Moral Philosophy Seminar
The Moral Philosophy Seminar (MPS) explores all areas and frameworks of moral philosophy, including normative ethics, applied ethics, and meta-ethics. Those who wish to be added to the mailing list should ask the convenor through email.
Seminars usually take place on Mondays in term time, in the Lecture Room (10.300), Level 1, Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre.
Moral Philosophy Seminar Convenor: David Owens
Michaelmas Term 2025 - Term Card
Past Terms
| Week 3 (12th May) | Thomas Sinclair (Oxford) | Hypocrisy as Evasion |
| Week 5 (26th May) | Rahul Kumar (Queen's University) | Contractualism and the Value of Mutual Recognition |
| Week 6 (6th June) | Sarah Buss (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) | Why Me? |
| Week 7 (9th June) | Samuel Dishaw (Universite Catholique de Louvain) | Justifiability and the Other's Point of View |
| Week 3 (10th Feb) | Dana Nelkin (UCSD) | Desert and Degrees of Liability |
| Week 5 (17th Feb) | Kenneth Walden (Dartmouth) | Estrangement |
| Week 7 (3rd March) | Jules Salomone-Sehr (Oxford) | Delayed Blame for Grave Wrongs |
| Week 3 (28th October) | Tim Mulgan (University of Auckland/University of St.Andrews) | Philosophy for an Ending World |
| Week 5 (11th November) | David Enoch (Oxford) | Foreseeing Intended Harm: When Do Expected in-bello Violations Undermine ad-bellum Justification? |
| Week 8 (2nd December) | Daniel Munoz (University of North Carolina) | Caring Who |
| Week 2 (29th April) | Rachel Achs (UoC Santa Cruz) | Moral Philosophy Seminar |
| Week 4 (13th May) | Sanford Diehl (New York University) | Recognition as Actualisation |
| Week 6 (27th May) | Jonathan Gingerich (University of Rutgers Newark) & Daniela Dover (Oxford) | Freedom and Futurity: Beauvoir's Moral Psychology |
| Week 8 (10th June) | Lidal Dror (Princeton University) | Ignorance and Indifference of the Deaths of Select Others |
| Week 2 (22nd Jan) | Quinn White (Harvard) | Paying it Forward |
| Week 3 (29th Jan) | CANCELLED | Moral Philosophy Seminar |
| Week 6 (19th Feb) | Carla Bagnoli (Modena) | Orientation in Moral Thinking |
| Week 8 (4th March) | Christopher Cowie (Durham) | The Unsolvable Puzzle: How Moral Paradoxes Support Scepticism |
| Week 2 (16th Oct) | Robert Audi (University of Notre Dame) | Intrinsic Value, Inherent Value, and the Reasons for Action |
| Week 4 (30th Oct) | David Owens (KCL) | Rules and Rulers |
| Week 6 (13th Nov) | James Lewis (Cardiff University) | What it togetherness and why is it good? |
| Week 8 (27th Nov) | Ulrike Heuer (UCL) | Obligations as Protected Reasons |
| Week 2 (1st May) | Luca Ferrero (University of California, Riverside) | Agency, Time, and Absurdity: Telic Pursuits, Atelic Activities, and the Crising of Meaning |
| Week 4 (15th May) | Berislav Marusic (University of Edinburgh) | Emotional Double Vision |
| Week 6 (29th May) | Olivia Bailey (University of California, Berkeley) | Growing up and getting better: on some neglected costs of sensibility change |
| Week 8 (12th Jun) | Aleksy Tarasenko-Struc (Alden March Bioethics Institute, Albany Medical College) | Love and the Value of a Subject |
| Week 2 (23rd Jan) | Benjamin Kiesewetter (FU Berlin) | What We May Expect of Each Other |
| Week 4 (6th February) | Jens Timmerman (University of St.Andrews) | Kant's Constitutivism of Practical Judgement |
| Week 6 (20th Feb) | Paul Schofield (Bates College) | What Would it Mean to Reason Second-Personally? |
| Week 8 (6th March) | Jessica Isserow (University of Leeds) | Mixing Pride with Pleasure |
| Week 1 (17th October) | Julia Driver (University of Texas-Austin) | Blame and Moral Criticism |
| Week 6 (14th Nov) | Theron Pummer (University of St. Andrews) | Lifetime Prerogatives and Moral Offsetting |
| Week 8 (28th Nov) | Paul Katsafanas (Boston) | The Puzzle of Commitment |
| Week 2 (2nd May) | David Brink (UC San Diego) | Perfect Freedom: Kant, Green, and their Critics |
| Week 4 (16th May) | Peter Railton (Michigan, Ann Arbor) | Ethics and Artificial Intelligence |
| Week 6 (30th May) | Frances Kamm (Rutgers - New Brunswick) | Handling Future Pandemics: Harming, Not Aiding, and Liberty |
| Week 8 (13th June) | Nomy Arpaly (Brown University) | Deliberation and Fetish |
| Week 2 (24th Jan) | Robert Stern (Sheffield) | Forgiveness: owed but not demanded? |
| Week 4 (7th Feb) | Richard Moran (Harvard) | Self-Consciousness and Self-Division |
| Week 6 (21st Feb) | Sarah Buss (Michigan) | Why you Practice |
| Week 8 (7 March) | Eric Marcus (Auburn) | Preaching What You Practice |
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Sarah Paul (NYU-Abu Dhabi) |
Plan B Consistency |
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| Week 4 (1st Nov) |
Matthew Boyle (University of Chicago) |
Ethics and the First Person Perspective |
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Paul Bloomfield (University of Connecticut) |
Justice as the Virtue of Respect |
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Jed Lewinsohn (University of Pittsburgh) |
The ‘Natural Unintelligibility’ of Normative Powers |
| Week 2 (3rd May) |
Lucy O'Brien (UCL) and Marie Guillot (Essex) |
Self - Matters |
| Week 4 (17th May) |
Alexander Prescott-Couch (Oxford) |
Hermeneutic Injustice and the Public Sphere |
| Week 6 (31st May) |
Sam Berstler (Princeton/MIT) |
The Ethics of Word Twisting |
| Week 8 (14th June) |
Johann Frick (Princeton) |
Dilemmas, Luck, and the Two Faces of Morality |
| Week 2 (25th Jan) |
David Sussman (Illinois) |
'Retributivism Reconsidered' |
| Week 4 (8th Feb) | E. Sonny Elizondo (California) |
'Kantian Eudaimonism' |
| Week 6 (22nd Feb) |
Selim Berker (Harvard) |
'The Deontic, the Evaluative, and the Fitting' |
| Week 8 (8th March) |
Michael Rabenberg (Princeton) |
'Lucretius’ Puzzle' |
| Week 4 (3rd Nov) |
Michael Otsuka (LSE) |
'The case for a funded pension with a defined benefit (DB)' |
| Week 6 (16th Nov) |
Edward Lamb (Oxford) |
'Benefiting Those Who Would Benefit More' |
| Week 8 (30th Nov) |
Barry Maguire (Edinburgh) |
'Rewiring Ethics' |
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Gopal Sreenivasan (Duke University) |
Must the ends in courage be good? |
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Martin O'Neill (York) |
Social Justice, Democratic Socialism, and Collective Capital Institutions |
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Oded Na'aman (Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Hebrew University of Jerusalem) |
Meaningful Suffering |
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Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan) |
''What Has Gone Wrong? Populist politics and the mobilization of fear and resentment'' |
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| Week 2 (21st October) |
Vida Yao (Rice University) |
''Grace and Alienation '' |
| Week 4 (4th November) |
Brendan de Kenessey (Toronto) |
''What Makes Reasons Moral?'' |
| Week 6 (18th November) |
Louise Hanson (Durham) |
''Robust Moral Realism and Robust Aesthetic Realism'' |
| Week 8 (2nd December) |
John-Stewart Gordon (Vytautas Magnus University) |
''Ethics as a Method'' |
| Week 1 (14th January) | Luke Elson (Reading) | 'Nihilistic Despair' |
| Week 2 (21st January) | Gerald Lang (Leeds) | 'What's Wrong with Hypocrisy' |
| Week 3 (28th January) | Martin Sticker (Bristol) | 'The Normativity of Obligatory End' |
| Week 4 (4th February) | Philipp Gisbertz (Göttingen) | 'Human Dignity as a Moral Concept' |
| Week 5 (11th February) | Jeremy Fix (Oxford) | 'The Instrumental Rule' |
| Week 6 (18th February) | Robert Simpson (UCL) | 'What is Legitimation?' |
| Week 7 (25th February) | Lucy Campbell (Warwick) | 'Anscombe on Practical Knowledge and Practical Truth' |
| Week 8 (4th March) | Paulina Sliwa (Cambridge) | 'Hermeneutical Advice' |
| Week 8 (7th March, Special Session) | Robert Audi (Notre Dame) | 'Prospects for a Value-Based Deontology' |
| Week 2 (15th October) | Joe Horton (UCL) | 'The Exploitation Problem' |
| Week 3 (22nd October) | Cressida Gaukroger (Oxford) | "Privacy and the Importance of "Getting Away With It" |
| Week 5 (5th November) | Adam Shriver (Oxford) | 'Is Hedonism a Version of Axiological Monism?' |
| Week 6 (12th November) | Brian McElwee (Southampton) | 'Moral Progress and Moral Reproach' |
| Week 7 (19th November) | Jeremy Williams (Birmingham) | 'Anti-Abortion Advocacy, Violence, and Toleration' |
| Week 8 (26th November) | Fabienne Peter (Warwick) | 'Moral Self-Trust and its Limits' |
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Week 1 (23rd April) |
Theron Pummer (St Andrews |
"Optimising Outside Options" |
| Week 4 (14th May) | Patrick Tomlin (Warwick) | "Accidentally Killing on Purpose" |
| Week 7 (4th June) | Tom Dougherty (Cambridge) | "Degrees of Consent" |
For an archive of previous terms, please see here.
