Department of Philosophy

ConceptLabHK
SEMINARS @ CLHK
Derek Ball
Thursday, Sept. 30
4pm HK time
TITLE
Metasemantics and Free Speech

Abstract:
Hume wrote, “We cannot form to ourselves a just idea of the taste of a pine-apple, without having actually tasted it”. Putnam claimed that brains in vats could not entertain thoughts about the external world, since thinking such thoughts requires genuine contact with the world \ one is thinking about. These are claims about how one’s circumstances constrain what one can think — what contents one can entertain. This talk aims to develop the notion of a content constraint, and to relate this notion to issues of free speech. A leading idea is that free speech requires adequate conceptual and linguistic resources, and that this requirement can motivate actions designed to avoid content constraints (including constraints that might be caused by the actions of other speakers).

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MEETING ID: 937 0991 8766

PASSWORD: 539584

AND AT HKU
Department of Philosophy
Run Run Shaw Tower
Room 1027
Centennial Campus
4pm HK time

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