主讲内容摘要

This paper studies the negative phenomena of understanding in relation to scientific explanations. We make a distinction between genuine understanding, lack of understanding, and misunderstanding. We define explanatory understanding as inclusively as possible, as the epistemic success that depends on abilities and skills and correct explanations. This success, we add, is often supplicated by specific positive phenomenology which plays a part in forming epistemic inclinations - the tendency to receive an insight from familiar types of explanatory information. We define lack of understanding as the epistemic failure that results from a lack of an explanation or an incorrect one. In turn misunderstanding is characterized by cases where one’s epistemic inclinations do not align with an otherwise correct explanation. This is illustrated by a short meta-philosophical study on the current debates about distinctively mathematical explanations.

主讲内容摘要

Practical knowledge, in the sense made famous by G. E. M. Anscombe, is “the knowledge that a man has of his intentional actions”. This knowledge is very ordinary, but philosophically it is not easy to understand. One illuminating approach is to see practical knowledge as a kind of self-knowledge or self-consciousness. I offer an enrichment of this approach, by (1) exploiting Gilbert Ryle’s discussion of heeding (that is, paying attention), in particular paying attention to one’s own intentional action, and (2) constructing and applying a practical analogue of Kant’s apperceptive “I think”. Combining (1) and (2), I offer an argument for my main claim: paying attention to what one is doing is an exercise of practical self-consciousness – it is how practical self-consciousness gets “schematized”.

主讲内容摘要

Huw Price and Ken Wharton claimed recently in their paper published in the Conversation, a well-known blog, that quantum mechanics shows that the future can influence the past. According to their paper, many scientists are convinced about it. However, there is still something mystical for philosophers. The first is about the definition of Retrocausality and its relation to causality philosophically. Second is concerned with understanding the relation of cause and effect, not only scientifically but also logically. In this talk, I will answer the two questions by analyzing the concept of temporality and by examining the counterfactual and overdetermination. I found a tension in understanding the concept of necessity in the physical and logical sense. Finally, I will argue that the time reversal asymmetry does not imply Retrocausality, and the phenomenon of Retrocausality does not exist in reality but only in logic. 

主讲内容摘要

In philosophy of time, there are two major positions; A-theory and B-theory. Although they disagree with various issues, both assume that time must have objective direction. Recently some philosophers such as Price (1996) and Farr (2021) challenge this assumption and propose C-theory, according to which there is no objective temporal direction. The aim of this talk is to explain and motivate C-theory. First, I explain what C-theory is by clarifying the difference between B-theory and C-theory and what it means for time to have a direction. Second, I motivate C-theory by presenting some argument against B-theory.