ZJR: Tomasz Zyglewicz: ‘Believe’ as an evidential

On Friday, December 15 at 5.00 p.m. CET (4 p.m. in London, 11 a.m. in NYC) Tomasz Zyglewicz (CUNY) will give a lecture “‘Believe’ as an evidential” as part of the seminar “Sign – Language – Reality” (“Znak – Język – Rzeczywistość,” ZJR). Link and details below.

Summary:
Ann believes every vegan has to supplement B12. Bob says to his vegan friend Carol, whom Ann has never heard of or met in any way: “Ann believes you have to supplement B12.” Kyle Blumberg and Harvey Lederman (2021) have proposed a dispositionalist analysis of such revisionist attitude reports: their function is to report what the ascriber would have believed, had they known what we know. I show that their view fails to account for revisionist reports about inanimate objects, and offer an alternative hypothesis capable of doing that. According to my view, revisionist reports function as evidentials: by uttering them, speakers cite the ascribee as the source of evidence about the prejacent. Next, I go a step further and suggest that the default – if not the only – meaning of ‘believe’ is evidential. While semantically unorthodox, the thesis receives independent support from philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting please use the information below:
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/98775052581?fbclid=IwAR10atnrywLE1dkatWTEFhFhd4GIuiEaRn3dFlUooMASjlVXA4S2QXvPNeQ
Meeting ID: 987 7505 2581
Access code: 076657

Seminar website (with a preliminary list of meetings):
http://pts.edu.pl/seminarium-2023-2024-seminar-2023-2024.html

The meeting will start at 4:45 p.m. and the lecture at 5 p.m.