Talk at Bogazici: Dan Korman (UI-UC) on ‘Debunking Perceptual Beliefs about Ordinary Objects’ Monday, 08/10/2012
Dan Korman (UI-UC) will be giving a talk on ’Debunking Perceptual Beliefs about Ordinary Objects‘ on Monday October 8th from 17:00-19:00 at Bogazici University, room TB130 (in the philosophy department).
A draft copy of the paper can be found here. And the handout here.
ABSTRACT: On our natural way of “carving up” the world into objects, some collections of objects together compose something (e.g., the trunk and branches of a palm tree) and others do not (the trunk and the dog lying beside it). Reflection on the sorts of factors that might underwrite or influence such judgments about which objects there are give rise to powerful (and under-appreciated) “debunking arguments” against our perceptual beliefs about ordinary objects. I assimilate these arguments to arguments that arise in meta-ethics and the philosophy of math, and I examine a variety of way of trying to resist the arguments.
