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"Falsity - not just Truth's poor relation" Conference. June 27th, 2015

Dan Adams, Nils Kürbis and the Philosophy Department at Birkbeck College, University of London are pleased to announce a one day conference on: Falsity — not just truth’s poor relation! To be held at the University of London on Saturday 27th June 2015.

Falsity -- not just Truth’s poor relation!

Workshop organised by Dan Adams and Nils Kürbis to be held at Birkbeck on Saturday 27th June 2015. 

The ancients were puzzled about how falsity was possible at all. How can there be false judgements, if to judge falsely is to judge something that is not, and thus is not there to be judged at all? Plato is generally credited with having solved the problem and after Aristotle, philosophers’ attention shifted almost exclusively to truth. 

Falsity remains as puzzling as ever. Nothing really corresponds to a false proposition. That’s why it is false. We only encounter things that are there or facts that are the case. Everything in the world is positive. There is just presence. Nowhere do we encounter absences. It would be absurd if we did. If we encountered an absence, there’d be something there. There is only what there is, not also what there's not. It would be mysterious if there were negative facts to which the false propositions correspond. Because shouldn’t they then be true, not false? But we obviously sometimes get things wrong and think false thoughts. How is that possible? 

This conference brings together work from a wide spectrum of specialisations to explore the oft-ignored falsity in its own right, not merely as the poor twin of truth. The speakers are MM McCabe (KCL), Keith Hossack (Birkbeck), Tuomas Tahko (Helsinki) and Anneli Jefferson (KCL), commentators are Paniel Osberto Reyes Cárdenas (Nottingham), Neil Barton (Birkbeck) and the organisers. The programme includes talks on falsity in ancient philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of psychology, logic and metaphysics. The aim is to bring together different philosophical perspectives on falsity in one day in order to foster interesting discussion as participants from various backgrounds converge on the single topic.

Tentative Schedule: 

10:00     Tuomas Tahko: Falsity and Primitive Incompatibility
Respondent: Dan Adams
11:30 Break
11:45 Anneli Jefferson: False Beliefs with a Purpose
Respondent: Paniel Osberto Reyes Cardenas
13:15 Break 
14:15 Keith Hossack: The Absence of Falsity
Respondent: Neil Barton
15:45 Break
16:00 MM McCabe: First chop your logos... Socrates and the Sophists on language, logic
and moral development
Respondent: Nils Kürbis
17:30     End

Abstracts are here

Place: Room 416, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX

*Registration*

The conference is free and open to the public but please register your interest by contacting Dan Adams or Nils Kürbis before June 13th or joining the event on our facebook page

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact either Dan or Nils.

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