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Alejandro Pérez Carballo (UMass-Amherst). “New Boundary Lines." Free and open to all. Reception follows.
Abstract: The primary goal of the paper is to develop, using tools from epistemic utility theory, a general theory of rational dynamics on which conceptual change can sometimes be epistemically rational. I argue that a particular kind of stability in one's body of beliefs is an epistemic good. This notion of stability is sensitive to the conceptual tools available to an agent: certain conceptual distinctions can be expected to increase the stability of a body of beliefs more than others. By looking at how much stability an instance of conceptual change is expected to bring with it, we can tell a story about how the introduction of new conceptual resources can be epistemically rational.
Alejandro Pérez Carballo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is mainly interested in questions in the philosophy of mind and language, especially as they relate to issues in the philosophy of mathematics and metaethics, as well as in some questions in metaphysics and formal epistemology. Pérez Carballo obtained his PhD in philosophy from MIT. Before that, he studied musicology (Paris IV), logic (Paris I, Paris VII), and philosophy (Paris I) at the University of Paris. Visit his website here, where you can also read many of his writings.
The Sapientia Lecture Series is funded by the Mark J. Byrne 1985 Fund in Philosophy.
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