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Arts and Humanities Lecture: Kevin Scharp, "Philosophy and Defective Concepts"

February 25, 2015
All Day
Faculty Club's Grand Lounge

Event Host: Arts and Humanities


Kevin Scharp, Philosophy, presents “Philosophy and Defective Concepts” as part of the 2014-2015 Arts and Humanities Inaugural Lecture Series.

From familiar concepts like tall and table to exotic ones like gravity and genocide, they guide our lives and are the basis for how we represent the world. However, there is good reason to think that many of our most cherished concepts, like truth, freedom, knowledge, and rationality, are defective in the sense that the rules for using them are inconsistent. This defect leads those who possess these concepts into paradoxes and absurdities. Indeed, he argues that many of the central problems of contemporary philosophy should be thought of as having their source in philosophical concepts that are defective in this way. If that is right, then we should take a more active role in crafting and sculpting our conceptual repertoire. We need to explore various ways of replacing these defective concepts with ones that will still do the work we need them to do without leading us into contradictions.

RSVP here for the lecture.
A reception will accompany each lecture. Free and open to all.

For more information, visit the Arts and Humanities Inagural Lectures website.

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