The Department of Philosophy is pleased to invite you to our 2022/2023 colloqu ium series.
Our next talk will be given by Dr. Gurpreet Rattan\, Prof essor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Prof essor and Chair at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toront o at Mississauga.
Talk Title: “I think therefore I a m not”
Time: 3 – 5 pm\, March 31\, 2023
Descartes t hought that he could conclude based on his occurrent thinking that he himse lf exists\, as a thinking thing. Lichtenberg and Russell objected that Desc artes was entitled to conclude a judgment\, not that he himself exists\, bu t only that there is thinking going on. Kant and Wittgenstein envisioned a middle position\, according to which the self is apperceived and not intuit ed (Kant)\, and is not an object in the world\, but a “limit” of the world (Wittgenstein). These ideas from the history of philosophy suggest a framew ork for thinking about the metaphysics of the self in terms of what I call three grades of self involvement. I explain this framework\, artic ulate it in relation to some contemporary work on the metaphysics of the se lf\, and then use it to argue that a move from the second grade to the meta physically most robust third grade is problematic. The argument concerns th e limits that the self\, understood as the subject of judgment\, encounters when it tries to incorporate what contemporary epistemologists call “highe r-order evidence” about itself into its judgments about the world. One cons equence of my argument is that Descartes should have said cogito ergo n on sum. I can conclude from my occurrent thinking that I am thinking\, but precisely because of this\, I cannot be an object in the world about w hich I am thinking.
Gurpreet Rattan is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and Professor and Chair at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto at Mississauga. He works mainly in the philosophy of language\, the philosophy of mind\, and epistemology. His current research project focuses on develo ping an account of the intellect and intellectual norms – the faculty of mi nd responsible for adhering to norms that prescribe intrasubjective concept ual clarity\, intersubjective understanding\, and objectivity in the evalua tion of one's own and others doxastic attitudes. The project encompasses ma ny issues of contemporary significance\, including issues about the nature of concepts\, the value of truth\, the significance of disagreement\, the p ossibility of conceptual relativism\, and the limits of intersubjective und erstanding and objectivity. More recently\, he has also begun working on is sues about the metaphysics of the self.
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