to be responsible for an act is to be liable to answer for it, i.e. to accept that one is its author, to defend it and to accept its possible consequences. I will argue that response theory applies well to beliefs. It has the advantage of correctly describing bad actions and beliefs for which we are responsible without being to blame for them - in other words, excused actions and beliefs. Response theory also advances the debate around doxastic voluntarism. Some have already shown how epistemic duties can exist despite the limited control we exercise over our beliefs; we can now explain under what circumstances the breach of an epistemic duty may or may not be excused.

Program

10 a.m.: Pierre Thevenin (CNRS): Non-radical doubt and the certainties of legal thought

Abstract : My talk will attempt to bring together several segments of the Romano-Canonical tradition, which could support the idea of a resonance between epistemological inquiry, on the one hand, and the way in which the judicial institution, aided by doctrine, organizes reference to the "truth of facts", on the other. These include the idea of "reasonable doubt", the adages auctoritas non veritas facit legem and ubi casus legis, ibi nulla dubitatio and the principle of res judicata. In so doing, the presentation will seek to identify the involvement of natural reasoning in the conduct of a magistracy, i.e. a power itself shaped by the norms of positive law.

11:00: Marie Cretin-Sombardier (UPEC): Investigating the epistemic conditions of a democratic expression of republican law

Abstract : For Hans Kelsen, knowledge of law is made possible at the price of excluding its normative content from the field of the knowable. Located at the heart of his legal system, and based on Hume's law, this exclusion justifies for Kelsen Democracy as a relativistic regime in which equality and the compromise of values take the place of truth.
However, this radical exclusion, which still largely defines the French boundaries of legal teaching and research, is based on outdated epistemic conditions and a definition of truth. The erosion of distinctions between law/value/fact and the current modesty of truth seem paradoxically to reopen the possibility of a normative science of law that normativist positivism had closed.

14h: Jean-Marie Chevalier (UPEC) : Philosophical clarity and legal clarity

Abstract : Philosophy is often seen as an enterprise of conceptual clarification. Should it place itself at the service of the law, which often requires bringing to full clarity statements of law or silences in the law? Answering in the negative, we hypothesize that there is a specific type of clarity, which is neither rhetorical, nor linguistic, nor even philosophical, but typically legal. This requires us to give legal meaning to the question of whether a legal text is clear, and to specify legal criteria for ambiguity or reasonable disagreement.

14h55: Lena Mudry (University of Zurich): Demographic profiling and statistical evidence

Abstract: Epistemology, as well as civil society, is increasingly interested in demographic profiling. Profiling consists in inferring that an individual possesses a certain property on the basis of his or her membership of a demographic group (race, gender, socio-economic class). Even if we assume that the statistical generalization on which the inference is based does indeed correspond to the facts, and that the inference is probably true, it still seems, in many contexts, inappropriate. Some conclude that demographic profiling reveals a conflict between moral and ethical considerations. The aim of this presentation is to show that this is not the case. In these cases, our best epistemic judgment is also our best moral judgment. In contrast to the moral encroachment, according to which inference is unjustified because of these moral costs, the position defended here is intended to be parallelist. As we shall see, statistical evidence is an epistemically weak basis for knowledge. In our case, the inferences in question are also discriminatory and at odds with our ideals of social equality. Finally, we will discuss these results in the specific context of legal proceedings.

4 p.m.: Benoit Gaultier (University of Zurich): What role for truth in law?

Abstract : In this talk, I will examine the question of what role truth plays in law, and more specifically its role in legal systems and judicial decisions. I will focus in particular on Susan Haack's position on this question, and the arguments that support it.

Program

10h: Conor McHugh (University of Southampton): Weighing for Belief

Abstract: According to the 'weighing model', the deontic status of an option (e.g. as permitted or required) is determined by the weights of the reasons bearing on it. The weighing model is standard in normative theorising about action but, while it is also increasingly popular in epistemology, the details of its application to belief remain relatively under-explored. In this talk I will consider some prima facie challenges to the application of the model to belief and how they can best be overcome.

11h: Ralf Bader (University of Freiburg): Organic wholes and organic parts

Abstract: Holism in the theory of reasons holds that reasons can vary across contexts. This can happen either because different reasons interact such that their combination constitutes a reason of its own, or insofar as the individual reasons themselves are grounded in the context. This paper provides an abstract characterisation of holism that subsumes the two and identifies the choice point at which they diverge. It argues that hybrid approaches that attempt to combine both types are unstable and then shows that contextualist approaches are to be rejected, since they are committed to an extreme form of holism.

14h : Miloud Blekoniene (University of Zurich) : From Seeing to Knowing: The Case of Propositional Perception

Abstract: This paper examines the question as to whether propositional seeing is best thought of as a way of knowing a proposition to be true. After showing how Pritchard's distinction between objective and subjective goodness motivates a negative answer to this question, I examine a challenge raised by Ghijsen for Pritchard's construal of that distinction. I then turn to the connection between propositional seeing and belief. I argue that doxasticism about propositional seeing - the claim that propositional seeing involves belief - ultimately lacks independent motivation and I offer a model of propositional seeing that explains how propositional perception can provide one with a rational basis for forming a perceptual belief. Finally, I discuss in what way the proposed model of propositional seeing may remain compatible with the claim that propositional seeing is a way of knowing a proposition to be true.

14h55 : Jacques-Henri Vollet (Collège de France) : Ignorance: justification or excuse?

Abstract: I argue that ignorance does not justify but, at best, provides an excuse. To argue in favour of that claim, I propose a set of independetly motivated criteria distinguishing cases of justification from (uncontroversial) cases of excuse. On this basis, I show that cases where (non-culpable) ignorance intervenes should rather be understood as cases of excused wrongs rather than as cases of justified wrongs.

Program

9h :ArtūrsLogins (Laval University) : Presentation of Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation, CUP 2022

9h30 : Pascal Engel (EHESS) : Reasons first or norms first?

Abstract: As Artūrs Logins shows in Normative Reasons, there are many ways to understand the omnipresent notion of reason, but also to understand the programs to put reasons "first". But even if his book focuses on the different views of normative reasons, he rejects "constitutivist" positions in terms of norms of correction of attitudes. The problem with these positions is that they underdetermine the reasons for attitudes, and leave us without the possibility of explaining them by reasons to apply them. But in my opinion we cannot explain these norms in terms of reasons. Reasons are, in this sense, secondary.

10h30 : Santiago Echeverri (UNAM) : The Disunity of (Normative) Reasons

11h20 : Conor McHugh (University of Southampton) : We Want Answers: On Reasons, Unity, and Guidance

Abstract: In this talk I will raise some constructive questions about Logins's erotetic view of reasons, and respond to some of his objections to the reasoning view. I will focus especially on issues about the unity of reasons and about guidance.

14h: Eva Schmidt(TU Dortmund): On the Connection between Normative Explanatory Reasons and Normative Reasoning Reasons

Abstract: I reflect on how normative explanatory reasons and normative reasoning reasons relate, calling into question Logins's claim that the two kinds of reasons are fundamentally distinct. First, I argue that being a normative explanatory reason near enough guarantees being a normative reasoning reason; second, I argue that normative explanatory reasons as well as normative reasoning reasons can be weighed, and that they can be weighed against each other. This causes trouble for the Eroteric View.

14h50 : Davide Fassio (Zhejiang University) : Are Reasons Answers to Questions?

Abstract: In Normative Reasons: Between Reasoning and Explanation (2022), Arturs Logins provides a novel reductivist account of normative reasons, what he calls the Erotetic View of Reasons. In this paper, I provide three challenges to this view. The first two concern the extensional adequacy of the Erotetic View. The view may fail to count as normative reasons all and only considerations that are such. In particular, the view seems to both overgenerate and undergenerate reasons. My third concern is that the view may fail to capture the essential, practice-independent nature of reasons, as well as reasons' constitutive and grounding role with respect to other normative properties.

15:30: Roberto Keller (University of Geneva): Reasons, Rationality, and Error-Theory

Abstract: In his recent book, Artūrs Logins (2022) has argued against two leading takes of normative reasons. He has argued against the reasoning view, according to which reasons are, roughly, premises of good reasoning, and he has argued against the explanation view, according to which reasons are, roughly, explanation of ought-facts. His positive proposal, which he terms 'the erotetic view', has it instead that x is a reason to F iff x is part of an appropriate answer to a normative 'why F?' question. This view, he claims, can integrate the best insights of both the reasoning and the explanation views, and it can at the same time do away with their respective drawbacks. In this talk, I will argue that the erotetic view-like the explanation view from which it partially draws inspiration-is, in an important regard, unattractive. The reason for this is that it yields an odd picture of the connection between reasons and rationality. This, if right, should in turn have us question the plausibility of the erotetic view, and reconsider the viability of the reasoning view.

16h10: Jacques-Henri Vollet (Collège de France): Reasons first and "speaking in favor of"

Abstract: In Normative Reasons (2022), Artūrs Logins raises a number of objections against reason-first approaches. All these objections rely in one way or another on the assumption that if a consideration "speaks in favor of" something, it is a reason. I will cast some doubt on that claim and argue that reason-first approaches need not endorse it.

Program

10  h : Jacques-Henri Vollet (Collège de France) :" That's not bullshit! Fake news and intention to deceive "

Abstract : According to a widespread view, fake news do not necessarily include an intention to deceive and some kinds of fake news should be seen as forms of bullshit. In this paper, I argue that the bullshit condition is out the track. While this condition is in itself insufficient to define fake news, it becomes useless when the other necessary conditions are added.

10  h 55 : Benjamin Icard (Institut Jean Nicod) :"  ADynamic Procedure for Information Evaluation in Intelligence "

Abstract : In the field of human intelligence, officers use an alphanumeric scale, known as the Admiralty System, to rate the credibility of messages and the reliability of their sources (e.g. NATO AJP-2.1, 2016). During this evaluation, they are expected to estimate the credibility and reliability dimensions independently of each other (e.g. NATO STANAG-2511, 2003). However, empirical results show that officers perceive these dimensions as strongly correlated (Baker et al., 1968). More precisely, they consider credibility as playing the leading role over reliability, the importance of which is only secondary (Samet 1975). In this talk, we present a formal evaluative procedure, called L_intel, in line with these findings. We adapt dynamic belief revision to make credibility the main dimension of evaluation and introduce dynamic operators to update credibility ratings with the source's reliability. In addition to being empirically sound, we show that L_intel provides an effective procedure to classify intelligence messages along the descriptive taxonomy presented in Icard (2023).

14  h : Robin McKenna (University of Liverpool) :" Should we do our own research? "

Abstract : The slogan "Do Your Own Research" is often adopted by those who are distrustful of recognized authorities and of expert consensus(es). Partly as a result, the extent to which individuals should do their own research has become a live debate within applied epistemology. This talk sets out to do two things. The first is to pinpoint the nature of this debate. It presumably isn't a debate about whether we should sometimes do our own research--we clearly should, at least some of the time. So what, exactly, is the debate about? The second is to argue that we, as applied epistemologists, need to be mindful of the potential value of research conducted by non-experts. We need to be particularly mindful of its potential value in fields that have a history of ignoring and excluding the perspectives of non-experts. I will suggest that patient activist groups are a particularly salient example of this, and discuss some of the ways in which research conducted by patient activist groups is valuable.

14  h 55 : Michel Croce (University of Genoa) :" Epistemic (Im)Partiality in Friendship " (joint work with Matt Jope, University of Edinburgh)

Abstract : Do the norms of good friendship require partiality in judgement as well as in action? Some have argued that friendship indeed requires responding differently to evidence regarding our friends than to similar evidence about our non-friends, offering up a variety of allegedly intuitive cases of epistemic partiality in friendship that seem to violate epistemic norms. In response, others have argued that the appearance of partiality can be accounted for without any direct epistemic norm violation. In this paper we offer a response to these latter views, showing that they are committed to epistemically vicious forms of partiality after all. We then move on to challenge the terms of the debate as a whole by suggesting that not only is partiality at odds with epistemic norms, but it is at odds with norms of good friendship too.

16  h 05 : Glenn Anderau (University of Zurich) :"  Fakenews and epistemic flooding "

Abstract : The advance of the internet and social media has had a drastic impact on our epistemic environment. This paper will focus on two different risks epistemic agents face online: being exposed to fake news and epistemic flooding. While the first risk is widely known and has been extensively discussed in the philosophical literature, the notion of 'epistemic flooding' is a novel concept introduced in this paper. Epistemic flooding occurs when epistemic agents find themselves in epistemic environments in which they are routinely confronted with more information and evidence than they can diligently process. Epistemic flooding is one of the most significant risks epistemic agents run while using social media and one of the reasons why the first risk (being exposed to fake news) is especially pernicious. It is particularly harmful if one ascribes to the Spinozan model of belief acquisition in which belief comes easy. Mitigating the combined threat of fake news and epistemic flooding requires us to think normatively about our epistemic environments and how to better them. This paper turns to the normative framework of epistemic environmentalism in order to accomplish this.

Program

9:30am: Yann Schmitt (CPGE, Lille): "La charrue après les bœufs: une méthode en philosophie des religions" (The cart after the horse: a method in philosophy of religion)
Presentation of Religions et Vérité

10am: Roger Pouivet (Université de Lorraine): "Sans justification ni conciliation. About Yann Schmitt'sReligions and Truth "

Abstract: Yann Schmitt argues that religious pluralism must lead the faithful to suspend or even renounce their belief in God. Conciliationism should be accepted: if epistemic peers disagree, then they must become somehow agnostic. This is based on a deontological conception of rationality and a theory of religious disagreement, both of which are questionable, to say the least. For Yann Schmitt, religious skepticism even leads to the conclusion that no reason fully justifies the claim to truth contained in religious beliefs. But religious skepticism and religious disagreement are not sufficient arguments - if they are arguments at all - against exclusivism and, therefore, the existence of a "true religion".

11:15: Benoit Gaultier (University of Zurich): "On the nature (and rationality) of (religious) faith"

Abstract: I will first present discussions relating to the question of what are the different components of faith, in virtue of which it is distinguished from mere belief, categorical or otherwise. I will then discuss, in this context, the possible specificity of religious faith, and say a few words about the epistemic and practical rationality of faith, religious or otherwise.

14h: Jean-Baptiste Guillon (University of Navarra): "Belief vs. knowledge - two-regime epistemology versus integrated epistemology"

Abstract: In France, the idea that our judgments can be held according to two absolutely distinct regimes - the regime of "belief" and the regime of "knowledge" - is commonly regarded as an unsurpassable foundation of epistemology (particularly the epistemology of religion). This two-regime epistemology stands in contrast to the way things are presented in the analytic world, where all judgements (all "holdings") are called "beliefs" and fall indiscriminately under the authority of the fundamental principles of common rationality (non-contradiction, logical consequences, justification). This is what I will call the "integrated epistemology" approach, an approach in which religious beliefs have no exceptionality of principle (nor privilege of exemption from rational norms, nor a priori irrationality). In this talk, I will examine the origin and problems of two-regime epistemology as an approach to the epistemology of religion.

3 p.m.: Michel Le Du (Centre Gilles-Gaston Granger, UMR 7304): "La religion, une affaire d'image?

Abstract: In Wittgenstein's Lessons on Religious Belief, we find the idea that believing, for example, in the Last Judgment amounts to subscribing to a certain image, and that this image is what holds all the "weight": the idea is that such an image is not simply a picturesque dressing-up for the idea of God, an image that could be replaced if it no longer serves its purpose. Nor is such an image a conjecture open to evaluation. Nor is it attributable to an individual, in the sense that an opinion or hypothesis can be: it is attributable to a collective, a historical religious tradition. This raises the question of the believer's responsibility towards the beliefs in question. We shall endeavor to show that certain magical beliefs (such as belief in oracles) raise similar problems. The collective nature of the images in question will also be explored.

4:30pm: Round-table discussion with Yann Schmitt, Jean-Marie Chevalier, Benoit Gaultier, Jean-Baptiste Guillon, Michel Le Du, Roger Pouivet, Jacques Vollet.

Program

9:30am: Jacques-Henri Vollet (Université Paris-Est Créteil): "The cost of error: antiluminosity and excuses"

10h45: Léna Mudry (University of Zurich): "Suspension and its epistemic limits"

14h: Benoit Guilielmo (University of Zurich): "The nature of inquiry"

15h15: Santiago Echeverri (UNAM): " Error possibilities and epistemic rationality"

Program

9am: Paul Egré (CNRS) "Truth is Flat and Bumpy"

10h: Thomas Boyer-Kassem (Université de Poitiers) "Is it relevant to say that "the majority of people think that P"? On the extension of majority judgment in epistemology"

11am: Cyrille Imbert (CNRS) "Epistemology of explanatory knowledge and informational relevance: types of graduality to the rescue of naturalism"

12h: Arturs Logins (University of Zurich) "What is the 'weight' of reasons if justification admits no degrees?"

2pm: Jacopo Benedetti (Université Paris IV) "Degrees of belief and skepticism"

3pm: Valentin Teillet (EHESS) "The threshold of gradual knowledge"

4pm: Jacques-Henri Vollet (University of Geneva) "The scale of certainty"

Program

10:30am: Magalie Schor (University of Geneva) "A Virtue Epistemology of Emotions"

11:30am: Émile Thalabard (CNRS/Paris-Sorbonne) "A Somewhat Cartesian Account of Epistemic Emotions"

12:30pm: Lunch break

2pm: Arturs Logins (University of Geneva) "Emotions and Evidence: No Knowledge, no Cry"

3pm: Julien Dutant (King's College) "The Threshold of Belief and the Value of Punishment"

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Program

10am: Miloud Belkoniene (University of Glasgow), "Grasping in Understanding "

11am: Benoit Gaultier (University of Zurich), "Compréhension et dépendance épistémique" (Understanding and epistemic dependence)

12h: Dominique Homo-Canavelli (Université Aix-Marseille), "Réponse à B. Gaultier"

1pm: Lunch break

2pm: Roger Pouivet (Université de Lorraine, IUF), "Does epistemology need wisdom?"

3pm: Pascal Engel (EHESS), "Quassim Cassam on the vices of the mind"

4pm: Jacques Vollet (University of Geneva), "Can epistemicakrasia be justified?"

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Program

10 a.m.: B. Gaultier (Aix-Marseille Université / GRÉ), "The Dialectics of the New Evil Demon Problem"

11am: E. Lamy (ESCP Europe / GRÉ), "Time to fly the nest: toward an operational social epistemology"

12h: J. Vollet (University of Hamburg / GRÉ), "The warrant account of action and the prominence of know "

2pm: J-M. Chevalier (UPEC / GRÉ), "Raisonnement, rationalisation et duperie de soi" (Reasoning, rationalization and self-deception)

15h: M. van Loon (University of Basel / GRÉ), "Responsibility for self-deception"

16h: M. Sarzano (University of Basel / GRÉ), "Costly false beliefs"

Program

10:30am: B. Gaultier (Aix-Marseille Université), "An epistemic reason to bet on God's non-existence"

11:15am: J. Dutant (King's College, London), "Justification in the image of knowledge"

13h45: A. Logins (University of Fribourg), "Reasons without reasoning"

2:30 p.m.: J. Vollet (SNSF / University of Hamburg), "Engel's purism: reasons to believe and reasons to form beliefs"