Oushinar Nath to speak on 'A Puzzle about Wisdom: Stability, Bias, and Reflection'

On February 28, Oushinar Nath (University College London) will deliver a report on 'A Puzzle about Wisdom: Stability, Bias, and Reflection'. The event is organised by HSE International Laboratory for Logic, Linguistics and Formal Philosophy.

Abstract:

Wisdom, in virtue of it being a character trait, is taken as a stable disposition to form beliefs and perform actions conducive to or constitutive of living well. I demonstrate that a puzzle emerges when we discuss wisdom’s relationship to certainty and bias, such that a wise agent isn’t in a position to perform wise actions stably over a large range of situations. I argue that this puzzle could be avoided if we take wise agents to be those who are skilled at reflecting – a wise agent forms her attitudes on the basis of skilfully reflecting on the relevant situation such that, despite the kind of uncertainty that threatens to make wisdom unstable, the involvement of this skill stably generates the relevant attitude.

Start time: 19:30.

If you plan to take part in the event, please, register here (in Russian).