Timetable of talks, food and drink

Abstracts and speaker information (alphabetical order)

Henry Fernando
Semantic and Internalist Justifications of Kant’s Attack on Intuition

In 1796, Kant published an uncharacteristically scathing and sarcastic pamphlet targeted at Johann Georg Schlosser’s translation of Plato’s letters, which he found representative of a then increasingly popular school of Neo-Platonism which claimed that knowledge can ultimately be acquired through some kind of supernatural intuition from “above”, so to speak, in contraposition to his view that knowledge is acquired only after a rigorous investigation of reason from below. In his pamphlet, he writes that “philosophizing through feeling” is “ultimately exposed to a test at which it is necessarily bound to fail”.

In this presentation, I offer two interpretations of the ambiguous “test” Kant has in mind here whilst defending a Kantian conception of reason. Firstly, I give a semantic interpretation based on Wittgenstein’s private language argument and explain why knowledge is logically impossible to attain via intuition. Secondly, I give an epistemological account of this test based on a distinction between internalist and externalist accounts of justification, which, if correct, explains why we should hesitate to classify intuition as a genuine source of knowledge.

I conclude by applying these interpretations to some contemporary philosophical problems in the twenty-first century, including recent developments in ethical intuitionism (e.g. the role that feelings play in our moral judgments of right and wrong) as well as what I call the Blackbox problem in AI: the question of to what extent we can trust AI-generated testimony in cases wherein we do not understand the reasoning and algorithms behind them.

Enrique Benjamin R. Fernando III, MA is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Philippines, the same institution where he earned his master’s degree after completing his thesis on adjudication. He recently completed his Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and will soon be moving to Hughes Hall, Cambridge to matriculate and pursue his MPhil. He won First Prize in the Marianne Talbot Student Essay Competition in Michaelmas Term 2022 for his essay, “Is structural realism the best of both worlds?” A full list of his publications may be found here: https://philosophy.upd.edu.ph/faculty/enrique-benjamin-r-fernando-iii-ma/.

Jonathan Harlow
'Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions' (Hume)

On the contrary, Reason itself arouses very strong passions. For the approval of our fellows and to keep on the right side of the law, we must appear reasonable in our behaviour. More vitally yet, each one of us needs to be sure of personal sanity; and needs this more desperately if it is in doubt. And reason is not just a vital controlling norm. Our curiosity, our search for reasons, has driven our amazing science and our understanding of history and society. And even where there is no such outcome, we enjoy the process of reasoning for its own sake. Witness detective stories, and crossword puzzles. And if reasoning together were not a pleasure, why this society?

Jonathan Harlow (PhD, MBA). I am a retired teacher (school & university) with responsible experience in government, management and active military service. I am a published historian, also much involved in poetry and philosophy. I live with my wife of 61 years. I cherish our children, a few very good friends, and fun.

Cliff Miller
Reason: The Philosophy of Stupidity When our brains trip over their own shoelaces

Even the sharpest minds occasionally manage to be spectacularly… well, stupid. Reason is often celebrated as humanity’s hallmark—our means of discerning truth and guiding action—yet it can be quietly undermined by its unruly counterpart: “stupidity”. Not mere ignorance, but the structural misuse of concepts. Drawing on Golob (2019), this presentation will:

• Define Stupidity as a failure of reasoning—when the principles we apply to succeed instead guarantee our failure. (E.g., Douglas Haig’s cavalry‐officer's application of “mobile operations at the halt” proved self‐hampering in trench warfare.)
• Stupidity vs. Reason by contrasting classical optimists (Plato, Aristotle), who extol reason as our highest faculty, with modern critics (Hume, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, Derrida), who reveal how passions, unconscious drives, and cultural contingencies corrode pure rationality.
• When Reason Fails through real‐world case studies—political polarization, echo chambers, flawed “evidence‐based” medicine, and governmental, political, corporate, and social‐media mis‐ and dis‐information—showing how concept‐gaps impede justice, truth, and public health.
• Toward Robust Rationality with practical strategies: cultivate reflexive critique, broaden your conceptual toolkit, and weave reason together with empathy and social awareness.

Cliff Miller, a former commercial lawyer and university lecturer, whose work on complex scientific and technical evidence now explores how conceptual “blind spots”—the philosophy of stupidity—erode democratic discourse.

Stephen O’Kane
The disintegration of Reason

This appears in three aspects: (a) Reason is now often referred to as ‘rationality’, but that is not quite the same. Rationality is a general and psychological term, whereas reason also includes specific cases such as reasons for an argument. (b) Since the later 19th century, and more especially Weber and the Frankfurt School, we have been worried about the divide between instrumental reason – which can be serving any purpose at all – and what is sometimes called substantive reason (maybe Kantian reason), which can be expected to accompany and even generate values. (c) Reflected in some of the views cited in the call for speakers – and emerging during the past two centuries, beginning with Schopenhauer – is the uncertainty about where reason comes from, or even whether it really has any important place at all.

I propose that rationality – which closely connects with reason – has survival value. The more so in times where humans have the power of general self-destruction, which has been the case since the middle of the 20th century. That might serve as a route to reason’s reintegration. Biog. Since completing a Ph.D at LSE in 1979, Stephen has been writing on philosophy and political ideas, gradually shifting into ethics. This has led to publication of two books: Politics and Morality under Conflict (Pentland Press, 1994), and Ethics and Radical Freedom (Melrose Books. 2004). Stephen also maintains a website which includes essays, comments, dialogues, and a blog (moralphilosophy.co.uk). He has kept earlier rough notebooks from the 1970s to 2000s.

Partly owing to health difficulties Stephen has had through his life, he remains free, single (not quite so young); his parents passed away in 1999 and 2021. He keeps a connection with local autism groups in Sussex and with Brighton University philosophy society. The new ebook Ethics and Survival, released on 30 June last, has both developed from previous ideas about the interconnection between morality and politics and now takes that in a direction set by the challenge of survival, which is a universal even if nothing else meets that description.

Marta Vecchio
Will humankind ever attain a rational happy life or never overcome the limits of Enlightenment?

In this presentation, I aim at defending Adorno and Horkheimer Dialectic of Englightment argument: humankind, far from having benefitted from the Enlightenment, has endured the dire consequences of a world shaped by Reason. I will consider specifically the epistemological aspects of this argument and its analysis of the Cultural Industry, attempting to demonstrate how this thesis still remains relevant in the 21st century. First, I discuss how the rational search for knowledge, as a mean towards humankind’s emancipation, defined a new relation between subject and object, that ultimately caused an alienation from the “self”, leaving individuals exposed to suffering and new forms of subjugation. This philosophical perspective will be enriched with a reflection on the anthropological Actor-Network Theory. Secondly, I concentrate on the categorization of the world imposed by Enlightenment and its implications within Western societies, such as the transformation of its own citizens into interchangeable commodities. Besides, I will illustrate how this paradigm is intertwined with Colonialism and the lingering impact of this phenomenon into the following centuries. Finally, I explain how Cultural Industry, though entertainment and advertising, has been apparently used by the dominating elites to alleviate humankind sufferings, unresolved by Enlightenment, with ephemeral pleasures, numbing consciences and helping to maintain society status quo.

Marta Vecchio background is in Business Administration. She currently works as a manager in a multinational company, based in Milan, while pursuing part-time a BA in Classic Studies at The Open University. Her interest in philosophy began in high school and it was rekindled in 2013, when she started studying online at OUDCE and joined the Philosophical Society. Since then, she has completed several courses at OUDCE in Philosophy as well as in other disciplines such as Anthropology and Psychology. Her main philosophical interest are Ethics, Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion.

Safwan Zabalawi
Predicting the Future, Reason’s Ultimate Purpose

Beyond the field of theoretical logic, reason extends into psychology (motives/behaviour) and law (motivations/justifications), guiding critical human activities. Reason’s core function is linking causes to effects, finding justification for occurring events and enabling prediction of future occurrences, a most beneficial role in one’s life.

Achievements in science offer proof of the power of the Principle of Uniformity of Nature, essential for predicting future events. On the other hand, philosophical scepticism argues that the future may not resemble the past, restricting thus the performance of the timeless laws of nature to anthropo-based concept of dividing time into past and future.

Scepticism emerged through two mistakes: the superficial analysis of observed events (ignoring the role of consistent initial conditions governing outcomes) – and applying man-convenient ideas about time to time-independent working of nature. This makes scepticism’s doubt about uniformity unreasonable.

Reason’s ultimate purpose is securing beneficial outcomes in one’s life, fostering harmony and avoiding unreasonable actions leading to suffering.

Safwan Zabalawi has been a member of the Philosophical Society since 2011. Following Online ccourses organised by Oxford University Department of Continuing Education: Philosophy of Mind (2010) and Philosophy of Religion, (2012), the author felt less intimidating by the difficult subjects and terminology used in philosophical articles. This encouraged the author to contribute to the Philosophical Review by 16 articles - of which The Problem of Self-Reference and the Law of Identity won Boethius Prize, 2019. The most recent activity was sharing in Rome International Weekend with a presentation on the subject of “The Truth in Eastern Philosophy”.