Wykłady prof. Alberta Newena i dr. Kevina Reutera w IF UW, 28.10.2016

Zakład Epistemologii IF UW, Polskie Towarzystwo Semiotyczne i Laboratorium Filozofii Eksperymentalnej „Kognilab” zapraszają na wykłady
prof. Alberta Newena (Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
dr. Kevina Reutera (University of Bern),
które odbędą się w piątek – 28 października 2016 roku, o godz. 16:45 w sali 109.

Prof. Albert Newen, 16:45
The relevance of social hierarchy for the attribution of moral responsibility
Abstract: What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? The aim is to argue that social hierarchy is a key factor radically overlooked. It is well known that intentionality as well as the valence of the outcome strongly influence our attribution of blame and praise for an action. To investigate the relevance of social hierarchy, we used of a variant of the boss vignette introduced by Knobe and others. In our scenarios we manipulated the valence of the side-effect (good versus bad side-effects) and asked for the attribution of blame versus praise for a company action to both, a boss and an employee. At the same time we kept the intentionality of boss and employee concerning the side-effect neutral and constant. Interestingly, social hierarchy strongly modulates the attribution of blame and praise. Furthermore, we put this into an intercultural context comparing the data from Germany, United Arabic Emirates (UAE) and China. In all cultures the main effect of hierarchical difference between boss and employee has the same tendency and is strongly significant: the boss deserves more blame and less praise than the employee. Furthermore, while the role of the boss leads to the same results in all culture, for the role of the employee we can observe some intercultural differences: the employee in Germany deserves more blame and less praise than the employees in UAE and China. I argue that this may be a result of the different understanding of social hierarchies. Additional studies will be presented which will be the basis for a qualified evaluation of the role of social hierarchy for the attribution of blame and praise. Thus, we have to integrate social hierarchy as an essential factor in our theory of the attribution of moral responsibility.

Dr Kevin Reuter, 17:45
No knowledge required: on the norms of assertion
Abstract: Assertions are the centre of gravity in social epistemology. But what are the norms of assertion? Do we request of a person to believe with justification what she claims, is it crucial that the claim she makes is true, or do we even need to know what we assert? Philosophers have to a large extent relied on their own intuitions to argue for one or the other account. In this paper, we present empirical evidence showing that having a justified belief that p is sufficient for asserting p. Truth and knowledge don’t seem to be required. Our results challenge recent studies conducted by Turri (2013, 2016) which are supposed to support a knowledge norm of assertion. We will demonstrate empirically that his conclusion is not warranted but that the justified belief account prevails.