Blog

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Michael Hillas (PhD student, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center) will deliver the ninth Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Thursday, April 7, 2022, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not already on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: Logic is All Skill: A Response to Devitt and Roberts on Adoption

Abstract: In Devitt and Roberts’ “Changing Our Logic: A Quinean Perspective” the authors give a neo-Quinean (in a particular sense of neo-Quinean) defense of adoption in logic. To a degree this is a non-defense – they concede that some may not take them as providing an account of rational adoption, but suggest that this is primarily because skill acquisition is not rational more generally, at least in the manner that we may have been hoping it was. However their work tries to establish that there is a large degree to which adoption is possible. My project here will be a critique of the paper on its own terms, accepting for the sake of discourse the core assumptions of the approach proposed. I will go through the examples that are used by Devitt and Roberts and show that even if their assumptions are accepted, their conclusions do not all follow. The conclusion of these arguments will be that Devitt and Roberts are better off embracing the irrationality of skill acquisition, and the consequence that rational adoption is impossible.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Margaret Gilbert (Melden Chair in Moral Philosophy and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine) will deliver the 5th Saul Kripke Lecture on March 10th, 2022, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not part of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Philosophy Program or are not on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: Collective Belief: Kinds, Contexts, and Consequences

Abstract: I focus on collective belief as this has been characterized in my previous work, beginning with my paper “Modeling Collective Belief” (1987), and further refined later. I start by introducing my account of collective belief in its present form, emphasizing its overarching aim, and noting some criteria of adequacy for an account with that aim, which the account satisfies. I then draw attention to an ubiquitous situation that I take to involve the development of a sequence of collective beliefs according to my account, and relate it to some prominent views in pragmatics. In concluding, I discuss some significant consequences of collective beliefs on my account of them.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that James Shaw (Associate Professor, Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh) will deliver a talk on Thursday, February 17th, 2022, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not part of the CUNY Graduate Center’s Philosophy Program or are not on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: Kripkean Necessities, Imaginative Kripke Puzzles, and Semantic Transparency

Abstract: Kripke (1980) famously argued that some a posteriori statements are necessary when true. I begin by exploring an unusual technique to try to learn these necessities merely through imagination that I call “Semantic Imaginative Transfer”. I explore an idealized instance of this technique which I suggest leads to an imaginative variant of Kripke’s (1979) puzzle about belief. I note that on some widespread assumptions (including that propositional idiom can be maintained in the face of Kripke puzzles), the idealized example restricts the space for accommodating Kripkean necessities to two families of views: familiar, broadly Guise-Theoretic approaches to propositional attitudes, and unconventional and largely unexplored views embracing semantic transparency principles. I briefly review some of the history of transparency principles, make some conjectures as to why they went out of fashion following the work of semantic externalists (including Kripke), and make a plea for exploring the consequences of their adoption. Along the way I note the significance of doing so: the transparency principles render Kripkean necessities a priori.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that William Nava (PhD student, Philosophy, NYU) will deliver the eighth Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Friday, October 8, 2021, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not already on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: The significance and scope of the adoption problem

Abstract: The adoption problem is an argument purporting to show that certain logical inference rules cannot be rationally ‘adopted’—roughly because one would need to already be guided by the inference rules in question to go about adopting them. In this talk, I’ll first argue that this argument is best understood as showing that certain rules are necessary for adoption of rules in general (where their own unadoptability is then a corollary). I’ll then defend the argument from the objection that the notion of adoption is too narrow for the argument to be relevant to logical debates. Finally, I’ll consider the question of just which rules the argument applies to. I conclude that the argument does not apply to any classical inference rules in full generality, but only to somewhat ad hoc restrictions of some of them. On the other hand, I’ll also show that the argument does apply to the transparent truth rules—or, more precisely, to restrictions of them that suffice to generate paradox. What falls out of these considerations is an ur-logic to which everyone must subscribe on pain of inability to adopt any new rules at all; and which, though quite minimal, is incompatible with classical logic by virtue of including the truth rules.

The Saul Kripke Center is delighted to cosponsor a workshop on the adoption problem as part of the X Workshop on Philosophical Logic, a multi-week series of events held under the auspices of the Buenos Aires Logic Group. This workshop will occur from Thursday, August 5th, to Friday, August 6th, 2021. To attend/register, please email balogic.wopl@gmail.com.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Peter Susanszky (PhD student, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center) will deliver the seventh Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Tuesday, April 20, 2021, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not already on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: Trying to Adjunct Without Knowing How: Adjunction and the Adoption Problem

Abstract: Adopting a logical rule is coming to infer in accordance with it in virtue of accepting it as correct. The adoption question asks whether it is always possible to adopt a logical rule if one does not already infer in accordance with it, and if not, which rules cannot be adopted this way. Picking up on previous work by Saul Kripke, Romina Padró argued that there are such unadoptable rules. Though the two rules which have taken center stage in the discussions of both Kripke and Padró are modus ponens (MP) and universal generalization (UI), they both hold that adjunction (AD) is also unadoptable. Pace Kripke and Padró, in a recent paper, Suki Finn argued that AD is not in the scope of the adoption problem. In the negative part of my talk, I will show that Finn’s arguments fail to show AD to be adoptable. In the positive part, I will elaborate on the reasons why AD is unadoptable, which will, in turn, shed light on the source of the adoption problem.

Following the recent workshop, Substructural Logic, Hierarchies Thereof, and Solutions to the Liar (October 30th, 2020), the Logic and Metaphysics Workshop and the Saul Kripke Center shall host ST and All That: Philosophical Issues, a roundtable discussion considering the philosophical implications of this technical work. The meeting will happen on Monday, December 14th, 2020, from 4:15 to 6:15 pm (NY time). Four panelists will speak for 15 minutes each addressing (at least) the following questions:

* What do we learn about the nature of logic from ST and its hierarchy?

* What do we learn about solutions to the liar from ST and its hierarchy?

There will then be an open discussion for all present. The panelists will be: Shay Logan (Kansas State), Federico Pailos (Buenos Aires), Dave Ripley (Monash), and Chris Scambler (NYU).

Talks will be on Zoom, and are open to all interested. A link will be sent out on the mailing lists of the Logic and Metaphysics Workshop and the Saul Kripke Center not later than the day before. People not on either of those lists who want to receive the link should email Graham Priest (priest DOT graham AT gmail DOT com). PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Camillo Fiore (Licentiate student, Philosophy, University of Buenos Aires) will deliver the sixth Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Tuesday, December 15, 2020, from 2:00 to 4:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register if they are not already on the Saul Kripke Center’s mailing list.

Title: What the Adoption Problem does not show 

Abstract: Saul Kripke proposed a skeptical challenge which Romina Padro defended and popularized by the name of the Adoption Problem. The challenge is that, given certain notion of adoption, there are some logical principles that cannot be adopted—paradigmatic cases being Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens. Kripke has used the Adoption Problem to argue that there is an important sense in which logic is not revisable. In this talk, I will defend two claims. First, that there is an alternative notion of adoption which (i) is adequate to assess the kind of revisability that Kripke seems to address, and (ii) delivers that Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens are sometimes adoptable. Second, that even if we stick to the notion of adoption assumed by Kripke and Padro, the Adoption Problem does not entail that logic is never revisable in the sense that Kripke seems to address. I reckon that my conclusions are compatible with the philosophical import attributed to the Adoption Problem; however, I hope that my critical discussion will shed some light upon the scope of the skeptical argument. 

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop and the Saul Kripke Center are hosting a day of talks on substructural logics, hierarchies thereof, and solutions to the Liar on Friday, October 30, 2020. The schedule, NY time, will be as follows (abstracts can be accessed here):

10.00. Strict/Tolerant and Tolerant/Strict Logics, Melvin Fitting, CUNY.

11.40. Expressibility and the (Un)paradoxicality Paradoxes, Will Nava, NYU.

1.20. Lunch Break.

2.00. What is Meta-inferential Validity?, Chris Scambler, NYU.

3.40. Supervaluations and the Strict-Tolerant Hierarchy, Brian Porter, CUNY.

5.20. End (virtual gathering).

Talks will be on Zoom, and are open to all interested. A link will be sent out on the mailing lists of the Logic and Metaphysics Workshop and the Saul Kripke Center the day before. People not on either of those lists who want to receive the link should email Graham Priest (priest DOT graham AT gmail DOT com). PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PASS ON THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.

The Saul Kripke Center is pleased to announce that Jillian Rose Roberts (PhD student, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center) will deliver the fifth Saul Kripke Center Young Scholars Series talk on Friday, September 11, 2020, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm (NY time) via Zoom. (This talk was previously scheduled for March 24, 2020.) The talk is free and open to all, but those interested in attending should email the Saul Kripke Center in advance to register.

Title: The Adoption Problem in Logic: Devitt’s Flawed Quinean Solution

Abstract: Can we adopt a new logic? If so, how? In unpublished talks, Saul Kripke has presented a certain message about this that Romina Padro has vigorously defended in What the Tortoise Said to Kripke—the Adoption Problem (2015). Padro contends certain basic logical principles cannot be adopted: “if a subject already infers in accordance with basic logical principles, no adoption is needed, and if the subject does not infer in accordance with them, no adoption is…possible.” Michael Devitt has taken up Kripke and Padro’s challenge in an unpublished paper, “The Adoption Problem in Logic: A Quinean Picture” (2016). Devitt argues for a Quinean solution to the adoption problem, concluding it is possible in principle for someone who does not reason by basic inferences to come to do so as a result of adopting the basic logical principles and training. I simply ask—does his solution work? I contend that Devitt’s attempted solution is critically flawed in a way that sheds new light on the problem.