Description

Ethics @ Edinburgh is one of the main research clusters in Philosophy and as such hosts a number of research activities including this regular research reading group. All inquiries about this group should be directed to Prof Michael Ridge.

This year the Ethics Reading group will be discussing a manuscript of Michael Ridge's book manuscript, Impassioned Belief (working title). The book defends a "hybrid" form of expressivism Ridge calls "Ecumenical Expressivism." Ecumenical Expressivism is a view according to which normative judgments are constituted by a fusion of belief-like states and desire-like states, but where the belief-like states (which have descriptive contents) do not thereby fix the truth conditions for the claims which express those judgments. Ridge argues that this approach can reap many of the benefits of more "pure" forms of expressivism and steal the thunder from cognitivists but without the costs associated with those views. Ridge also surveys the wide range of hybrid forms of cognitivism that have arisen in the literature recently (there has been something of an explosion of work in this area), and argues that his approach is superior to these alternative hybrid views too. The book will also address broader issues in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind (and moral/normative pscyhology in particular) as well as at the intersection of linguistics and philosophy - the way in which traditionally "normative" predicates and words have non-normative uses, but are not simply brutely ambiguous also figures heavily in the book, and this intersects with another bunch of recent literature on modals and context-sensitivity.

All are in principle welcome, but some background in meta-ethics and/or the philosophy of language/philosophy of mind would be very useful; some of the material will be challenging for those not familiar with any of that literature. Professor Ridge is finishing this book while on AHRC funded research leave and will distribute the chapters via an email list of those taking part as they are ready to circulate. Typically they will be distributed around 2 weeks before the meeting at which they will be discussed.

All meetings for this reading group will be at 2pm - 4pm in room 1.01 of the Dugald Stewart Building. This room only holds 14-16 people maximum, so there will be a cap on how many can participate. Those interested in attending should contact Michael Ridge to see if there are any slots left.

Meeting Schedule

• 23rd March, 2012
• 27th April, 2012
• 11th May, 2012
• 18th May, 2012

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