Experience & Updating

WORKSHOP THEME:It is a longstanding philosophical idea that we obtain our evidence (observational data, perceptual beliefs) on the basis of experiences, and that accepting this evidence is often justified/rational in light of the respective experience. This procedure corresponds to the first step of rational, or justified, belief acquisition. In a second step, we use this evidence to justify other, non-perceptual beliefs and to update our belief system.

Concerning the second step, formal epistemology and philosophy of science have already made considerable progress in explaining how we should proceed rationally from evidence to hypotheses about the world, even if many further questions and problems remain. However, very little progress has been made concerning the first step.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together formal epistemologists, philosophers of science and philosophers of mind working at the intersection of both topics and to answer questions regarding experience and its relation to rational updating. We are especially interested in debates concerning:

• conditionalization in general
• conditionalization and holism
• experience and defeaters
• formal accounts of defeat
• experience and vagueness of (perceptual) concepts
• models of the content of experience
• theory-ladenness of experience
• models for how experience might get theory-laden

ORGANIZERS: The workshop is organized by members of the research group From Perception To Belief and Back Again.  (Peter Brössel (Pittsburgh & Bochum), Finnur Dellsén (Dublin), Anna-Maria A. Eder (Northeastern), and Thomas Raleigh (Vienna))