• Workshop overview
• Presentations

Workshop overview

This small informal graduate workshop on Epistemology will be held on Sunday 29th March, room 1.01 Dugald Stewart Building. Everyone is welcome and there is no registration fee. The workshop will start at 2pm and end at 7.30pm. Any questions about this event should be directed to Georgi Gardiner at epistemologyworkshops@googlemail.com. This event is part of the Epistemology research group at Edinburgh.

Presentations

• Peter Milne (Stirling)

'Comments on Becker's Reliabilism and Safety'

ABSTRACT. To follow.

• Evan Butts (Edinburgh)

"Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: Problems With Some Solutions to the Generality Problem'

ABSTRACT. To follow.

• Christopher Ranalli (Edinburgh)

'I Cannot Think I Am A BIV'

ABSTRACT. Semantic Externalism is the thesis that the meanings of our terms – and thereby the contents of our propositions – are in part individuated by factors external to our minds. In this paper, I critically assess Hilary Putnam’s antiskeptical argument from his seminal work Reason, Truth and History, where he argues that considerations from semantic externalism alone can be used to demonstrate the falsity of global skepticism (of the Cartesian variety). I will focus upon two versions of the Putnamian antiskeptical argument, namely Crispin Wrights first-person version of the ‘Brain-in-a-vat’, henceforth ‘BIV’, antiskeptical argument, and his third-person version of the ‘BIV’ antiskeptical argument, from his paper 'On Putnam's Proof That We Are Not Brains-in-a-Vat'.