Philosophy Department Sapientia Lecture Series

Reception follows. Funded by The Mark J. Byrne 1985 Fund in Philosophy. For the full Winter 2013 schedule and for more details, see the Philosophy Department's events webpage: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~phil/events/index.html ABSTRACT: There has recently been a growing interest in the notion of ground. In particular it has been suggested that various ``reductive'' theses such as physicalism, normative naturalism, phenomenalism, etc, are to be understood in terms of ground. For example, the idea would… Show more be that normative naturalism is (or at least entails) the view that all normative facts have a natural ground. In this talk I will discuss a problem with this approach and try to develop a solution. According to this solution, these reductive theses are in some respects much weaker but in other respects much stronger than we might have thought. Understanding this helps to clarify what needs to be established (and what doesn't need to be established) in order to defend one or other of these reductive theses.
Location: 103 Thornton Hall

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