Dear all, Matthew Simpson (Cambridge University) will be speaking at the next meeting of the Moral Sciences Club with a talk titled *Pragmatism and the No Exit Objection*. The abstract for this talk is below:
*One kind of so-called pragmatism, recently defended by writers like Blackburn, Gibbard, Thomasson, Price and others, promises a way out of worries about the metaphysical status of a range of contentious facts and properties. These pragmatists argue that by giving a distinctive explanation of, say, ethical language, we can avoid metaphysical worries about what ethical facts are like and how they fit into the world as described by the natural sciences. However, Simon Blackburn has recently argued that pragmatist theories cannot be given for all kinds of language, and those kinds for which such a theory cannot be provided will raise metaphysical questions that pragmatism cannot dissolve. I call his argument the No Exit Objection. Huw Price has responded, arguing that pragmatism can still be true in the cases Blackburn describes. In this talk I will argue that even if Price's argument saves pragmatism in those cases, it does not yield the metaphysical relief pragmatism promises us, and that in fact this holds in many more cases than one might think.* This meeting will be held on Tuesday the 16th from 2.30 until 4.15 in Sidgwick Hall in Newnham College.The meeting will be followed by tea and coffee in the philosophy faculty. For those who have not yet paid, there is a yearly membership fee of £7.50 for students and £15 for others (alternatively, students can pay a one-off fee for the meeting of £2 and others can pay a one-off fee of £3). These fees can be paid online (at the following link: http://onlinesales.admin.cam.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=75&prodvarid=87) or in cash on the day. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Best wishes, Adam Bales and Daisy Dixon -- Daisy Dixon and Adam Bales Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ 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.
