Author Archives: admin

The British Society of Aesthetics Cambridge Lecture Series

British Society of AestheticsVenue: Seminar Room, 1 Newnham Terrace, Darwin College. (Enter by main door).

Time: 5.00pm to 7.00pm

Admission is free, and all are welcome.

Thursday 22nd October: Stacie Friend, Department of Philosophy, Birkbeck College: ‘The Real Foundation of Fictional Worlds’.

Tuesday 3rd November: Edward Winters: Artist and Philosopher. ‘Situating Joseph Cornell’.

Thursday 19th November: Matthew Kieran, Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds: TBC.

For further information, contact Derek Matravers (derek.matravers@open.ac.uk)

Share

Seminar: Dr Stephen Boulter, 4 November 2015

 Dr Stephen Boulter (Oxford Brookes)
‘Can consequences be right-makers?’

Summary

This paper sets out a novel challenge to consequentialism as a theory in normative ethics. The challenge is rooted in the ontological claim that consequences of actions do not exist at the time required to be that in virtue of which actions are right or wrong, and so consequences cannot play the role attributed to them by consequentialists in ethics. The challenge takes the form of a dilemma. The consequentialist is confronted with a set of propositions she will find individually plausible but incompossible if taken in conjunction with consequentialism. The task is to restore consistency. The most plausible route to this end, I suggest, is to reject consequentialism. There are other ways of restoring consistency, but they come at the cost of endorsing highly implausible and unattractive theses. I begin by setting out the Continue reading →

Share

New publication from Cristina Chimisso

Cristina Chimisso’s article, ‘Narrative and epistemology: Georges Canguilhem’s concept of scientific ideology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science has just been published online, and will be published in the hard-copy version of the journal this year.

Abstract:

In the late 1960s, Georges Canguilhem introduced the concept of ‘scientific ideology’. This concept had not played any role in his previous work, so why introduce it at all? This is the central question of my paper. Although it may seem a rather modest question, its answer in fact uncovers hidden tensions in the tradition of historical epistemology, in particular between its normative and descriptive aspects. The term ideology suggests the influence of Althusser’s and Foucault’s philosophies. However, I show the differences between Canguilhem’s concept of scientific ideology and Althusser’s and Foucault’s respective concepts of ideology. I argue that Canguilhem was in fact attempting to solve long-standing problems in the Continue reading →

Share

Is there anything wrong with violence in video games?

The Open University Branch of the Royal Institute of Philosophy: Is there anything wrong with violence in video games?
Cambridge, 14 October 2015

A discussion, chaired by Derek Matravers, with David Braben, Louise Hanson, and Jamie Rumbelow.
14th October, 5.00pm to 7.00pm.

Venue: Seminar Room, Number 1 Newnham Terrace, Darwin College, Cambridge (enter by the main door on Silver Street).

Entry is free, and all are welcome.

Any enquiries to Derek Matravers: derek.matravers@open.ac.uk

Share

Seminar: Dr Chris Belshaw, 7 October 2015

Dr Chris Belshaw (Open University)
‘Death and extinction’

How should we feel about extinction in general, and human extinction in particular? There are important connections with death. The death of animals and plants can be bad for survivors, but only the death of persons is bad (often) for those who die. Species extinction, as such, is not bad for the members of that species, but if it brings about the disappearance of culture then our extinction is (very likely) bad for us. But isn’t death sometimes good? Indeed it is, and so (in a roughly parallel fashion) extinction

Share

Seminar: Dr Chris Woodard, 9 September 2015

Dr Chris Woodard (University of Nottingham)
Subjective well-being
9 September 2015

Well-being subjectivists aim to explain the nature of one central kind of value—well-being—entirely in terms of psychological states of valuing. This paper explores the attractions of well-being subjectivism, how best to develop it, and some of its implications. One conclusion is that subjectivism is compatible with the claim that subjects can be deeply mistaken about what is good for them, and that being prudent is very difficult.

Share

Seminar: Dr Stacie Friend, 1 July 2015

Dr Stacie Friend (Birkbeck, University of London)
Reality in Fiction

The concept of ‘truth in fiction’ prompts two questions: (i) What does it mean to say that something (e.g., a proposition) is fictionally true? (ii) How are the fictional truths determined? In answer to (i) I defend a version of the claim that fictional truth should be understood in terms of prescriptions to imagine. However, my focus in this talk is on (ii). I argue that the starting point for determining fictional truth is the assumption that fictional stories invite us to imagine about the real world. In consequence, we assume that whatever really obtains also obtains in the fictional world, so long as it is consistent with other fictional truths. I defend this claim against objections and contrast it with alternative approaches.

Share

Seminar: Dr Phillip Meadows, 3 June 2015

Mind Meaning and Rationality group seminar

Dr Phillip Meadows (The University of Manchester)
In defence of medial theories of sounds
3 June 2015

The recent literature on the nature of sounds has produced a consensus rejection of what might be thought of as the scientifically informed common-sense position: that sounds, whatever else they may be, must be an entity mediate between the source of the sound and the subject hearing it. In this paper I attempt to (i) resist the motivations for this rejection of what has been called a medial theory of sounds, and (ii) provide an independent argument for medial theories of sounds. This latter argument is intended to shift attention from the two considerations that have dominated the debate thus far: the relevant scientific facts about audition, and the spatial phenomenology of auditory experience.

Share