Dear All, The Early Career Philosophy Group is meeting again on Friday at 4pm in the *Graduate Common Room* at the Philosophy Faculty (note unusual location). This time, Robin Zheng will be presenting on “Responsibility, Causality, and Social Inequality” (abstract below).
All the best, Bernhard Abstract: Evidence from social psychology suggests that choices of causal explanation, both lay and scientific, are influenced by on different experiences, interests, and values derived from the different social locations occupied by the individuals giving them. However, it is in the nature of (at least some types of) causal explanation itself that the selection of causes depends on normative expectations concerning what is (or ought to be kept) normal and what can (or is hoped to) be controlled. This means that apparently empirical disagreements that stymie public discourse and policy around social inequalities—in particular, whether they are attributable to individual dispositions or background structural factors—actually depend irreducibly on moral and political disagreements about the distribution of powers and roles. I thus argue that philosophers who work to reshape such normative expectations and values also work to restructure what count as acceptable causal explanations of, and hence interventions on, existing social inequalities. _____________________________________________________ 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.
