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 16 talks, evenly distributed with 8 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 and welcome address

Invited talk

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

10.30–10.45:  coffee break

Formal approaches

10.45–11.30: Patryk Dzuirosz-Serafinowicz (University of Montenegro in Podgorica and University of Gdańsk): Decision Instability Strikes Again

11.30–12.15: Timothy Tambassi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice): Is Extensible Markup Language perspectivist?

12.15 – 13.45: lunch break

Ethics

13.45 –14.30: Thomas Engeland (University of Bonn): What would methodological naturalism in ethics be?

14.30 –15.15: 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

15.15–15.30: coffee break

Philosophical traditions

15:30 – 16.15: Michal Hladky (University of Geneva): End of logical positivism? #toosoon

16:15 – 17.00: Rafal K. Stepien (Austrian Academy of Sciences): The Absent Elephant: Non-Western Methods in Contemporary Philosophy

17.00 – 17.45: Olga Markič (University of Ljubljana): TBA

19.00: conference dinner (location TBA)

Saturday, October 26

Room 434 (4th floor)

Computational methods

9.00 – 9.45: Borut Trpin (LMU Munich, University of Maribor, University of Ljubljana): TBA 

9.45 – 10.30: Martin Justin (University of Maribor): TBA

10.30–10.45: coffee break

Empirical methods

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

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): TBA

15.15 – 15.30: coffee break

Invited talk

15.30 – 16:45: Dunja Šešelja (RUB Bochum): TBA

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.

Acknowledgement:

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