Dear Colleagues,
Prof. Jonathan Knowles from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, will be give a talk on Tuesday 3 May at 15:40-17:30, room G-160. You are all welcome.
“To what extent does metaphysics depend on representationalism?” by Jonathan Knowles, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
A prominent theme of neo-pragmatist thinking is that once we give up a certain representationalist conception of the relation between language and the world, many or even most of the characteristic concerns of philosophy will lapse. Among these are questions about how notions of everyday life such as meaning and value fit into a natural world (so-called ‘placement problems’). This line of thought is prominent in the work of Richard Rorty and, more recently, Huw Price. In this talk I critically examine Rorty’s and Price’s arguments against placement metaphysics from a rejection of representationalism. I will then discuss the implications of anti-representationalism for alternative or broader conceptions of what metaphysics might be.