Carolyn Price has contributed a chapter to a new collection – Shadows of the Soul: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Emotions, which has just been published by Routledge. The collection, edited by Christine Tappolet, Fabrice Teroni and Anita Konzelmann Ziv, explores the nature and value of negative emotions, such as anxiety, shame and jealousy. The book is aimed at specialists and non-specialists alike. Carolyn’s chapter is on grief: she explores why some philosophers have held that we would be better off without grief, and she explains why she thinks they are wrong.

Professor Derek Matravers considers the treatment of cultural heritage in war and the philosophical questions that need to be asked to protect cultural property. See a video for this and more on OpenLearn

Join the global discussion……with Professor Michael Sandel 

Live Debate:

This is the latest philosophical question Professor Michael Sandel and the Global Philosophy Facebook group will be discussing live this Friday 26 January from 16.00 to 17.30.

The debate will be streamed live to the Global Philosophy Club Facebook group, so please do join us and share your comments and thoughts. . Some of your comments will be relayed to Prof Sandel during the session for live debate.

Everyone is invited, all you need is an internet connection.

If you want to join in the discussion, become a member of the group here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalphilosopher/about/

The debate can be viewed here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalphilosopher/

Radio Broadcast:

A shorter version of the debate will subsequently be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Tuesday 6th February at 09.00-09.45.    A video version, as well as previous debates are also available on the BBC Global Philosopher website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b075ft6f

OpenLearn:

Our OpenLearn Global Philosophy pages also contain lots more information around philosophical themes, topic and questions.  Explore further by visiting Open Learn:

http://www.open.edu/openlearn/tv-radio-events/radio/the-global-philosopher

Our student Jon Phelan was examined for his PhD yesterday, and passed with no corrections. The PhD was called ‘Reading Between the Lines: An Account of Cognitive Gain from Literary Fiction’.

Big congrats Jon!

Dr. Liz Irvine (University of Cardiff) will start our 2018 seminar series with her talk, “Semantics in the Light of Interaction”

Abstract: In this talk I’ll argue that new psycholinguistic research on communicative interaction  makes it possible to challenge a leading theory in the semantics vs. pragmatics debate (minimalism). This is surprising: semantic theories are not usually particularly empirically sensitive, but I’ll argue more generally that if they’re not empirically sensitive (in a particular sense), then it is not clear that they can fulfill a core part of their job description.

The talk will be held on Wednesday January 9th (2-4pm) at the Open University’s Campus at Walton Hall, in Room 006, Gardiner Building 1. All welcome.