Two parallel sessions on the Saturday afternoon will be devoted to short presentations by graduate students (or those who have recently obtained a postgraduate degree).

The 2008 speakers

Session A

14.00 Paula Sweeney - St Andrews University: ‘Boundarylessness and Contextualism’

ABSTRACT

I outline a new theory of the phenomenon of vagueness. The theory presented develops some observations regarding the nature of vague predicates found in Mark Sainsbury’s Concepts without Boundaries (1990). Sainsbury’s observations are married with a contextualist semantic framework, the resulting theory of what constitutes vagueness clearing the ground for future contextualist solutions to the sorites paradox.

14.30 Martin Cooke - University of Glasgow: 'Against Physical Tendencies’

ABSTRACT
By assuming standard mathematics, some realistic physics, and four properties that tendencies (single-case propensities) could not plausibly lack, the fact that countably many exhaustive and exclusive possibilities cannot be equally probable will be used to show that it is implausible that quantum-mechanical probabilities are tendencies.

15.00 Alison Hall - University College London: ‘Semantic Compositionality and Truth-Conditional Content’

ABSTRACT
It is widely held that hearers grasp an utterance’s truth conditions by assigning contents to the linguistic expressions used, and combining these contents according to semantic composition rules. To preserve compositionality of truth-conditional content while accounting for context-sensitivity that is not traceable to overt linguistic form, semanticists posit covert linguistic variables or parameters in the uttered sentence. The main motivation for this approach is the apparently unconstrained nature of the alternative, whereby a process of ‘free pragmatic enrichment’ supplies constituents of content that are not traceable to (overt or covert) encoded meaning. This paper shows how free enrichment is constrained by general, widely accepted assumptions about pragmatic processing, and so undermines the motivation for semantic compositionality.

15.30 Lee Walters - University College London: ‘Morgenbesser’s coin and counterfactuals with true components’

ABSTRACT
Is A&C sufficient for the truth of 'if A were the case, C would be the case'? Jonathan Bennett argues not. However, the counterexample he gives is inconsistent with his own account of counterfactuals. Furthermore, I argue that anyone who accepts the case of Morgenbesser's coin should accept the sufficiency of A&C for the truth of the corresponding counterfactual.

Session B

14.00 Jennifer Campbell - University of York: ‘Darwall misses "‘Strawson’s point’"

ABSTRACT
I argue that Stephen Darwall’s ‘second personal’ analysis of P.F. Strawson’s ‘point’ about moral responsibility is illegitimate and misleading. For, in claiming that Strawson advocates the rational warranting of responsibility practices by implicit appeal to ‘normative felicity conditions’ satisfied in the experience of reactive attitudes, Darwall contravenes Strawson’s basic naturalistic point. This is that responsibility practices are grounded by a primitive naturalistic expectation we have for interpersonal regard which gives rise to reactive sentiments in circumstances where we perceive this expectation is flouted. For Strawson, this naturalistic commitment renders idle any apparent need to vindicate responsibility practices by reference to a constructive mode of rational justificatory analysis. Thus I shall argue, by characterizing ‘Strawson’s point’ as that of the need to provide the ‘right kind of reason’ that would ‘warrant’ responsibility practices, Darwall misses Strawson’s point.

14.30 Helen Frowe - University of Sheffield: ‘The justified inflicting of unjust harms’

ABSTRACT
I develop a distinction between the justness of inflicting a harm and the justness of the harm itself. I use this distinction to argue that Victim is permitted to inflict lethal harm upon Mistaken Threats: characters whom Victim justifiably, but mistakenly, believes to pose a threat to his life. Since Victim cannot distinguish these Mistaken Threats from Genuine Threats, whom Victim is permitted to kill, a theory of defence can be action-guiding only if it grants identical permissions in both cases. However, the independence of the justness of the harm from the justness of its infliction allows us to differentiate culpable and innocent Threats. Innocent Threats are not liable to bear the harm that Victim will inflict. Thus, any harm that they suffer will be unjust. This explains why innocent Threats are permitted to use force against Victim to prevent his justified infliction of an unjust harm.

15.00 Alice Pinheiro Walla - University of St Andrews: ‘Moral Principles, Defeasibility, and Practical Reasoning’

ABSTRACT
Principle based ethical theories have been the object of much philosophical controversy. Among other difficulties, allegedly “absolute” moral principles seem unable to account for the subtleties of particular contexts. For instance, principles cannot explain why a feature x can make an action morally right in one context and yet wrong in another. This led particularists and proponents of a judgment centered approach to practical deliberation to deny the need for principles in practical deliberation. A less radical alternative leaves the need for practical principles intact but argues that principles are not absolute, but defeasible laws. I shall argue that the reason for rejecting principles for practical reasoning, as well as for assuming that moral principles must be “defeasible” is a misunderstanding of the role of principles and of the way they interact with judgment in particular cases. I will propose a reinterpretation of the Kantian account of principles and rules in practical deliberation that solves these difficulties.

15.30 Richard Floyd - University of Lancaster: ‘Butler and Psychological Hedonism: A Critique of a Critique’

ABSTRACT
Butler's argument against psychological hedonism shares its form with many arguments against various forms of psychological egoism, and is something of a classic of moral philosophy, but unfortunately it doesn't work. It is claimed that the acknowledgment of the necessity of the particular passions for the experience of pleasure rules out pleasure as the sole motive of ones actions (the argument can be generalised to refer to self-interest or self-benefit rather than mere pleasure). But the argument is based on an ambiguity concerning the concepts of passion and desire. Once this ambiguity is exposed, the premises no longer support the conclusion and the argument fails.