Uriah Kriegel: Experiential Origins of Intentionality
ABSTRACT Several recent authors - Loar, McGinn, Strawson, and Horgan, among others - have argued that the intentionality proper to conscious experience is somehow prior to, and grounds, other forms of intentionality. Here as elsewhere in philosophy, however, it is not always clear what is meant by "priority" and "grounding." Although the kind of priority [...]
Philip Kitcher: Authority, Responsibility, and Democracy
ABSTRACT Speaking at the official opening of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Dr. Philip Kitcher gave this lecture entitled "Authority, Responsibility, and Democracy." This was the first of two lectures, under the collective title, "Science in a Democratic Society", engaged with Kitcher’s ideas about the two forces of democracy and science, and how they interact [...]
Philip Kitcher: Alienation and its Dangers
ABSTRACT Speaking at the official opening of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, Dr. Philip Kitcher gave this lecture entitled "Alienation and its Dangers". This was the second of two lectures, under the collective title, "Science in a Democratic Society", engaged with Kitcher’s ideas about the two forces of democracy and science, and how they interact [...]
Susan Haack: Six Signs of Scientism
ABSTRACT Susan Haack's lecture, titled Six Signs of Scientism, discusses the social phenomenon known as scientism, the view that natural science is the most authoritative way of looking at the world, and is superior to other interpretations of life. SPEAKER PROFILE Susan Haack is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and [...]
Colin Howson: Should Probabilities be Countably Additive?
ABSTRACT Though it may not sound like a very exciting question, a good deal of both the mathematics and the interpretation of probability depend on the answer to it. Many of the striking theorems of mathematical probability, like the celebrated 'with probability 1' convergence theorems, depend on the axiom of countable additivity, as does the [...]
Kyle Stanford: The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis: Evolution and the Emergence of Moral Objectivity
ABSTRACT Kyle Stanford delivered this lecture entitled, "The Difference Between Ice Cream and Nazis: Evolution and the Emergence of Moral Objectivity", where he examined the evolutionary function of moral projection. SPEAKER PROFILE Photo by L. Perniciaro Kyle Stanford has been a Professor in the department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the [...]
Andrew Janiak: Three Concepts of Cause in Newton’s Thought
ABSTRACT Dr. Andrew Janiak, of Duke University, examines how Newton’s assertion that objects spread across space can interact causally is related to his endorsement of the traditional metaphysical concepts of substance and of causation. Download a copy of the lecture handout. SPEAKER PROFILE Andrew Janiak has been a Professor at Duke University since 2002. He [...]
Frederique de Vignemont: Bodily Immunity to Error
ABSTRACT Dr. de Vignemont’s lecture considers the question ‘Are bodily self-ascriptions immune to error through misidentification?’ According to the classic view, one cannot be mistaken about whose body part it is when experiencing them on the basis of body senses. De Vignemont considers two putative objections to this ‘bodily immunity.’ SPEAKER PROFILE Frederique de Vignemont [...]
Sandra Mitchell: GMOs and Policy in a Complex, Diverse World
ABSTRACT Dr. Mitchell’s lecture considers how both biological diversity and value pluralism thwart simple regulatory models for genetically modified organisms. For example, we talk about policy for BT modified plants, yet there are about 600 known strains of Bacillus thuringiensis and the effect of different strains on different host plants as well as the consequences [...]
Katherine Brading: Unity, Change, and What There Is
ABSTRACT Dr. Brading’s lecture considers such fundamental questions as ‘What is there?’ and ‘How, if at all, can what there is undergo change?’ She explores the relationships between matter, space and time by means of an approach to physics that has its origins in Newton’s engagement with Descartes’ philosophy. SPEAKER PROFILE Katherine Brading is an [...]
Alison Wylie: A Plurality of Pluralisms – Collaborative Practice in Archaeology
ABSTRACT Dr. Wylie’s lecture focuses on examples of collaborations between archaeologists and descendant communities that are epistemically productive in ways that are systematically obscured by the sharply drawn conflicts of headline news. SPEAKER PROFILE Alison Wylie is a feminist philosopher of science at the University of Washington, Seattle. She works on epistemic questions raised by [...]
Sylvia Berryman: How Many Philosophers Does It Take To Haul A Ship? Thoughts on the Philosophical Reception of Ancient Greek Mechanics
ABSTRACT Sylvia Berryman’s talk focuses on ancient Greek mechanics, which were so crucial to the emergence of the ‘mechanical world picture’ and the New Science in the seventeenth century. These same mechanics also provoked philosophical responses from the philosophers of late antiquity. By observing responses to Aristotle’s ‘ship hauler’ problem, Berryman will reveal a new [...]
Nancy Cartwright: Evidence, Argument and Mixed Methods
ABSTRACT Dr. Cartwright’s lecture, Evidence, Argument and Mixed Methods, focuses on effectiveness predictions for illustration. Effectiveness predictions are predictions that well-defined policies will produce targeted outcomes in the present, as soon as they are implemented. Randomized controlled trials are touted as a gold standard for effective prediction claims – but there is a catch, which [...]
Nancy Cartwright: Wiser Use of Social Science, Wiser Wishes, Wiser Policies
ABSTRACT In Dr. Cartwright’s lecture, Wiser Use of Social Science, Wiser Wishes, Wiser Policies, she considers the rhetoric of blame and accountability with regards to social issues such as protection of children from domestic abuse. Amidst calls for best practice, and the insistence on implementing only policies that work, Cartwright questions whether policies that ‘work’ [...]
Michael Parker: Moral Craft in the Genetics Clinic and Laboratory
ABSTRACT Dr. Parker’s talk will explore the moral world of the contemporary genetics profession at a key moment in its development. In particular, the talk will focus on the relationships between the well-established and reasonably stable moral commitments underpinning ideas of ‘good practice’ in contemporary clinical genetics –- such as those to the care of [...]
Moira Howes: Agency and the Evolution of Human Reproductive Immune Functions
Dr. David S.H. Chu International Student Centre International and Graduate Affairs Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Dr. Howes’ talk is on how a variety of problematic assumptions about human biology in the environment of evolutionary adaptation are made in evolutionary and immunological accounts of reproductive immunology. Drawing on evidence from numerous scientific fields, Howes will argue that these assumptions are scientifically flawed and that they involve substantial oversights. SPEAKER PROFILE [...]
Stephen Gaukroger: Sensibility and Metaphysics: Diderot, Hume, Baumgarten and Herder
ABSTRACT In the 1760s, Herder sets out a program for replacing metaphysical inquiry into the nature of thought with an anthropological account of the nature of thought. To understand the novelty and significance of Herder’s project, Gaukroger places Herder’s philosophical anthropology in the context of his contemporaries, Diderot, Hume and Baumgarten. SPEAKER PROFILE Stephen Gaukroger [...]