Reading Group as part of the Praxis-CFUL activities

Working language: Portuguese

Organizers: Dr. Ricardo Mendoza-Canales ([email protected]) & Rui Filipe ([email protected])

Wednesdays, from 17h30 to 19h00, according to the calendar below.

To participate, please send an e-mail to the organizers expressing your interest in taking part in the RG.

 

Spring Semester 2021: “Alienation/Reification”

The first edition of the reading group on Topics of Social Philosophy and Critical Theory will address the notions of Alienation and Reification along the history and evolution of both terms in the hegelian-marxist tradition (Hegel, Marx, Rubin, Lúkacs), as well its hermeneutical turn after Heidegger and recent approaches in the frankfurtian Critical Theory (Honneth and Jaeggi). It does not aim to provide a full acknowledgement on the topic, but, rather, to trace a panoramic view on how seemingly side-problems such as subjectivation and emancipation are deeply connected with the economical, social and material conditions that constraint freedom and shape social forms of life.

 

Programme

Session 1 | 10 February 2025 (Zoom link here)

Introduction

Hegel, G.W. (2003). “Independência e dependência da consciência-de-si: dominação e escravidão”. In: Fenomenologia do Espírito. 2ª ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 126-134. Descarregar aqui.

 

Session 2 | 3 March 2025

Marx, K. (s.d.). “Trabalho alienado”. In: Manuscritos Econômico-Filosóficos. Retrieved from here.

 

Session 3 | 17 March 2025

Rubin, I. I. (1987). “A Reificação das Relações de Produção entre as Pessoas e a Personificação das Coisas”. In: A Teoria Marxista do Valor. São Paulo: Polis, 34-43.

 

Session 4 | 7 April 2025

Lúkacs, G. (2003). “A Reificação e a Consciência do Proletariado. Secção I: O fenômeno da reificação”. História e Consciência de Classe. São Paulo: Martin Fontes, 194-240.

 

Session 5 | 21 April 2025

Heidegger, M. Ser e tempo. Secções §27 e §§35-38.

 

Session 6 | 5 May 2025

Honneth, A. (2008). “IV. Reification as Forgetfulness of Recognition”. In: Reification. A New Look to an Old Idea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 52-74.

 

Session 7 | 19 May 2024

Jaeggi, R. (2014). Selected pages of Alienation. New York: Columbia University Press.

 

 

 

Reasons in Deception
Artūrs Logins (University of Zürich)

14 May 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) & on Zoom

Abstract: According to a popular and pretheoretically appealing view, victims of radical deception (e.g., the New Evil Demon scenarios, cf. Cohen and Lehrer (1983) and Cohen (1984)) are epistemically justified in their beliefs about the external world (after all, they have no clue about the appearances being radically misleading). But what reasons are there for them to believe as they do? According to the Sameness Thesis, the reasons for deceived subjects to believe as they do are the same as the reasons for their non-deceived counterparts. I argue that this thesis is false. Once we get a better grasp on how normative reasons work in general, we can see that there are good grounds for doubting the Sameness Thesis. My argument relies on the connection between normative reasons, answers to normative questions, and premises of good patterns of reasoning. Moreover, given additional assumptions about the justification – reasons connection, this conclusion seems to provide a further theory-driven argument against the view that victims of the radical deception cases and their non-deceived counterparts are the same justification-wise. I argue that this conclusion is not as crazy as it might initially appear.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://www.lancog.com/lancog/registration/

Varieties of Risk and Recklessness
Philip Ebert (University of Stirling)

07 May 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) & on Zoom

Abstract: A number of philosophers have recently argued that danger or risk judgments do not track underlying probabilities of a bad outcome and have argued for non-probabilistic notions of risk or danger (Williamson 2009, Pritchard 2016, Ebert, Smith & Durbach 2020). However, the intuitive examples used so far to motivate non-probabilistic notions were often found unconvincing. In this talk, I first present some new experimental work on intuitive risk/danger and recklessness judgements. The data raises a challenge for the probabilistic notion and I discuss different ways in which these intuitive judgments could be explained within a probabilistic framework. In the second part of the talk, I will outline and explain two recently defended non-probabilistic notions: the modal and the normic notion of risk and show how they could explain the relevant data and assess in what way they do better (or worse) than the probabilistic notion of risk. In the last part of the talk, I discuss the notion of recklessness and show how a normic notion of risk can underwrite and motivate a distinctive non-probabilistic notion of recklessness that may do well to explain some of our intuitive judgements about recklessness.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://www.lancog.com/lancog/registration/

NeoRussellian Logicism
Bruno Jacinto (CFCUL/LanCog) & José Mestre (Stirling/LanCog)

30 April 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) & on Zoom

Abstract: Frege’s and Russell’s original projects of deriving the basic laws of arithmetic in pure logic were based on contrasting conceptions of the natural numbers. While Frege thought numbers were logical objects, Russell took them to be attributes of attributes of objects. Both projects failed. The Fregean conception of numbers has been at the basis of attempts to revive the logicist programme. Alas, neoFregean logicism has been the target of devastating objections. All the while, the Russellian route for establishing arithmetic’s logicality has been neglected. Yet, Russell’s is the more promising view on natural numbers. In this talk we show that our NeoRussellian Logicism is capable of finally sustaining the view that arithmetic is nothing but logic. We furthermore indicate one of its striking consequences: that arithmetic is an inherently modal discipline.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://www.lancog.com/lancog/registration/

Hartmut Rosa

Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Uncontrollability, Responsivity and ‚Responsability‘ In Search of a ‘Third Voice’ Between Active and Passive

27 April 2021, 18h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Online seminar (Zoom link here)

 

Abstract

Modern Society is characterized by its consistent drive to expand the horizon of attainability, accessibility, and availability (‘Verfügbarkeit’). This drive is fed on the one hand by the structural requirement of dynamic stabilization, i.e., by the fact that this society needs incessant growth, acceleration, and innovation in order to reproduce and maintain its institutional status quo. On the other hand, the driving force is a specific culturalconception of the good life which defines the ‘good’ as an expansion of the horizon of the knowable, the reachable, controllable, and usable. It will be the core argument of the presentation that this leads to a twofold social pathology: On the one hand, the aspiration for control and domination creates the opposite of the desired state: It creates monstrous forms of uncontrollability such as nuclear explosions, ecological disasters, viral pandemics, or financial market dynamics beyond control. On the other hand, those parts of life that aremade controllable, predictable, available, and commodified turn out to be mute, silent and reclusive for the experiencing subjects. Hence, modern subjects are torn between the search for omnipotent activity and a sense of passive victimhood. By consequence, what is needed is a ‘third voice’ between active control and passive powerlessness, between the active and the passive. The paper will suggest ‘resonance’ as such a mode of relating to the world. It is characterized by affective responsivity, ethical ‘responability’ and the acceptance of the world’s basic uncontrollability.

The Problem of Logical Omniscience: aboutness and impossible worlds approaches
Francisca Silva (LanCog, University of Lisbon)

23 April 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia) & on Zoom

Abstract: Possible worlds semantics has been applied successfully in many areas in Philosophy, including in the construction of epistemic logics in which knowledge is treated as a necessity operator over epistemically possible worlds. This application, however, has been criticized on grounds that it cannot capture non-ideal agents’ systems of knowledge, as logics for knowledge construed in this way have as a consequence that: i) all agents know all logical consequences of what they know; and ii) all agents know all logical truths. These are two very prominent variations of what has come to be known in the literature as the problem of logical omniscience. In my talk I’ll survey and assess two aboutness approaches (Yalcin (2018) and Hawke, Berto and Özgün (2020)) and two impossible worlds approaches (Jago (2014), Berto and Jago (2019) and Bjerring (forthcoming)) to the aforementioned variations of the logical omniscience problem. From this survey some conclusions will follow for what a solution to the problem of logical omniscience should look like for the cases of explicit and normatively relevant implicit knowledge.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://www.lancog.com/lancog/registration/

Interpreting Groups
J. Robert G. Williams (University of Leeds)

16 April 2021, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT+1) | Online, via Zoom

Abstract: Some theories of content entail that an entity cannot be a believer/desirer without being a chooser/perceiver. This includes my version of radical interpretation, on which the correct belief-desire interpretation of an agent is that interpretation which best rationalizes their choices given their evidence. But (I’ll argue) group agents can be believers and desirers, without the group as a whole making choices, and without the group as a whole having any analogue of a perceptual state. Rather than give up on my favourite theory of content or denying group attitudes, I explore a generalization. Drawing on Plantinga’s proper-functionalism theory of warrant, I’ll characterize a radical-interpretation schema in which the choice-evidence-centric version I developed in previous work is just one special case. I’ll draw out connections to related proposals for group thinking by List and Pettit, and Tollefsen.

Free Attendance, but preregistration required: https://www.lancog.com/lancog/registration/

Provisional list of results:

1. João C. Miranda
2. Guilherme Riscali
3. Yazan Freij
4. Silvia Locatelli
5. Marco Gomboso
6. Elisa Mozzelin
7. Manuel Zambrano (ex aequo com 6º lugar)
8. Erik Lind
9. Maura Ceci (ex aequo com 8º lugar)
10. Ignacio Fluxà
11. Jorge Luis Rosales Macías (ex aequo com 10º lugar)
12. Catarina Tello de Castro
13. Octavio Garcia (ex aequo com 12º lugar)
14. Mansour Golpour
15. Stefano Zanni
16. José Camillo Neto
17. Max Mazoteras (ex aequo com 16º lugar)
18. Vladimir Brodskiy (ex aequo com 16º lugar)
19. Youssef Aguisoul
20. Júlio Costa
21. Sara Romão (ex aequo com 20º lugar)
22. Gabriel Reis de Oliveira
23. Mariana Pereira
24. Julien Belhassen
25. Maira Hallack

From the Final Classification List Ordering Proposal, candidates can claim within 10 working days from the date of its publication (from March 31 to April 14, 2025)

For more information: https://www.letras.ulisboa.pt/pt/investigacao/bolsas-flul