Title: Persuasion, Advocacy, and Interpersonal Epistemic Justification
Lecturer: Peter Dennis (LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method)
Chairperson: YU Feng (Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, September 19th, 2016 (Monday)
Venue: Humanities Salon, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
We seek not only to be justified in our beliefs, but also to justify our beliefs to one another. While traditional epistemology has focused on the former kind of justification (viz. personal justification), it is through the latter kind (viz. interpersonal justification) that our most successful forms of enquiry make progress. Contrary to the received view, I argue that interpersonal justification cannot be analysed in terms of personal justification. Instead, it is a form of collective deliberation which allows us to place one another under irreducibly second-personal intellectual obligations. Epistemology must therefore reckon with it directly if it is to be relevant to our best epistemic practices.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Peter Dennis is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method. His research in epistemology seeks to understand how we come to be justified in our beliefs, and how this relates to our ability (or otherwise) to justify ourselves to those who don’t think like us. He is also interested in group rationality and knowledge. He completed his PhD at Reading University in 2013, and his MA is from the University of Paris VIII.
