TBC

Guest Speaker: Helen Frowe (Stockholm)

Guest Speaker: Charlotte Knowles (University of Groningen)

Title: 'How to Dress Like a Feminist: Towards a Relational Account of Complicity'

Sara Gorea leading, paper TBD

Speaker: Maria Zanella (second-year PhD student)

 Title: Is visualising imagining seeing?

 Abstract: 

Is visualising imagining seeing? Mike Martin thinks so, Bernard Williams thinks not. In ‘The Transparency of Experience’, Martin criticizes Williams’ argument, but his criticism is based on a misreading of Williams’ ‘Imagination and the Self’, as I shall show. The dispute between Martin and Williams is about whether imagining seeing something is necessary in order to imagine what it would look like were it to be seen from a point of view. I, like Williams, think that it is not; I shall present my reasons for thinking so and my reasons for thinking that the extant arguments for the necessity are weak.

Guest Speaker: Jonathan Parry (LSE)

Professor Quassim Cassim will be delivering the 2022 Philosophy Christmas lecture entitled ' Extremism: A Philosophical Analysis' with responses from our students. Drinks and nibbles included.

Speaker: Achim Wamssler (PhD)

Title: Arbitrariness, Freedom of the will and Contingency in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

Everyone Welcome!

 Abstract: In the Elements of the Philosophy of Right Hegel discusses the concept of arbitrariness (freedom of choice) as part of his more general endeavour to develop a conception of will and freedom. In several passages he speaks of arbitrariness as being contingent. Being interested in Hegel’s concept of contingency I like to address the following points. (1) What exactly is arbitrariness for Hegel and how does this concept depict his understanding of the debate about free will and freedom of choice? (2) Hegel’s criticism of the concept of arbitrariness and of the debate concerning the possibility of freedom of choice. (3) His affirmation of certain points of the conception. (4) And finally, I like to address the question, in which way, for Hegel, arbitrariness is related to contingency.

RegistrationLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window

Guest Speaker: Sarah Flavel (Bath Spa University)

Title: Daoism and Strategic Thinking

Second Annual Secret Santa Book Exchange: The Philosophy & Literature Society book exchange and end-of-term celebration.

Guest Speaker: Anca Gheaus (LEU)

This week's PG WiP seminar will be led by Giulia Lorenzi (PhD).

Title: "Understanding Musical Virtuosity to Understand the Perception of Music"

Everyone welcome!

 Abstract:

In the realm of auditory perception, philosophers have considered the perception of music as a distinctive case, differentiating it from the perception of noises and everyday life sounds. In order to explain the uniqueness of perceiving music, Scruton (1997) has proposed what he called the acousmatic view, namely the idea that when we experience sounds in the musical context we do so divorcing them from their sources and circumstances of production. This clearly contrasts with the standard view of perception as the source of information about the external world which should characterise, in Scruton’s account, the perception of ordinary sounds. Hamilton (2007, 2009), however, has proposed that both the acousmatic and the non-acousmatic experience of music are aesthetically relevant, constructing as a consequence a two-fold theory which embraces both.  

In order to argue for an account that could combine both acousmatic and non-acousmatic experience tough, Hamilton has the burden of proving how the non-acousmatic experience (the one implying thoughts and awareness of the origins of sounds) can be relevant in the musical context. In order to do that, he presents four objects to Scruton’s account which consider the acousmatic experience as the only essential way to engage with musical sounds. 

In this talk, I am going to focus on Hamilton’s objection on the perception of virtuosity with the intention to support and strength is idea that a non-acousmatic experience of music is both possible and relevant for aesthetic appreciation. In order to do so, I am going to look to accounts of virtuosity present in the literature, sketch a new possible way to go and show how the nature of this aesthetic phenomenon in itself, however understood, requires a non-acousmatic experience in order to be perceived as this phenomenon.

Guest Speaker: Andrea Sangiovanni (KCL)

Imagination: 'Of the Powers of Imagination' by Montaigne

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/researchcentres/wma/graduates/afflictionsofmind/

Guest Speaker: Robert Simpson (UCL)

Speaker: Robert Simpson (UCL)

Talk: The Chilling Effect and the Heating Effect

 Abstract: Chilling Effects occur when a restriction on speech deters lawful speech, because of people’s uncertainty about the risks of incurring costs related to the restriction. I propose that, contrary to an orthodox account of this phenomenon, individual-level deterrence of speech sometimes intensifies discourse, at the group-level, rather than suppressing or subduing it. The deterrence of lawful speech may, somewhat counterintuitively, trigger a Heating Effect. This hypothesis offers us a promising (partial) explanation of the relentlessness of public debate on topics for which there is, simultaneously, evidence of people self-censoring, for fear of running afoul of speech restrictions. It also helps to identify and rectify two shortcomings in existing theoretical accounts of the Chilling Effect – in how they (i) explain the relation between individual- and group-level discursive phenomena, and (ii) characterize the distinctive objectionability of inadvertent speech deterrence.

TBD

This week's PG WiP Seminar will be led by Will Gildea.

Title: "Humans and Animals: Identical Moral Status, Different Anti-Killing Rights"

Abstract:

Existing views of moral status and the rights not to be killed that they help to ground are inadequate for one of two reasons. Either they fail to accommodate the intuition that humans matter as much as each other regardless of whether they possess advanced psychological capacities, or they fail to imply that killing humans is always or almost always harder to justify than killing animals. I offer an account of moral status and anti-killing rights that, uniquely within the actualist literature, accommodates both intuitions, explaining why humans are equals and also why humans have more robust anti-killing rights than animals. I defend the egalitarian intuition about moral status by arguing that all humans and animals that matter at all matter equally. I defend the intuition about killing by offering a new account of the grounds of anti-killing rights, according to which an individual’s rights not to be killed don’t just stem from their moral status. They can also stem from some of their normal rights against interference and to the receipt of goods. Autonomous humans have special rights of non-interference. And deeply cognitively impaired humans have special rights to certain goods. So, whilst killing animals generally violates their rights, human lives are protected even more robustly against killing.

RegistrationLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window

Guest Speaker: Jingjing Li (Leiden University)

Title: Husserlian Phenomenology, Chinese Buddhism, and The Problem of Essence

Guest Speaker: Charlie Richards (Oxford)

Guest Speaker: Dean Moyar (Johns Hopkins University)

Title: TBC