ESAP News

European Society for Analytic Philosophy Newsletter

ESAP is pleased to present you with the first issue of its Newsletter. The Newsletter aims at informing ESAP members in events in the analytic community in Europe. We are setting up an ESAP network of correspondents all over Europe. If you wish to let us know about activities you or your department are planning (conferences, seminars, workshops, and the like) or about important philosophical events that have recently taken place, please contact either your na- tional correspondent or the newsletter editor (see e-mail addresses below). For longer reports, as well as for urgent news, the Local organizing team at Maribor is prepmng an electronic bul- letin and a homepage. We will keep you informed as we proceed.

Nenad MiSEeviC, President of ESAP Elisabeth Pacherie, Editor of the Newslet- ter

Correspondents of the ESAP Newsletter: Austria: Winfried Loeffler E-mail: Winfried.Loeffler@uibk.ac.at Czech Republic: James Hill E-mail: phil@earn.cvut.cz Germany: Michael Groneberg E-mail: mgroneb@gwdg.de Great-Britain: Shahrar Ali E-mail: uctysma@ucl.ac.uk Italy: Pierdaniele Giaretta E-mail: giaretta@wl.unipd.it Slovenia: Bozidar Kante E-mail: bozidar.kante@guest.arnes.si Spain: Conception Martinez Vidal E-mail: 1flpcmav.usc.es Sweden: Toni Ronnow-Rasmussen E-mail: Toni.Ronnow-Rasmussen@fil.lu.se Switzerland: Kevin Mulligan E-mail: Mulligan@uni2a.unige.ch Turkey: Ufuk Cakmak E-mail: ucakmak@hamlin.cc.boun.edu.tr

This list of correspondents will shortly be completed. In the meanwhile, for other countries, please contact: Elisabeth Pacherie Editor of the Newsletter E-mail: esapnews@poly.polytechnique.fr

I STEERING COMMITTEE I New ESAP President and Steering Committee

During the Congress a General Assembly of the Society was held at which around 80 people were present. The President reported on Society activities during his period of office, notably forging of the link with Dialectica. It was decided to continue the practice of not charging a membership fee for the Society. Members were encouraged to submit their own and their stu- dents’ best work to Dialectica for publication.

Dialectica Vol. 50, No 4 (1996)

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There was an election for President and Steering Committee of the Society. Nenad MiSEeviC (Maribor, Slovenia was elected uno posed as new President. Professor Miscevic pledged to set up a web site with electronic buietin for the Society to help overcome current com- munication difficulties, and he also declared his intention to foster analytic philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe (long felt to be desirable by the Society) by setting up a regional division ESAP - Central and Eastern. After a ballot the following persons were elected to the Steering Committee: Arda Denkel (Istanbul) Manuel Garcia-Carpintero (Barcelona) Samuel Guttenplan (London) Kevin Mulligan (Geneva) Julian Nida-Rumelin (Gottingen) Eva Picardi (Bologna) Wlodzimierz Rabinowicz (Lund) Francois Recanati (Paris) Following the conference a membership drive via the internet brought in several dozen new members: membership currently stands at 1050. Society records are now being transferred from Leeds to Maribor. Through this Medium I wish to thank members and especially the National Representa- tives for their support during my Presidency and look forward to the Society flourishing in the years ahead.

Peter Simons Outgoing President, ESAP

I PAST EVENTS I SIFA I1

“Philosophy and philosophical analysis, theoretical perspective and historiographical revisions” Vercelli, February, 18-21, 1996 The second national conference of the Italian Society of Analytic Philosophy gathered 141 participants, including nine invited speakers. Fortpone papers were given, out of sixty submitted. The conference included sessions on ethics, philosophy of mind, logic and philosophy of language, historiographical revisions, philosophy of politics and philosophy of law. The title of the conference is indicative of the strong commitment which philosophy still has to historicism in Italy. Indeed it is a well-known and even trivial fact that analytic philosophy studies Descartes and Arnauld - to take just two examples - in a different manner from that in which these philosophers are studied by historians of philosophy in Italy and France. However, it may be useful to compare and contrast these different ap- proaches. This was the subject of Emanuela Scribano’s talk, in which she made ref- erence to Robert Sleigh’s distinction between exegetical history of philosophy and phil- osophical history of philosophy. The former has only as its goal the comprehension of a philosophical text. When an invalid argument is individuated, it is analysed in its his-

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torical and linguistic context, so that its meaning is grasped. In contrast, those involved in philosophical history of philosophy study an author or a text only if they present an interesting solution to a problem which professional philosophers consider important. Philosophical history of philosophy sharply distinguishes between good and bad argu- ments, and when an argument proves to be invalid or unsound, it is no longer worth stu- dying. This latter approach to philosophy treats as irrelevant the history of philosophi- cal problems as well as the philosophical meaning of some (perhaps important) bad ar- guments. Yet according to Scribano, this approach to the history of ideas does not help one gain an understanding of what X said in its proper context. Still, the construction of (good) arguments, as well as their analysis and evaluation, inspired most of the talks in Vercelli. Among the topics discussed were the following: the relation between theory of meaning and a particular theory of perception; the relation between self-consciousness and proprioception; the relation between truth and justification in fiction; the relation between willing and deciding. The first of these issues was addressed by Kevin Mulligan who presented a theory of meaning, whose sources are Husserl and Biihler. Mulligan argues that semantic rela- tions are intentional, but their intentionality is based on that of perception. Gianfranco Soldati argued that there is a relation of dependence between the concept of self and proprioception, such that the awareness I have of myself depends on the manner in which I am acquainted with my own body. This view allows one to avoid metaphysical idealism, according to which self-consciousness concerns only facts which are necessar- ily subjective (and are therefore mental). At the same time, the relation between self- consciousness and proprioception is compatible with a certain kind of epistemic and behavioural immunity to error. Marco Santambrogio addressed the topic of truth in fic- tion by analysing a paradox which recall’s Kripke’s in A Puzzle about belief. Santambro- gio argued that, in fiction, the concept of truth does not have the relation with the con- cept of justification it usually has in non-fictional contexts. More precisely, in fictional contexts, propositions are not objects of assertion; rather, one pretends to give one’s as- sent to a particular proposition. From this it follows that the concept of truth in fiction does not involve the notion of possible worlds and that it is rendered independent of both that of justification and that of belief. Finally, Alfred0 Civita maintained that classical decision theories present a distorted picture of the relation between willing and deciding. According to these theories, willing precedes deciding as its mental cause; the one who decides is seen as someone who knows perfectly well what he wants, and con- sequently acts. By contrast, Civita claims that deciding is a mental process, in the course of which the agent shapes his will. Therefore, the content of one’s will is not completely determined before deciding. According to this viewpoint, action does not immediately follow a thought (the thought that something is desirable). Rather, thought follows ac- tion: if I have to decide what to do, I decide, and then I try to make up my mind about what are in fact my preferences and goals.

Clotilde Calabi

Naturalized Semantics and its Methodology Maribor, Slovenia, June 10-15, 1996

The symposium was focused upon Michael Devitt’s book Coming to our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism. Three important questions get insufficient attention in semantics. What are the semantic tasks? Why are they worthwile? How

308 ESAP News

should we accomplish them? The central purpose of the book is to answer these “meth- odological” questions “naturalistically” and to see what semantic program follows from the answers. The approach is “anti-Cartesian”, rejecting the idea that linguistic or con- ceptual competence yields any privileged access to meanings. Thirty participants from the USA, Canada, England, Australia and Slovenia gave papers on the philosophical and linguistic aspects of semantics. The session on Metho- dology was dedicated to the methodological approaches in philosophical semantics. Paul Pietroski talked about the consequences of some of Frege’s semantic theses; Dorit Bar-On discussed a much heated question concerning the important contrast between semantic facts and other kinds of empirical facts arguing that the contrast is worth pres- erving. William Demopoulos contrasted Devitt’s and Dummet’s approaches to seman- tics and examined these two opposing views. Paul Horwich presented and advocated his own deflationary theory of meaning. Two papers were dedicated to the issues of seman- tics and linguistics. Peter Ludlow defended a particular version of referential semantics while at the same time conceding to Chomsky his core assumptions about the nature of language. Michael Devitt discussed the points of agreement as well as essential dis- agreement with Chomskian approach to linguistics and semantics. The papers in the second session discussed different approaches to belief ascriptions: Anne Bezuidenhout criticized Devitt’s rejection of mild context-dependence for atti- tude ascriptions. Kent Bach discussed different puzzles about belief reports. Lou Goble argued that most propositional attitude ascriptions are neither opaque nor transparent. Eugene Mills discussed the thesis that objects of belief are sentences in the head. Wil- liam Taschek defended the thesis that belief ascriptions are context dependent. The session entitled “A Priori“, comprised papers by Yagisawa, Miscevic, Rey, Bigelow, King, and Neale. The next six papers were dedicated to the issues of Holism and Local- ism in the philosophy of language and mind. The last session was on Meaning. The proceedings of the symposium with Devitt’s responses will be published in two is-

Dunja Jutronic-Tihomirovic sues of Acta Analytica.

ECAP II

The 2nd European Congress of Analytic Philosophy took place on 5-7 September 1996 at the University of Leeds. Over 150 participants from more than twenty countries list- ened to 120 papers on a wide range of topics. Invited speakers were Hugh Mellor, Mark Sainsbury and David Wiggins. Despite a busy programme there was enough time for a fair discussion of papers and most speakers had a good audience. The most popular areas for papers were, predictably, philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but there were also strong sections on metaphysics and the history of analytic philosophy. The single most frequently discussed topic was the externalism/internalism debate.

Peter Simons

Fifth Karlovy Vary Symposium On Analytical Philosophy, Interpreting Davidson Karlovy Vary, Septembre 9-14, 1996

This year the subject was the philosophy of Donald Davidson, with particular emphasis on his philosophy of language. Professor Quine gave a public talk and made inspiring

ESAP News 309

contributions to the discussions. Other speakers included Dagfinn Fdlesdal, Roger Gibson, Anthony Grayling, Paul Horvich, Richard Jeffrey, Ernie Lepore, John McDo- well, Nenad MiEeviC., Stephen Neale and Eddie Zemach, and Robert Moms. The vigorous and frank exchange of views and the atmosphere of openess prompted Davidson to give us not only robust defences of his basic positions, but also news of de- velopments in his thinking, retractions of some of his previous arguments, and reflec- tions on the merits of others’ understandings of his work. In response to a critique of the “omniscient interpreter” argument by Eddie Zemach, for instance, Davidson disclosed that he already regretted ever having introduced it, and later we were told that the same went for the “swampman”. He also now rejects the title “coherence theory” for his posi- tion on knowledge. In Externalisms, which opened the proceedings, Davidson put forward his method of triangulation as a form of externalism preferable to two others - the social externalism of Kripke’s Wittgenstein, and the perceptual externalism of Burge. Despite his doubts about the title, Davidson defended the substance of his coherence theory of knowledge. He justified his famous slogan “nothing can justify the holding of a belief but another belief” by arguing that there could be no rational constraint from outside the totality of our beliefs - “beliefs” including perceptual beliefs. In a gripping exchange with John McDowell, Davidson denied the possibility of there being propositions without our having attitudes towards them. McDowell, for his part, accepted that only something drawing upon our conceptual apparatus could be evidence for a belief, but denied that this something must itself be a belief. Several papers discussed Davidson’s views in relation to Wittgenstein. Barry Smith, in a paper which was (in the true spirit of the later Wittgenstein) explorative and openly in- conclusive, made us feel the Wittgensteinian worry of how it is that I have transparent knowledge of what I mean - “in a flash” - and the problems of making this phenome- non dovetail with a theory of interpretation of third person meanings. Peter Pagin in “Varieties of Triangulation” showed how in the later version of triangulation Davidson needs the second speaker to make possible the distinction, so dear to Wittgenstein, be- tween using a term correctly and just believing that that is what you are doing.

James Hill

19th International Wittgenstein Symposium Kirchberg am Wechsel, August 18, 1996.

Diligent organisers, Professor Peter Koller and Klaus Puhl from the University of Graz, succeeded in gathering together more than hundred participants, among them some of today’s most distinguished moral and political philosophers (Onora O’Neill, David Gauthier, Hugo A. Bedau, Robert E. Goodin, Thomas W. Pogge, and others). The symposium was primarily, though not exclusively concerned with current issues in political philosophy. A number of topics that lie at the intersection of traditionally con- ceived moral and political philosophy were vividly discussed. The first group of prob- lems was concentrated around the notion of border as that which, on the one hand, defines individuals as members of (not only political, but also moral) communities, thereby conferring moral status to them, while on the other hand it too often introduces arbitrary limitations on the scope and/or strength of our moral duties and rights. So what a considerable number of authors (O’Neill, Oldenquist, Goodin, Koller, Pogge,

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F0llesdal, Steinvorth, and others) were trying to do in their papers was to find a way of reconciliating the fact that people do live in more or less exclusive political com- munities, which the idea that moral rights and obligations should somehow extend be- yond existing political borders. The second group of questions concerned the issue of war and peace. Over a dozen papers on this particular topic, together with some on the closely related ones (national- ism, national consciousness, secession, and the like) indicated the ongoing philosophi- cal interest in re-assessing predominant moral justification for war, an interest newly awaken as a reaction to the alleged moral purity of Gulf war and later on nurtured by unfortunate killings in former Yugoslavia, Tchetchenyia, Israel,. . . Justice and welfare in society and world order was a third intensively discussed topic. What most of the papers had in common was an attempt to supplement some particular conception of justice (whithin the state as well as between the states) with a more or less detailed picture of what it would take one to realize it in a less than ideal world of the present. For a start, these exercises in applied political philosophy certainly looked promising enough to motivate further research. There were many other interesting papers dealing with various issues in normative pol- itical theory, normative ethics and applied decision-theory (among others, the moral st- atus of animals, justification of tolerance, democracy, liberalism, rationality of collec- tive action, and the like). The symposium has made us aware of the remarkable in- crease, during the last few years, of the interest among European philosophers in analy- tical approach to moral and political issues.

Friderik Klampfer

I FUTUREEVENTS I Conference Announcements

From Semantics to Pragmatics Problems and theories of reference Palermo, Italy, March 22-25, 1997 Tentative list of participants:

Stephen Schiffer, Howard Wettstein, Takashi Yagisawa, Jonathan Berg, Eros Corazza, JCrGme Dokic, Paul Horwich, Kevin Mulligan, Franpis Recanati, An- drea Bonomi, Paolo Casalegno, Michele di Francesco, Paolo Leonardi, Ernest0 Napoli, Marco Santambrogio, Filippo Costa, Antonino di Sparti, Nunzio L a Fauci, Franc0 Lo Piparo, Gianfranco Marrone, Gianni Puglisi, Gianni Riga- monti, Leonard0 Samona, Alberto Voltolini

Information: Dr. Wanda Tasquier Presidenza della Facolta' di Scienze della formazione, Piazza I. Florio 24, 1-90139 Palermo, tel. 0039/91/6956559, fax 0039/91/321665; Dr. Alberto Voltolini Instituto di Filosofia e Scienze dell'uomo, Piazza I. Florio 24,I-90139 Palermo, e-mail: voltolin@cibs.sns.it, tel. 0039/91/6956521, fax 0039/91/6956518

ESAP News 311

Jean Nicod Lectures 1997 The Jean Nicod Lecturer for 1997 is Jon Elster. He will deliver a series of lectures on emotions in Paris in June (Tentative dates: 19, 20, 23, 24) For further information, contact Frangois Recanati, e-mail: recanati@poly.polytechnique.fr

Calls for papers

GAP ZZZ “Rationality, realism, revision” The Third International Congress of the German Society of Analytic Philosophy will take place in Munich, Sept 15-18, 1997. Main speakers: Onora ONeill, Hans Kamp, John McDowell, Nicholas Rescher, Wol- gang Kiinne, Martin Hollis, Richard Boyd. The deadline for submissions is January 15th, 1996 (max. 2000 words, or 7 pp). The deadline for registration is end of April 1997. Organizers: C.U. Moulines, J. Nida-Rumelin, W. Vossenkuhl Papers and requests for further information to be sent to: Michael Groneberg, General secretary of GAP. GAP, c/o Philosophisches Seminar der Universitit Goettingen Humboldtallee 19 - 37073 Gottingen Tel.: 49 551 39 4778 (off.) e-mail: mgroneb@gwdg.de

SOPHA Z The First International Conference of the Francophone Society of Analytic Philosophy will take place in Caen, May 23-25, 1997. Invited Speakers include J. Bouveresse, J. Dokic, P. Gochet, P. Jacob, P. Kotatko, D. Laurier, N. MiikviC, K. Mulligan, C. Peacocke, F. Recanati, M. Seymour, J. Skorupski. Those wishing to submit papers (in all areas of analytical philosophy) should send 4 copies of a summary in French (minimum length 2000 characters and maximum length 5000 characters) no latter than January, 15th, 1996 to: Pascal Engel - Dkpartement de Philosophie, UFR Sciences de L’homme, Universitk de Caen, 14032 Caen Cedex Tel.: 33 2 31 56 56 74, Fax 33 1 31 56 59 82 For further information contact Pascal Engel E-mail: engel@poly.polytechnique.fr

20th International Wittgenstein Symposium The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy.” Kirchberg, Lower Austria, August 10-16, 1997. The symposium will consist of the following six sections: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Wittgenstein

Pragmatic Aspects of Applied Logic The Pragmatic Dimension of Language Pragmatic Problems in the Philosophy of Science Pragmatic Approaches in Ethics and in the Theory of Action Pragmatic Philosophers and Pragmatic Systems of Thought

312 ESAP News

If you want to participate, please contact (preferably between December 1996 and March 1997): The Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society Markt 63, A-2880 Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, Europe Tel/fax: +43 2641 2557 A detailed registration form will then be sent to you. If you return this with the indica- tion that you would like to give a paper, you will receive the guidelines for the sub- mission of papers (deadline: 30 April 1997), along with a list of key words outlining the contents of the sections. Up-to-date information on the next Wittgenstein symposium is obtainable via internet. The Wittgenstein ’97 Home Page can be found at: http: / /www.sbg.ac.at/phs/docs/wittgenstein97.htm

Cent ans de philosophie autrichienne 1838-1 938 Cerisy-La-Salle, 3-10 septembre 1997 (Direction: J. -I? Cometti et Kevin Mulligan) De la naissance de Brentano, en 1838, un an aprks la publication de la Wissenschafts- lehre de Bolzano, jusqu’h la veille de la seconde Guerre mondiale, la philosophie autri- chienne s’est affirmhe comme l’un des pdes les plus novateurs de la reflexion philoso- phique. Champs de rkflexion: Logique et Langage - MCtaphysique - Esprit - SociCtC/lhonomie - Sciences et MathCmatiques - Art Les diffkrentes contributions - limitCes B vingt-six au total - devront necessairement s’inscrire dans l’un de ces champs de rCflexion et s’attacher Ben explorer historiquement ou systkmatiquement un ou plusieurs aspects. La sClection des communications se fera sur la base d’un resume de 6000-8000 signes (5 pages maximum). Les auteurs precise- ront dans quelle mesure ils accepteraient de modifier leur expos6 si les contraintes du thkme et des autres communications l’exigeaient. Les rCsum6s pourront 6tre redigees en fransais, en anglais ou en allemand. I1 sera toute fois recommand6, pendant le collo- que, de prkvoir une communication en francais chaque fois que cela sera possible.

Les textes seront adressCs avant le 31 dCcembre 1996 8:

Universitt de Provence, DCpartement de philosophie, 29, avenue Robert Schuman - 13621 Aix-en Provence cedex 1 Tel/Fax (33) 42 22 62 94 Kevin MULLIGAN UniversitC de Genkve, DCpartement de philosophie, 2, rue de Candolle CH-1211 Genkve 4 Tel705 70 51 - Fax 328 25 66 E-mail: mulliganQuni2a.unige.ch

J.-P. COMETIT

SEMINAR AND CONFERENCE PROGRAMS

Interdisciplinary Seminar “Modular Approaches to cognitive processes ” - Programme 1997 Institut des Sciences Cognitives, Lyon, Coordinator: Pierre Jacob

ESAP News 3 13

Jan. 16th SCmantique et psycholinguistique Speakers: J. Mehler, G. Chierchia

Feb., 20th Hippocampe, cortex et processus de reconnaissance Speakers: E. Rolls, M. Meunier

March, 13th Neurolinguistique et philosophie du langage Speakers: J.F. Nespoulous, D. Marconi

April, 24th ThCorie de l'esprit et schizophrknie Speakers: C. Frith, J. Campbell

May Neurophysiologie de la vision Speakers: S. Thorpe, N. Logothetis

June Pragmatique Speakers: F. Recanati, D. Wilson

For further information, contact Pierre Jacob, e-mail: jacob@poly.polytechnique.fr

Philosophy Programme 1997 (One-day conferences) University of London School of Advanced Study Jan 24th Individual and community

Main speakers: David Archard, Margaret Gilbert, Keith Gra- ham The analytic and the a priori Main speakers: Paul Boghossian, Paul Honvich, Christopher Peacocke Justice and the family Main speakers: Diemut Bubeck, VCronique Munoz-Darde

Main speakers: Roger Crisp, Joseph Raz

Feb 28th

Mar 21st

Jun 27th Well-being

Programme Director Jonathan Wolf Email j.wolff@ucl.ac.uk Conference & membership enquiries to: Programme Administrator Shahrar Ali Email shahrar.ali@ucl.ac.uk Telephone Facsimile (0171) 436 2301

Postal address: Philosophy Programme, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WClE 7HU

(0171) 636 8000 ext 5105

I EUROTOURS I

Professor Steven Davis (Dept of Philosophy, Simon Frazer University, Canada) is vi- siting at CREA, Paris, in January 1997 and May-June 1997. His areas of specializa- tion are: philosophy of language, pragmatics, and philosophy of mind. If you wish to contact him, his e-mail address is: stdavis@poly.polytechnique.fr.

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After a three-month stay at CREA, Paris, Professor Robert Nozick (Dept. Philosophy, Hmard University) will be in Italy from January to June. Prof. Nozick will be guest lec- turer at the Instituto universitario Suor Orsola Benincase in Naples in February and March. If you wish to contact him, his e-mail is: nozick@husc.harvard.edu

Professor Charles Parsons (Dept. Philosophy, Harvard University) will be visiting pro- fessor in Padova for a month from mid-May 1997. He will give a series of lectures and seminars on mathematical structuralism.

Dialectica Vol. 50, No 4 (1996)