David Roden reviewed some of the ideas from his recent book on posthuman life and answered questions from the audience at the London Futurists event at Birkbeck College in London on October 25. A video recording of this event is available on YouTube.
Category Archives: news events publications
Timothy Chappell on Alan Turing: A retrospective
On the centenary of Alan Turing’s birth Professor Timothy Chappell has contributed two audio tracks to the new OpenLearn album on Alan Turing: Life and Legacy. In the first he reflects on Turing’s personal life within the context of the society in which he lived. The second track covers Turing’s approaches to problem solving and how he applied his skills to help decipher the Enigma machine codes.
Seminar: Dr Costas Athanasopoulos, 5 November 2014
Dr Costas Athanasopoulos (University of Glasgow)
Demonstration (Απόδειξις) and its problems for St Gregory Palamas: Some neglected Aristotelian aspects of St Gregory Palamas’ Philosophy and Theology.
5 November 2014
I will discuss some often neglected aspects of St Gregory Palamas’ Philosophy and Theology in relation to his views on the use of Demonstration (Απόδειξις). My starting point will be Aristotle’s views on this and how St Gregory Palamas dealt with them in his treatises. Then, I will examine Sinkewicz’s and Ierodiakonou’s claims that either St Gregory Palamas did not understand the points Barlaam was making in relation to the use of Demonstration or that the Saint is mistaken on his interpretation of Aristotle. I will finish with some thoughts of why St Gregory Palamas expressed his critique on the use of Demonstration, which hopefully will clarify some of the intentions of the Saint on this debate (time permitting I will associate his views with some of the concerns of L. Wittgenstein, esp. in his late works).
Alex Barber wins AJP Best Paper award
‘Science’s Immunity to Moral Refutation’ in the 2013 volume of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. In the article, Alex argues that moral realists (some of them, anyway) have trouble explaining why we would never reject a scientific theory simply because it has implausible-sounding moral implications.
New philosophy module: A333 Key questions in philosophy
Key Questions in Philosophy A333 replaces AA308, with a first presentation in October 2014. This new module will have a structure and approach that is closer in spirit to Exploring philosophy (A222). Like A222, A333 covers a wide range of philosophical fields but focuses on specific questions such as: When is a war just? How can truth emerge from fiction? What is weakness of will? Does dying leave one worse off? Does it make sense to say that humans as a species are irrational?
Two new BBC programmes with philosophy elements
Seminar: Dr Sophie Archer, 1 October 2014
Mind Meaning and Rationality group seminar
Dr Sophie Archer (Keble College, Oxford)
‘Defending exclusivity’
October 1 2014
When one considers whether or not to believe something, what kind of considerations can one bring to bear on this question? You might think it obvious that in considering whether or not to believe something, all one can consider is whether or not that thing is true. However, recently, some philosophers have made an interesting case for the idea that this is not so. They have argued that, under certain circumstances, one can take into account practical considerations like whether one would like to believe that thing. However, I will argue that although considerations such as whether or not one would like to believe something undoubtedly influence one’s deliberation concerning what to believe outside of one’s conscious awareness, such practical considerations can never enter into one’s conscious deliberation concerning whether to believe something. Believing just doesn’t work like this. I will defend the idea that there is a certain exclusivity pertaining to the kinds of considerations that one can take into account when one is considering whether or not to believe something. That is, that it is only epistemic considerations – considerations concerning the truth of the matter – that one can consciously consider when deciding whether or not to believe that that thing is the case.
Chris Belshaw wins immortality…
…or the next best thing, a grant to study immortality for six months. A number of philosophers have asked whether it might be good if we could live forever, and have offered diverging verdicts. Assuming living forever isn’t going to be possible, Chris instead explores how differences in our powers of memory and anticipation might lead to a simulated immortality and whether in particular, having a good memory is overrated. The award is funded by the Templeton Foundation and administered by the Immortality Project at the University of California, Riverside. It runs from September 2014, will lead to a couple of papers and a book chapter.
Cristina Chimisso elected to the BPA Executive Committee
Seminar: Dr Sean Cordell, 4 June 2014
Dr Sean Cordell
Group Virtues: Backwards with Collectivism!
4 June 2014
Some contemporary work in ethics and epistemology argues that certain social groups can themselves bear virtues and vices: morally or epistemically valuable traits which we normally attribute to the character of individual agents. Focusing on two different accounts of distinctly collective group virtues as examples, I argue that the project faces a basic problem. On one hand, characteristics of social groups which look most like character virtues are explained by features of individuals, thus undermining the explanatory power of the collective picture. On the other hand, insofar as some group characteristic is irreducibly social and not explicable in terms of features of individuals – collective par excellence – it fails to meet minimal conditions of a character virtue. So the more like a character virtue a social feature appears, the less it is distinctively collective: and the more distinctly collective a group characteristic is, the less it is like a character virtue.
This shows only that the project of distinctly collective virtues is misguided, not that a conception of the virtues of groups per se is flawed or redundant. The positive upshot of the problem is that we can only understand group virtues in terms of the mutually dependent conditions of a) the purpose of or practice embodied in a particular group and b) the group-oriented attitudes and actions of individuals. This implies that neither the group nor the individual has explanatorily privilege as the starting point for group virtues. One level cannot get going without the other: there are no group-orientated virtue generating features of individuals without a group, and there is no such group virtue without such appropriately oriented individuals. If this is generally true of relations between individual features and social collectives (I think it is), then maybe we should resist such prioritization in any case.