PG Work in Progress Seminar
About the WiPThe Postgraduate Work in Progress (WiP) Seminar is a student-organised session intended to provide all philosophy graduate students, and occasionally graduate students undertaking philosophy projects in other departments, with the platform to present and discuss their ongoing research. All philosophy PGs, whether MA, MPhil, or PhD, are encouraged to attend, and faculty members and visitors to the department are very welcome. No extensive knowledge of the week’s topic is necessary. The seminar offers an invaluable opportunity for graduates to present their work in a friendly, supportive, unassessed setting, and receive vital peer-review feedback and tips, allowing them to improve and practise defence of their work, as well as to get to know and socialise with fellow students and members of the wider department. Seminars normally take place on Thursdays, from 5:00pm until 6:15pm in S2.77, and can also be attended online on via Teams. The title and abstract for each talk along with a Teams link is circulated to all PG students on a Monday.The format will consist of a roughly 30-minute presentation of a paper, followed by a roughly 30-minute open discussion and Q&A. Current term scheduleA list of seminars occurring in the current academic term can be found below. Term 2 (2023-2024) Schedule
Thursday 11th January - Aurian De Briey - 'From Heidegger's social ontology to his answer to the technological challenge' Thursday 18th January - Emily Boocock - 'Some Characteristic Features of Extremist Ideology' Thursday 25th January - Chris Hall - 'Knowing What We're Doing' Thursday 1st February - Sara Gorea - 'Sideways music and sideways obligations' Thursday 8th February - Gustavo Ruiz da Silva - 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography' Thursday 15th February - Lumeng Liu Thursday 22nd February - Simon Gansinger Thursday 29th February - Efan Owen Thursday 7th March - Harland Cossons Thursday 14th March - Oscar North-Concar Previous term scheduleTerm 1 (2023-2024) Schedule
Friday 6th October - Clarissa Mueller - 'A Phenomenology of Neurodivergence' Thursday 12th October - Eve Poirier - 'Plausible Abstractions: The role of fiction, truth and history in Genealogy and State of Nature Philosophy' Thursday 19th October - Aurian de Briey - 'The Articulation between Liberty and Happiness' Thursday 26th October - Ben Campion - 'Videogame Photography Returns: Photography versus ‘the Photographic’ Thursday 2nd November - Elias Girma Wondimu - 'Mixed-Raced Inclusion: Revising Existing Definitions of Race' Thursday 9th November - Johan Heemskerk Thursday 16th November - Haley Burke Thursday 23rd November - Fridolin Neumann Thursday 30th November - Oscar North-Concar - 'A Problem For Objectivism in Ethics' Thursday 7th December - Marco Rienzi Notes for presentersThere is no strict minimum or maximum limit on paper length, and you may present an entire paper, a chapter of a thesis, an article, or outline the scope of a project, etc. The general recommendation is 3000-5000 words, as your work should be amenable to summation within 30 minutes. Please provide your title and abstract to the WiP organisers by the end of the Sunday on the week you are presenting.Please keep in mind that the seminar is best used to gather valuable suggestions with which to improve to your work, and to gain experience in presenting your work. As such, your work does not need to be a watertight, polished piece, but may be a draft or substantial set of notes. You are welcome to share work at all stages of the writing process. Contact the organisersIf you would like to present at the WiP or have any questions about it, please email both Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk) and Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk). |
Next talk: Thursday 8th February 2024, 5pm, S2.77Gustavo Ruiz da Silva: 'Paul Veyne: Elegiac Storiography'WiP Organisers 23/24: Chris Hall (Chris.Hall.1@warwick.ac.uk) Grainne O'Shea (Grainne.O-Shea@warwick.ac.uk) |
|
|
|
Postgraduate Work in Progress Seminar
Abstract:
Objects can look different in different conditions of illumination while retaining their colour: for instance, a directly illumined part of a uniformly white wall and a shadowed part of that wall look different in spite of being, and looking to be, the same colour. These familiar cases of changing appearances have been used to motivate substantive philosophical theories of appearances. On these views, in order to explain how things look, we need to posit some special subject - or context-dependent properties, such as colours, shapes and sizes (e.g. Shoemaker 2000, 2006, Noë 2004, Schellenberg 2008, Hill-Bennett 2008, Genone 2014).
In this paper, Giulia argues that changes in colour appearance under different illuminants can be explained in terms of ordinary, objective properties we visually perceive and do not motivate a metaphysical commitment to properties of a different kind. She first appeals to evidence from theories of colour constancy, colour matching experiments and phenomenological considerations to show that visual appearances exhibit a structural complexity that can only be explained by acknowledging that properties other than colours contribute to the way things visually appear. Giulia will then argue that the best explanation for this complexity is that we can visually perceive the illumination of surfaces and that illumination distinctively contributes to determining visual appearance. She concludes that cases of changing appearances involving colours under different illuminants do not support the appearance properties view. Finally she discusses an alternative proposal, on which illumination is a dimension of colour appearance (Hilbert 2005, Jagnow 2010), and argues that we have no reason to accept its counter-intuitive consequences. Changing appearances do not require us to abandon the näive view on which the way the objects we perceive appear is explained by their perceivable, objective properties.