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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

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Location: MS Teams

This week we are joined by Giulia Lorenzi and Felipe Morales Carbonell who will introduce their paper Modal Judgement in Musical Performance. We hope to see as many of you as possible there!

 Abstract

 In this paper, we aim to connect some issues in modal epistemology with some issues in the philosophy of music. Our aim is to explore the function of modal judgment in the context of music, and more specifically, in the context of musical performance. We show how judgments about what is ‘musically possible’ play an important role for performers in the western classical tradition. First, we address some preliminary concerns about the plausibility of the project. Then, we consider the case of the formation of expectations in performance, and argue that these are directed not only to future events (like the continuation of an arpeggio or a change in tempo), but also to merely possible ones. After doing this, we show that in order to account for the different ways in which modal judgment is part of the cognitive dimension of performance, we need to adopt a pluralist modal epistemology, which in turn pushes in the direction of a form of empiricism about the epistemology of modality. Briefly put: the time constraints for judgment in musical contexts make it implausible that modal judgments can arise by purely rational means. This suggests that we should consider the possibility of perception-based mechanisms of modal belief formation. Finally, we suggest that modal judgment also plays a role in listening more generally, and in composition.

Please contact Johan Heemskerk for instructions on joining.

 

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