29 March: Graeme A. Forbes (Kent) — “The Practical Rationality of Tralfamadorians”
Sala Enzo Paci, Via Festa del Perdono 7, h. 15:30-17:30.
Abstract: In Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s novella Slaughterhouse Five, the alien civilisation the Tralfamadorians, perceive time as ‘we perceive a panorama of the Rocky Mountains’, so their attitude to different events in time is one of equanimity: ‘So it goes’. I will argue that, on certain views of practical rationality, the existence of the future can give rise to this sort of fatalistic equanimity, because it is irrational to intend anything.