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PG Work in Progress Seminar

About the WiP

The 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 schedule

A 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 schedule

Term 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 presenters

There 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 organisers

If 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, S2.77
Gustavo 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)

   

 

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Postgraduate Work in Progress Seminar: Tristan Kreetz: 'The Lives and Times of Rylean Achievements: A Defence of Ryle on Seeing (and Knowing)'

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Location: Room S0.09

Tristan offers a defence of a suggestion made by Gilbert Ryle about seeing and knowing in The Concept of Mind and elsewhere. Seeing and knowing are, Ryle argues, to be understood as special sorts of occurrences that Ryle calls 'achievements'. Many philosophers, most prominently Zeno Vendler, have found Ryle's claims about seeing and knowing puzzling, and it is now orthodoxy to hold that both seeing and knowing are types of state rather than occurrence, and fill time by obtaining rather than by unfolding or happening. The suggestion Tristan develops is that Ryle's critics have, by and large, not only failed to appreciate Ryle's category of achievements and the Aristotelian background to Ryle's suggestion that seeing and knowing belong in that category, but that there are significant and tangible philosophical benefits to thinking about seeing and knowing as Rylean achievements - a point Tristan draws out by looking at some remarks made by Austin about whether or not the verb 'to see' is ambiguous.

The talk will be followed by discussion and drinks at The Dirty Duck.

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