Institutskolloquium

08.04.2026

Matthew Braham
(Universität Hamburg)

Can a Community Decide on the Principles That Constitute Itself?

Abstract: 

Can a normative community decide on the principles that constitute it? This paper shows that the answer depends on whether the community is naive or sophisticated. A naive normative system accepts three axioms: unrestricted moral scope (no exclusion criterion has intrinsic moral significance), comprehensive authority (the foundational principle constitutes a governing body), and universal jurisdiction (no normative proposition is off the agenda). Each axiom is defensible in isolation. But universal jurisdiction is not an independent commitment: it is entailed by the first two axioms, because any jurisdictional limit would itself be an exclusion criterion that the foundational principle declares morally arbitrary. The foundational principle is thereby forced onto its own agenda---a structure identical to Russell's paradox, where the defining condition of a set ranges over a totality that includes the set being defined. Using effectivity functions, the paper establishes that the authority is simultaneously effective and not effective with respect to its own foundational principle: it can formally decide on it, but any exercise of this power is self-annihilating. This is a contradiction, not merely an instability. The authority cannot be determinately constituted. Three applications are developed: cosmopolitanism (whose commitment to the moral arbitrariness of borders forces the global demos to have jurisdiction over the principle that constitutes it), radical popular sovereignty (the constituent power problem), and political realism (whose rejection of external moral constraints is a demand for the very self-containment that generates the contradiction). A sophisticated normative community escapes by restricting jurisdiction: its foundational principle sits at a higher logical type, outside the authority's reach. This is the structure of Hart's Rule of Recognition, Kelsen's Grundnorm, and constitutional entrenchment. The result implies that moralism in politics---the insistence that some normative ground stands outside political authority---is not a philosophical preference but a structural necessity. There is no normativity from below.

Paradoxes of Analysis in Bolzano and their Leibnizian Solutions

Abstract:

I investigate two paradoxes of analysis and their solutions in Bolzano’s Theory of Science. According to the semantical paradox, each analysis is either trivial or false because it is a proposition of the form: The concept A is identical to the concept A. Bolzano avoids this paradox by assuming instead that analysis-sentences need to be interpreted as expressing two distinct higher-order concepts. But even though he avoids the semantical paradox, he is troubled by a psychological variant: If one assumes that we usually know what we think, it seems puzzling that analyses of the contents of thought are difficult. This paradox is avoided by rejecting the supposedly traditional idea that our thoughts are essentially conscious. Finally, I show that Bolzano’s solutions to both versions of the paradox are inspired by his reading of Leibniz.

Abstract: TBA

Different Location and Time: The Workshop will be held at the Warburg Haus, Heilwigstraße 116, 20249 Hamburg, 9:30-17:00 h.
Registration: Please register by April 19th at emmi-inari.lampinen"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

Eliot Michaelson
(King's College London)

Consent Without Counterfactuals

Abstract:

TBA

Ezgi Sertler
(Leibnitz Universität Hannover)

An Epistemic Autopsy: Knowing in Asylum

Abstract

Asylum is an international institution that has ‘local’ branches in different host countries. All branches maintain one of the key functions of the institution: declaring someone as a credible knower of what has happened to them, while simultaneously corroborating their story within the confines of a legal system. However, things go wrong, all the time. Hence the increasing attention to epistemic injustice issues within asylum. This is not altogether surprising. Truly listening to stories of suffering, pain, and trauma (political or not) tends to be difficult for institutions. Asylum regimes house both credibility-related and intelligibility-related forms of epistemic injustice – such as testimonial and contributory epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007, Dotson 2012) – under their roofs (Wikström 2014, Sertler 2018). From first-level interviews to courtrooms, decision-makers persistently not only fail to believe applicants but also fail to understand them and make sense of their lives, realities, and experiences (McKinnon 2012, 2016). While such interactions between asylum-seekers and decision-makers render perceivable significant and persistent epistemic exclusions asylum seekers suffer from, understanding the epistemic landscape of asylum regimes goes beyond these interactions. In this paper, I want to ask: Why does this institution regularly generate precisely these kinds of exclusions? I will be asking, in other words, how this institution is epistemically designed (Ruíz 2024). My aim is to shed some light on the constitutive elements of this epistemic landscape. I will identify, at least, three constitutive elements of the epistemic landscape of the asylum regime: 1. the range of epistemic affordances, 2. the question of epistemic agency, and 3. the set-up of categorization. This paper, while noting the parallels between different institutions of asylum in different countries, investigates the institutionalized practices of asylum in the U.S. more closely. Finally, as we watch this institution under significant strain, I will also inquire why and how this analysis could be useful.

Bernhard Nickel
(Harvard University)

True Ideological Beliefs?

Abstract:

On a pejorative use of the term, ideological beliefs are mistaken or misguided in ways that help sustain unjust social and political arrangements. Some cases, such as beliefs that treat historically contingent facts as natural or inevitable, are easy to diagnose as simply false.

More recently, however, attention has turned to generic generalizations about social groups. They appear to go beyond mere statistical description in ways that can support policies, yet they also stop short of explicitly mentioning any causal basis. That combination makes them hard to evaluate as true or false, leading some theorists to propose new evaluative tools.

In this talk, I argue that no such tools are needed. Generic sentences encode commitments to causal bases, and I explain why their use can nonetheless create the appearance that speakers are not committed to such claims. This allows us to assess them as straightforwardly false.

Matthew Adams
(Indiana University Bloomington)

TBA

Abstract:

TBA

John Hyman
(University College London)

Defining Antisemitism

Abstract:

TBA

Simone Dietz
(Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

TBA

Abstract:

TBA