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) |
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PG Work in Progress Seminar
Raffaele Grandoni: “Vital dialogues: Georges Canguilhem on the history of science”
This week Raffaele Grandoni will present his paper 'Vital Dialogue: Georges Canguilhem on the history of science'.
Abstract:
The main feature of the post-Foucauldian historical epistemology (e.g. Hacking, A. Davidson) lies in retracing how the social, cultural and political context determines the emergence of scientific concepts and, in turn, how science plays a role in the government of populations and individuals. However, this tradition fails to provide a normative standpoint from which to judge how relations between science and non-scientific activities affects our lives. A solution, I claim, can be found in one of the sources of these authors: the French philosopher and historian of life sciences Georges Canguilhem.
With my talk, I will address how in grounding it on a vitalist philosophy, Canguilhem turns the history of science into a tool for ethically evaluating political uses of scientific concepts, without introducing any normative criteria from the outside. I will show that Canguilhem’s history of science shares the main feature of post-Foucauldian historical epistemology – i.e. revealing the role of socio-political values in the formation of scientific concepts and retracing the process through which they acquired their autonomy – while also providing the tools for an inherent ethical critique concerning processes of normalisation legitimised by science. My idea is that by defining life as the living being’s unconscious creation of better ways to relate to its environment, Canguilhem developed a critical approach to all attempts (including scientific ones) to uniform human subjectivities under strict norms. From this, I claim that this vitalist background does not only enable Canguilhem’s history of science to evaluate socio-cultural-political influences on scientific concepts, but it also entrusts it with the ethical aim of opposing (from an objective standpoint and without undermining science’s validity) science-led policies that constrain human beings’ capacity to autonomously create their own norms.