Methodological Trends and Challenges in Contemporary Philosophy

Contemporary analytic philosophers have expanded their methodological toolkit beyond traditional philosophical inquiry, embracing a wide array of approaches that intersect with various disciplines. These methods include (but are not limited to) experimental approaches, which involve empirical testing and data collection to inform philosophical hypotheses; non-idealized and naturalized epistemology, which considers the real-world complexities of knowledge acquisition and justification; computer simulations and probabilistic modeling, which enable philosophers to explore complex systems and uncertainties in reasoning; neuroscientific methods, which offer insights into the neural underpinnings of cognitive processes and decision-making; formal ontology, which provides rigorous frameworks for analyzing concepts and categories; conceptual engineering, which involves the deliberate design and modification of conceptual frameworks to address philosophical problems; evolutionary modeling, which investigates the emergence and evolution of cognitive capacities and norms; and feminist perspectives, which critically examine power dynamics and social structures in philosophical discourse.

The upcoming workshop aims to delve into these methodological trends, showcasing recent research that employs these diverse approaches and addressing the challenges and opportunities they present for contemporary philosophy. Over the course of two days, the workshop will feature a total of 14 talks, evenly distributed with 7 talks scheduled for each day. Each keynote talk will span 75 minutes, while contributed talks will be allocated 45 minutes. This workshop seeks to enrich our understanding of contemporary philosophical inquiry and inspire new avenues of research.

Schedule* (abstracts of the keynote talks below)

Friday, October 25

Modra soba (5th floor)

9.00 – 9.15: Registration

Olga Markič (University of Ljubljana): Welcome address

Invited talk

Chair: Borut Trpin

9.15 – 10.30: Jan Sprenger (University of Turin): Semantic Modeling between Empirical Data and Norms of Rationality

10.30–11.00:  coffee break

Formal approaches

Chair: Maja Malec

11.00–11.45: Olga Markič (University of Ljubljana): The Roles of Philosophers in Interdisciplinary Research

11.45–12.30: Timothy Tambassi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice): Is Extensible Markup Language perspectivist?

12.30 – 14.00: lunch break

Ethics

Chair: Olga Markič

14.00 –14.45: Thomas Engeland (University of Bonn): What would methodological naturalism in ethics be?

14.45 –15.30: Paweł Polak and Roman Krzanowski (Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow): Ethics in Silico: Computer Modeling of Ethical Concepts in Autonomous AI Systems

15.30–16.00: coffee break

Philosophical traditions

Chair: Martin Justin

16:00 – 16.45: Michal Hladky (University of Geneva): End of logical positivism? #toosoon

16:45 – 17.30: Rafal K. Stepien (Austrian Academy of Sciences): The Absent Elephant: Non-Western Methods in Contemporary Philosophy

19.00: conference dinner (Hiša Pod Gradom)

Saturday, October 26

Room 434 (4th floor)

Computational methods

Chair: Nastja Tomat

9.00 – 9.45: Borut Trpin (LMU Munich, University of Maribor, University of Ljubljana): Revisiting Epistemic Coherence from A Posterior-Probability Perspective

9.45 – 10.30: Martin Justin (University of Maribor): The Value of Social Coherence in Science: An Agent-Based-Modelling Exploration

10.30–10.45: coffee break

Empirical methods

Chair: Borut Trpin

10.45–11.30: Raimund Pils (University of Salzburg): Integrating Empirical Research and Philosophical Theorizing on the Scientific Realism Debate for Science Reporting

11.30–12.15: Juan De Jager (University of Ljubljana): Making Porosity More Porous: An Open Call for Brainstorming After Tanya Luhrmann’s Recent Findings

12.15 – 13.45: lunch break

Reasoning

Chair: Olga Markič

13.45 – 14:30: Danilo Šuster (University of Maribor): Open-mindedness and the Appeal to Ignorance

14.30 – 15.15: Nastja Tomat (University of Ljubljana): Bounded epistemic rationality as a link between the normative and the descriptive

15.15 – 15.30: coffee break

Invited talk

Chair: Martin Justin

15.30 – 16:45: Dunja Šešelja (RUB Bochum): When Expert Judgment Fails: Epistemic Trespassing and Risks to Collective Inquiry

Keynote talks - abstracts:

Jan Sprenger (University of Turin): Semantic Modeling between Empirical Data and Norms of Rationality

This talk uses current research on conditionals as a case study for methodological reflections on modeling and theory confirmation in formal semantics. Traditionally, such structures have been studied primarily by logicians and philosophers of language, but currently, they are also investigated by formal epistemologists, computer scientists, linguists and psychologists of reasoning. These groups model semantic phenomena in different ways, they have different ideas of what counts as data in favor of a specific theory, and they assign different weights to norms of rationality in semantic modeling. I will analyze these differences and highlight the respective role of truth conditions, probability and valid inference in various prominent theories of conditionals. The talk concludes with an evaluation of the prospects for a unified semantic theory of conditionals that could be attractive across disciplinary boundaries.

Dunja Šešelja (RUB Bochum): When Expert Judgment Fails: Epistemic Trespassing and Risks to Collective Inquiry

In this talk I will first discuss the role of two social-epistemic reasons that have remained overlooked in the discussions on expertise: higher-order evidence and inquisitive reasons. Using this account of expert judgment, I will examine the phenomenon of epistemic trespassing, which happens when individuals engage in areas outside their expertise. While recent discussions in social epistemology have emphasized harms of epistemic trespassing in the context of public assertions, how trespassers may affect collective inquiry has been comparatively less explored. To address this question, I will present an agent-based model that simulates the involvement of trespassers in the scientific inquiry and their impact on the collective knowledge acquisition. The first part of the talk is based on joint work with Will Fleisher and Daniel C. Friedman; the second part is based on joint work with Matteo Michelini.

Acknowledgement:

We acknowledge the kind support of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana (project number: 28-ISF.SKLAD2024).