Alex Barber and Sean Cordell are running an AHRC funded project, the Role Ethics Network, with a number of events over 18 months involving academics from across the globe. The rationale of the project is that social roles – our occupancy and performance of them – shape our ethical lives in ways that have not been fully appreciated or understood. Full details are on the project website.

The next is a workshop in Manchester on March 22, at which Alex will deliver a paper on a puzzle about wellbeing: wellbeing is an individualist notion (it equates to that which is good for a particular person), and achievement is an ingredient of wellbeing, but achievement is often collective rather than individual (just think about orchestral performance). Alex argues that thinking about the fulfillingness of role occupancy and role performance can help dissolve the tension.

The seminar will be held at the Open University’s campus at Walton Hall, in meeting room 5, Wilson A, from 2pm – 4pm, Wed 1 March 2017.

Professor Stella Sandford (Kingston University) ‘Kant, Teleology and Natural History: “Race” in the Critique of Pure Reason’

Abstract: As the fact and the nature of Kant’s controversial essays on race become better known, the question of their relationship to his major philosophical works is extremely vexing. Starting with the critical philosophy, and recognising the application of aspects of it in the essays on race, still allows, in principle, for their separation, isolating and marginalizing the topic of ‘race’ in Kant’s oeuvre. Starting instead with Kant’s ‘natural history of the human races’, this talk will suggest that there are ways in which Kant’s work on race may be more tightly woven into the critical philosophy that has hitherto been recognized, giving aspects of the critical philosophy – specifically Kant’s philosophical claims concerning the necessity of teleological judgement in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgement – its lead, and perhaps even its practical motivation. Although this does not mean that the critical philosophy is hopelessly compromised (study of it will remain important and productive), this does mean that the place of ‘race’ in Kant’s oeuvre will need to be reconsidered.

All welcome. Contact: Cristina Chimisso

OU Philosophy welcomed guest speaker Phillip Meadows from the United Arab Emirates University to a one-off Metaphysics Day on November 30 2016. He talked about the puzzle of absences, which seem to be both vital to causal explanations (‘It happened because there were no electron’) and yet incapable of causing anything (‘How can absent electrons, or absent anything elses for that matter, have causal properties?’)

OU philosophers rounded out the day with contributions on the metaphysics of sports (Jon Pike), moral refutations of metaphysics (Alex Barber) and the objectivity of ordinary life (Sophie Grace Chappell).