Rational Belief. Stability, Reasoning, and Action

The René Descartes Lectures 2014 + Workshop "Full and Partial Belief"

20 - 22 October 2014

Professor Hannes Leitgeb, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

Rational Belief. Stability, Reasoning, and Action.

Tilburg Center for Logic, General Ethics and Philosophy of Science (TiLPS)

Invited Commentators:
Alexandru Baltag (ILLC/University of Amsterdam)
Nina Gierasimczuk (ILLC/University of Amsterdam)
Colin Howson (London School of Economics and University of Toronto)
Richard Pettigrew (Bristol University)
Jan-Willem Romeijn (RU Groningen)
Gerhard Schurz (DCLPS/University of Düsseldorf)

****************************************************************

Every other year, a distinguished philosopher visits Tilburg University for one week to present the René Descartes Lectures. It is a great pleasure to announce that Professor Hannes Leitgeb will give the 2014 lectures devoted to the topic of rational belief and its relation to reasoning and action. Each of the lectures is followed by two invited commentaries.

The René Descartes Lectures are acommpanied by a workshop "Full and Partial Belief". For this workshop, we cordially invite submissions in the form of extended abstracts (up to 1000 words) by 15 May 2014. Notifications will be sent out by 15 June 2014. There is also a Graduate Student Essay Prize worth 200 €.  

For more information, visit the website mentioned above.

*Synopsis of the lectures:*

The topic of these lectures will be a theory of rational belief that links up traditional accounts of categorical belief with modern subjective probability theory by means of one principle: it is rational to believe a proposition just in case it is rational to have a stably high degree of belief in it. We will make the corresponding notion of stability precise, we will justify the resulting theory in different ways, we will explain what consequences the theory has for reasoning, acting, and communicating rationally, and we will apply the theory to well-known paradoxes and problem cases in epistemology, philosophy of science, and the philosophy of language.

Organizers:
Dominik Klein (TiLPS)
Jan Sprenger (TiLPS)
 
Program Committee:
 
Alexandru Baltag (ILLC/University of Amsterdam)
Peter Brössel (RU Bochum)
Filip Buekens (TiLPS/Tilburg University)
Igor Douven (RU Groningen)
Catarina Dutilh Novaes (RU Groningen)
Branden Fitelson ()
Nina Gierasimczuk (ILLC/University of Amsterdam)
Colin Howson (London School of Economics and University of Toronto)
Richard Pettigrew (Bristol University)
Jan-Willem Romeijn (RU Groningen)
Gerhard Schurz (DCLPS/University of Düsseldorf)
Eric Pacuit (TiLPS and University of Maryland)
Wolfgang Spohn (Uni Konstanz)
Jeanne Peijnenburg (RU Groningen)