Academic workshop “Judgment and Action”

This workshop brings together scholars to examine the relation between judgment and action from multiple philosophical perspectives. We will discuss four papers (abstracts for two are below). The papers will be distributed two weeks in advance. To facilitate discussion, all participants are kindly asked to read the papers in advance. Participation is free, but the number of places is limited. Please register by contacting Karineke Sombroek: c.w.sombroek@phil.leidenuniv.nl

Date: 16 September 2016
Location: Lipsius building room 148, Leiden

Program:

13:00-14:00 Wayne Martin (Essex): “The Antinomy of Judgement, Delusion, and Twelve Angry Men”
Discussant: Leon de Bruin (Nijmegen)

14:15-15:15 Annemarie Kalis (Utrecht): “A dispositional account of judgment: implications for moral psychology”
Discussant: Fleur Jongepier (Nijmegen)

15:30-16:30 Marietje van der Schaar (Leiden): “Judgment and Reason”
Discussant: Naomi van Steenbergen (Utrecht)

16:45-17:45 Thomas Fossen (Leiden): “The Question of Legitimacy as a Problem of Judgment”
Discussant: Sem de Maagt (Utrecht)

17:45: drinks

Wayne Martin
“The Antinomy of Judgement, Delusion, and Twelve Angry Men”

The exercise of judgement requires a combination of autonomy/activity (I make up my mind for myself) and heteronomy/passivity (my judgement is determined by the evidence). From Maimon to McDowell, theorists of judgement have seen a tension between these two moments or aspects of judgement; an adequate theory of judgement must resolve this antinomial tension.  I take a lead from Theodor Lipps, who proposed that judgement should be understood as an intentional comportment, and from Henry Fonda, whose 1957 film, Twelve Angry Men, undertook a careful study of the judgemental comportment of twelve fictional New York jurors. I argue that  the antinomy of judgement can be resolved in a distinctive comportment, which itself involves a distinctive teleological exercise of the imagination. I apply the results of this analysis in interpreting data from an interview-based study investigating the exercise of judgement under conditions of schizophrenic delusion.

Marietje van der Schaar:
Judgement and Reason

In modern democracy the public contributes to political decisions by means of elections, in which each citizen can make a choice based upon his subjective opinion and the trust he puts in a representing person or party. Happily, there is no rationality police asking why you have chosen the way you did. This means, though, that your choice is as powerful whether it is based on rational judgement or on mere prejudice. Politicians need only to convince people, and they will use every rhetorical trick to make you think they are the right ones to trust.
I will argue that modern democracy is in need of a notion of judgement, in which judgement is explained in terms of ground, or reason. Although rationality may thus be brought into democracy, because the citizen’s choice is based upon judgement rather than subjective opinion, the choices have not become less personal. For judgement is essentially made from a first person perspective. Whether in politics or in science, the judging agent has to accept something as a ground, and, in more complicated judgements, has to weigh the reasons pro and con. I will base my argument upon the writings of Gottlob Frege. The importance of the assertive force in Frege’s logic shows that, for Frege, reason as well as a first person perspective play a central role in logic and science.