Dear all, Next week at Serious Metaphysics, Professor Richard Holton (MIT) will be speaking on "Primitive Self-Ascription: Lewis on the De Se" - abstract below.
We'll meet at 4:30pm in the Philosophy Faculty Boardroom. Best, Emily _______________________________________ Abstract: There are two parts to Lewis's account of the de se. First there is the idea that the objects of de se thought (and, by extension of de dicto thought too) are properties, not propositions. This is the idea that is center-stage in Lewis's discussion. Second there is the idea that the relation that thinkers bear to these properties is that of self-ascription. It is crucial to Lewis's account that this is understood as a fundamental, unanalyzable, notion: self-ascription of a property is not ascription of a property to the self, on a par with ascription to someone else. I argue that this dimension of Lewis's account has been largely overlooked, especially given the current tendency to understand the account in terms of centred worlds. It is the source of many problems. First-person plural ascriptions risk becoming baroque; a plausible generality constraint is lost; and, once the de dicto is analyzed as Lewis suggests, de dicto ascriptions become objectionably egocentric. _____________________________________________________ Sent by the CamPhilEvents mailing list. To unsubscribe or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents Posts are archived here: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive
