Hosts: Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Peking UniversityInstitute of Foreign Philosophy at Peking University

Date: 20 December, 2024

Venue: Room 210, New Sun Student Center, Peking University

Programme:

13:30–14:40 
Neri Marsili (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid)“Cheap Talk or Costly Signal? Examining the Reputational Costs of Reposting False Content”
14:55–16:05 
LIU Chang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University)“Two Arguments against Hybrid Theories of Moral Language”
16:20–17:30 
TANG Refeng (Beijing Normal University)“An Agential Conception of Self-knowledge”

Refeng Tang is professor of philosophy at Beijing Normal University. She did her first degree in Psychology at Peking University and her second degree in Philosophy at Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She obtained her PhD in Philosophy from University College London. Her main research areas are philosophy of mind (mainly philosophy of perception and philosophy of action), epistemology, Aristotle’s ethics, and later Wittgenstein.
Title: An agential conception of self-knowledge
Abstract: The talk advocates an agential conception of self-knowledge, which applies to both bodily action and mental action.

Chang Liu is a Tenure-track Associate Professor of Philosophy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research focuses on the questions at the intersection between Philosophy of Language and Political Philosophy: 1) Theories of Slurs: Why are racial slurs derogatory and offensive? 2) Ethics of interpretation: What are the fair interpretations of what someone says? 3) Moral Psychology of Offense: Under what conditions is it appropriate to feel offended?
Title: A Norm-constitutive Theory of General Pejoratives
Abstract: Hybrid theories in meta-ethics take a moral utterance (e.g., “stealing is wrong”) to express both a belief (e.g., that stealing has a certain property) and a desire-like attitude (e.g., disapproval of stealing). The desire-like attitudes are usually taken to be expressed in conversational implicature or conventional implicatures. I will raise two arguments against these implicature-based hybrid theories. First, if desire-like attitudes were expressed in conversational implicatures, stating that “stealing is wrong” could not be accused of hypocrisy nor could it succeed at condemning stealing. Second, if the desire-like attitudes of “Stealing is wrong” were expressed in conversational or conventional implicatures, it would be impossible to reject them directly with “No. That is not the case.” I will also defend these two arguments from objections.

Neri Marsili (PhD 2018, Sheffield) is a “Talent Attraction” Fellow at UNED, in Madrid, where he is currently leading an interdisciplinary research project on the philosophy of online disinformation. His primary areas of research include philosophy of language, epistemology, aesthetics, and experimental philosophy.
Title: Cheap Talk or Costly Signal? Examining the Reputational Costs of Reposting False Content
Abstract: Much of what we communicate on social media is affirmed only indirectly, by reposting content originally shared by others. Reposting, in turn, has been identified as one of the main online conduits for fake news. Some researchers have suggested that reposting fosters misinformation because it is governed by more permissive norms – reposting false content is intuitively less damaging to one’s reputation than directly posting that same content. Other researchers suggested that reposting may alter the balance of incentives that typically keep misinformation in check by allowing communicators to pass on a message while retaining plausible deniability. To investigate these assumptions, we conducted six studies comparing direct and indirect communication of false information, both online and offline. Our findings shed light on under-investigated philosophical questions about the epistemic value of reposting and the normative expectations governing this speech act. Beyond its theoretical significance, this work informs the broader philosophical debate about how digital technologies reshape the reputational incentives that motivate communicators to be truthful in online spaces.

Source: Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies