Postgraduate "Work In Progress" Seminar
Postgraduate Work-In-Progress SeminarA weekly seminar for Philosophy postgraduates to present their in-progress work, followed by a well-spirited trip to the pub. OverviewThe WIP provides a risk-free and supportive space for postgraduates to present their work and receive feedback from other graduates and faculty.
Attendance optional but highly recommended. All postgraduates are welcome to present or attend -- whether MA, MPhil, PhD, Visitors, etc. Useful InfoThe WIP is a unique opportunity for graduates to develop their presenting and writing skills, take risks, test out ideas, and receive constructive feedback from peers.
Presentations need not be watertight or polished pieces at all. You are encouraged to present work at all stages of the writing process. Should you present?Are you a postgraduate? Then yes, you should present. |
NEXT TALKRozemin Keshvani (PhD) Kant Thursday 25/06/2026 5pm - 6:15pm S1.50 ORGANISERS |
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Knowledge and Belief Seminar
Guest Speaker: Rachel Dudley (CEU)
Title; 'The Pragmatics of Knowing'
Abstract:
"Children鈥檚 understanding of propositional attitude reports (and their understanding of others鈥� minds) has played a central role in the study of cognitive development for several decades. Over the years, an orthodox perspective emerged whereby children fail to understand attitude reports, with sources of difficulty being syntactic, semantic or even conceptual in nature. This orthodoxy has also been ported over into other fields such as epistemology and philosophy of mind. However, a wave of findings from new methods and analyses has cast this orthodoxy into doubt. These new findings suggest that even infants have a greater understanding of mental state concepts than we once suspected, and that the apparent difficulties in later childhood stem from pragmatic sources. Resolving the conflict between these new findings and the orthodox perspective is critical to understanding the development of children鈥檚 minds and their language faculties, but the debate is far from settled.
In this talk, I鈥檒l discuss my research on children鈥檚 understanding of the attitude verbs "know" and "think" and how it relates to the broader conflict. While both verbs can be used to describe beliefs, there are subtle differences between them. As a factive verb, "know" only felicitously describes true beliefs about propositions which we take for granted. In contrast, the non-factive "think" can describe false beliefs or beliefs which we do not take for granted. Using a combination of behavioral methods and corpus analyses, I investigate how children come to master this subtle contrast. Results from this line of research highlight the importance of pragmatic cues to the language acquisition process, particularly from the different kinds of discourse moves that adults make in everyday conversation (e.g., I think it's time for bed, Do you know where my keys are?). Results also suggest that we are sensitive to related pragmatic factors even much later in development. Ultimately, this supports a broader picture where older children鈥檚 errors with attitude reports are pragmatic performance errors and not deeper conceptual or semantic errors, highlighting the need for more research on the interplay between semantic and pragmatic development in early development."