Digest Week 2 Trinity Term 2024

The Royal Institute of Philosophy public lecture: Katherine Puddifoot

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:00 - 19:15

Old Fire Station, café, 40 George Street Oxford OX1 2AQ

This talk will explore how conceptions about memory can be crucial to determining whether justice and fairness are secured. It will show how claims to remember can both support and undermine justice, and different ways to conceptualise memory can support or undermine these claims. It will then argue that theorists interested in developing accounts of what it is to remember ought to keep in mind how different conceptions of memory can support or undermine injustice. And, fairly radically, it will argue that accounts of what it is to remember ought to be constrained by the demand to develop conceptions of memory that support rather than undermine justice and fairness.

Katherine Puddifoot is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Durham University, working on topics in social philosophy, social epistemology, philosophy of psychology, and feminist epistemology. Her recent research focuses on stereotyping, implicit bias, epistemic injustice and distorted memories. Prior to arriving in Durham, Katherine studied for her PhD in Sheffield and held positions in Bristol, Glasgow and Birmingham. Katherine's first book How Stereotypes Deceive Us was released by Oxford University Press in 2021. Her other academic work has been published in Synthese, Philosophical Studies, Episteme and Journal of American Philosophical Association among other places. Since January 2022, she has been an Associate Editor at the journal Philosophical Psychology.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-royal-institute-of-philosophy-public-lecture-katherine-puddifoot-tickets-850128345767?aff=oddtdtcreator

Oxford University Philosophy Society

“Racism, Naming Racism, and Academic Freedom” by Elizabeth Harman, Professor of Philosophy and Human Values, Princeton University

Where: Radcliffe Humanities Lecture Room

When: 7-8 PM, April 30th

Abstract:  Sometimes academic research is racist.  What should be done about this?  Some people think that any racist research must be an instance of research misconduct; it should be investigated and punished.  On this view, racist research should be banned.  Others think that the protections of academic freedom should be so broad as to encompass research that is seen as racist; they furthermore think that calling a colleague’s work “racist” is combative and disrespectful, an unacceptable violation of norms of professional civility.  I will argue that both camps get something right, and both camps get something wrong.  When racist research happens, it should be named as such, rather than merely criticised in other terms.  But the protections of academic freedom are and should be broad, protecting much racist research.  Similarly, much research that is sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist should be protected.

"Why Middle-Sized Matters" with George Ellis & Robert Koons

William Simpson, a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford this year, has organised a Public Lecture and Discussion of ‘Why Middle-Sized Matters’ to Science and Metaphysics, involving the cosmologist George Ellis and the philosopher Robert Koons.

How the Science of the Middle-Sized Restores Purpose

Professor George F. R. Ellis, FRS, University of Cape Town.

 Professor George Ellis is a world-leading cosmologist and a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. 

Is Aristotle’s Philosophy of Nature Scientifically Obsolete

Professor Robert C. Koons, University of Texas at Austin.

Professor Robert Koons is a philosopher of religion and metaphysician, and a prominent advocate for the revival of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature. He will argue that the Aristotelianism of the scholastic period provides an attractive foundation for human values, and that a re-thinking of the philosophy of the natural sciences in Aristotelian terms is not only desirable but feasible.

The Public Lectures and Discussion will take place at St Cross/Pusey House on Wednesday 1^st May from 3pm to 5.20pm (this includes a break between the lectures and the discussion). Entrance is free.

The Public Lectures and Discussion are part of a Colloquium organised by William Simpson, which is pursuing the theme of ‘middle-sized objects’ in the philosophy of physics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion. For more information about the Colloquium, visit https://civitas.utexas.edu/a-colloquium-at-oxford.

Place & Emotion
Interdisciplinary workshop
Atmosphere room, School of geography and the environment, University of Oxford
May 2nd, 2024, 10 AM - 4 PM

Register at https://placeandemotion.wixsite.com/workshop

The connection between place and emotion is both deep and intricate. Our emotions are always situated and shaped by our surroundings. And places have an affective life of their own, an atmosphere that can move us in myriad ways. This interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers across geography, philosophy and the arts to explore this connection.

Schedule
10.30 Intro
11.00 Anna Gleizer | Slow violence and Ecological Grief
11.40 Josefina Jaureguiberry Mondion | Imperfect Affective Infrastructures: The Politics of Inconvenience
and Solidarity in Radical Housing Projects
12.20 Pablo Fernandez Velasco | The Aesthetics of Disorientation
13.00 Lunch
14.00 Takuya Niikawa | Mood and Atmosphere
14.40 Kate Keohane | Nadia Huggins: Poetics and Politics of the Deep

Organisers: Anna Gleizer, Pablo Fernandez Velasco

2024 Annual Uehiro Lectures in Practical Ethics

Love and Abortion

Lecture 2: Loving Someone Whose Death Wouldn’t Matter

Speaker: Professor Elizabeth Harman

Date/time: Thursday 2 May 2024, 16:15 - 18:00 (followed by drinks for all attendees)

In-person @ H B Allen Centre, Keble College

What does love teach us about abortion? How does love challenge our ideas about abortion? How can love explain the importance of abortion?

https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2024-lecture1

Graduate Discussion Group in Practical Ethics.

Friday 3 May 14:15 – 16:15

Convenor:  Dr Becky Brown

Venue: Oxford Uehiro Centre, Seminar Room, Suite 1 Littlegate House, 16-17 St Ebbes St. OX1 1PT

Join Zoom Meeting: Graduate Discussion Group Trinity Term 2024

https://zoom.us/j/95217985116?pwd=dDRwN3VZTnJMQjBCOXFGbHJFOENGUT09

Meeting ID: 952 1798 5116

Passcode: 665076

Part 1: Work in Progress

Student Presenting:  Anne Fenoy "Debates on the concept of disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)"

Part 2: Methods in Applied Ethics: Dr Thomas Mitchell on the philosophy of trust

Suggested Reading:

Hawley, K., (2014) Trust, Distrust and Commitment, Noûs, Vol. 48, No. 1 pp. 1-20 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43828859

Jones, K., (2012), Trustworthiness, Ethics, 123:1, 61-85, https://doi.org/10.1086/667838

In Dialogue: Michèle Le Doeuff and Kate Kirkpatrick

Friday 3 May, 16:00–17:30

The Collier Room, Regent’s Park College

To celebrate the publication of a collection introduced and curated by the late philosopher Pamela Sue Anderson, In Dialogue with Michèle Le Dœuff, this conversation will introduce and explore ways Le Dœuff’s work creatively disrupts established notions of what philosophy might be. Far from being a discipline about the leader and the disciple, a hierarchy of knowledge and paternalism, Le Dœuff proposes a philosophy of dialogue and friendship. The encounters in this book show how openness and generosity can be the starting point of truly rigorous thinking—about feminism, joy, memory, and the importance of a key Le Dœuffian concept, the imaginary.

Wine reception to follow