Dr Kathleen Stock, University of Sussex
Sexual objectification, perception and images
7 May 2014

On the face of it, to ‘sexually objectify’ someone is to treat them ‘as a sexual object’; but what does this mean, exactly? Within feminist literature on notions of sexual objectification, there are several different approaches to this question. Significant disagreement apparently exists about number of key issues, in a way that seems puzzling given the apparent aim of analyzing a single phenomenon. After describing three prominent sorts of contribution to this field, I will focus on apparent areas of disagreement. I will then argue that the appearance of genuine disagreement here is in fact illusory. This will help clarify both the state of the current debate about the nature of objectification, and my eventual contribution to it. In the final part of my paper, I will argue for a conception of objectification which helps us understand how non-pornographic images can be objectifying: namely, objectification as seeing someone in a way which de-emphasises their minded features.

Dr Thom Brooks, Durham Law School
The Capabilities Approach and Political Liberalism
2 April 2014

John Rawls argues that A Theory of Justice suffers from a “serious problem”: the problem of political stability. His theory failed to account for the reality that citizens are deeply divided by reasonable and incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral comprehensive doctrines. This fact of reasonable pluralism may pose a threat to political stability over time and requires a solution. Rawls proposes the idea of an overlapping consensus among incompatible comprehensive doctrines through the use of public reasons in his later Political Liberalism. Rawls’s proposed solution to the problem of political stability has received much criticism. Some, such as Kurt Baier, Brian Barry, George Klosko, and Edward McClennen, argue that an overlapping consensus is relatively unnecessary. Rawls should have acknowledged existing resources in his account that might secure political stability over time without major changes to his original views about justice. Others, including Kent Greenawalt, Michael Sandel, Leif Wenar, and Iris Marion Young believe that an overlapping consensus is too fragile to secure political stability. Rawls correctly identifies a major problem for his original account, but he fails to provide a satisfactory solution.

I believe these objections rest on a mistake easily overlooked. Each objection claims that, for Rawls, the possibility of future political stability is to be guaranteed by an overlapping consensus alone. This perspective fails to recognize the central importance of the social minimum in securing political stability. There is, in fact, more resources to secure political stability than Rawls or his critics have recognized. My discussion will begin with a brief explanation of why the problem of political stability raises an important challenge to Rawls’s views on justice and why he argues for an overlapping consensus as a solution to it. I will next consider the more important objections to Rawls’s solution and why these fail. I will argue that the social minimum might better support political stability if it is broadly understood in terms of the capabilities approach. This approach is compatible with Rawls’s political liberalism and it provides a more robust understanding of a just social minimum. Political stability does not rely upon an overlapping consensus alone — and it may be better secured where the capabilities approach plays a more central role. Therefore, Rawls does provide an illuminating solution to the problem of political stability that is more compelling if we incorporate the capabilities approach into political liberalism, but in a novel way.

Dr Goff Philip, University of Liverpool
Cognitive phenomenology makes it hard to naturalise the mind
5 March 2014

In the twentieth century there was a broad consensus that thought and consciousness were quite distinct aspects of mentality. In the twenty first century, a growing number of philosophers believe that occurrent thoughts just are, or at least are grounded in, conscious states. I argue that this view, call it ‘phenomenal intentionalism’, makes the project of giving a naturalistic account of the mind extremely problematic.

Firstly, phenomenal intentionalism renders more acute problems associated with the under-determination content (contrary to the claim sometimes made by its proponents that it makes things easier in this regard). Secondly, phenomenal intentionalism implies that there is no logical connection between thought and behaviour, and this makes it extremely difficult to explain why, always or for the most part, thoughts give rise to rationally appropriate behaviour.

Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness merely threatens physicalism; there are naturalistic forms of dualism and panpsychism. The hard problems associated with a commitment to phenomenal intentionality threaten any theory of mind we might plausibly call ‘naturalistic’.

Prof Paul Noordhof, University of York
Evaluative Perception as Response Dependent Representation
5 February 2014

After having distinguished at least two forms of evaluative perception across subject matter, I relate the debate to the question of whether perceptual content should be understood richly or austerely. One way to capture some of the motivations of both parties is to distinguish between sensory and non-sensory perceptual content. Evaluative properties typically figure in non-sensory perceptual contents.  Nevertheless, interestingly, many don’t display a hidden structure as, for example, kind properties do.  I seek to explain the way the way in which they are presented in experience – non sensorily but without hidden structure – in terms of the way in which they are represented. I argue we need to recognise the existence of representations constituted by our dispositions to respond in certain ways and outline how this may be developed.

Alex Barber
Equality, roles and station
8 January 2014

The topic of distributive justice (within a single society) is normally approached through the question:

Q: How and why should a society’s resources be distributed across its population?

Or, more colloquially, ‘Who gets what?’ I propose we split Q into two less familiar questions:

Q(i): How and why should a society’s resources be distributed across various social roles?
Q(ii): How and why should a society’s roles be distributed across its population?

The reason for making such a split is twofold. First, justifications of inequality are, in practice, usually tied directly to social roles and only indirectly to the people occupying them. In the context of paid employment, for example, an office cleaner receives less than a university professor because of differences in how these roles are constituted and evaluated. Much of the existing philosophical literature on equality glides over this fact (or else focuses solely on the role of free-market entrepreneur).

Second, it is tempting for  supporters of social equality to think that, broadly speaking, equality thrives better under conditions of co-operation, collaboration and common purpose than under conditions of competition between individuals in, say, an open market. In this talk I examine justifications for inequalities that emerge when we work together as part of a group or society. Working together involves us in occupying different roles. I argue that diversity between social roles (in respective of their entrance/exit conditions, their obligations and entitlements, the importance of their function) permits non-egalitarians to defend a relatively uneven distribution of society’s resources. I end by considering possible egalitarian responses, with the hope of improving on Cohen’s response to Rawls on entrepreneurs.

Professor of Philosophy, Derek Matravers
‘Life and Narrative’
9 January 2013

Summary

Many people maintain that some sense of narrative is necessary if we are to make sense of our lives. In his last book, The Mess Inside, Peter Goldie argued that there are certain ‘dangerous fictionalising tendencies’ of narrative that have the potential to distort that sense. I argue two points. First, that some of what Goldie sees as properties of fictional narrative are, in fact, properties of narrative per se. Second, that these are not uniformly dangerous; it depends on what we are trying to achieve with the narrative.

Derek Matravers, Professor of Philosophy
Pots, deception, and beauty
6 November 2013

In their 1994 book, Artful Crafts, Michael Vickers and David Gill argue that the value we place on Greek pots stems from a deliberate deception practiced by Sir William Hamilton in the 1770s. Without this deception, we might never have found them valuable and (I shall assume) they would not have the place in our aesthetic pantheon which they currently occupy. In short, we have been conned into seeing them as beautiful. I consider what we should do in response to this, and also what light this throws on the nature of beauty.

Timothy Chappell, Professor of Philosophy
Plato and Socrates on evil
2 October 2013

As Nietzsche observed, our ethical tradition has often been dominated by the idea of evil as malign force, energetic malice. I contrast this essentially Judaeo-Christian conception with the Greek conception of evil as incompetence, suggesting that there is much to be said for the latter.