Dear all, Elizabeth Fricker (University of Oxford) will give a talk entitled: "Satnavs - Good or Bad?". (Abstract below)
The talk will take place in Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, 11am to 12, followed by lunch. As usual, everyone, from any department or gender, is welcome to attend. Best wishes, Ellen Judson, Magali Krasny, Lena Robaszkiewicz and Ella Whiteley for WIP http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/women-in-phil Abstract: In the modern world there is ever-increasing division of epistemic and practical labour. Each one of us is able to tap into a vast inherited wealth of accumulated scientific, historical and cultural knowledge, which we accept on trust. Doing so gives one epistemic riches one could not possibly aspire to achieve just through deploying one's own cognitive resources. But there is a cost to this extensive epistemic dependence on others. One cost is that it generates a correlative practical dependence. If I know nothing about how my car works, I have no option but to trust the account my mechanic gives me of what is wrong with it, and how much it truly costs to repair it. Whenever I delegate a domain of epistemic and practical expertise relevant to my life to another, I incur risks - of being duped, or let down, or misled. More than this, I lessen my own control over my own life, and I am a passive recipient, not an active skill-exercising agent. - Do the Goods achieved outweigh the Bads incurred? Surely so, but what exactly do we give up on that is of essential value to what humans are, when we do this? I consider these themes. _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
