Philosophy » Past Equality and Welfare Events

14/02-15/02: MindGrad2026

Rachel Harrington — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:36:41 GMT

When: Sat, 14 Feb - Sun, 15 Feb '26

Where: MS.04

Keynote speakers:

Helen Steward (Leeds)

Jessie Munton (Cambridge)

Rory Madden (UCL).

04/02 12pm-2pm: WMA Graduate Research Seminar

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 09:16:57 GMT

When: 12pm - 2pm, Wed, 04 Feb '26

Where: S1.88

Week 4 (4 Feb), 12:00-14:00, room: S1.88

21/01 12pm-2pm: WMA Graduate Research Seminar

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 09:15:37 GMT

When: 12pm - 2pm, Wed, 21 Jan '26

Where: S1.88

Week 2 (21 Jan), 12:00-14:00, room: S1.88

22/10 2pm-4pm: WMA Seminar - Mental Imagery and Harmful Language

Rachel Harrington — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:26:56 GMT

When: 2pm - 4pm, Wed, 22 Oct '25

Where: S0.11

Date: Wednesday, 22 October 2025

Location: Social Sciences Building, S0.11

Schedule:

14:05-14:55

Speaker: Michelle Liu (Monash)

Title: Mental Imagery and Harmful Language*

14:55-15:05

Coffee Break

15:05-15:50

Q&A

*Abstract:

Research on pernicious language tends to focus on harmful beliefs and associations transmitted by such language. In this paper, I explore the idea that pernicious language often transmits harmful mental imagery. Empirical studies suggest that mental imagery is a pervasive feature of language processing. Furthermore, mental imagery prompted by language can influence our memories and judgements in an insidious way. Focusing on language containing misinformation about witnessed events, as well as generics and metaphors about social groups, this paper argues for the importance of mental imagery for theorising harmful language and suggests ways to combat the imagistic harm.

17/09 11am-6pm: Avishai Margalit Workshop

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 07:38:46 GMT

When: 11am - 6pm, Wed, 17 Sept '25

Where: Scarman House

'We are holding a workshop on September 17^th to celebrate the work of Avishai Margalit, to which you are warmly invited. The workshop will have as background a manuscript consisting of a brief autobiography and an extended interview linking much of his published work, books and articles. If you would like to take part in it, please let me know, as we need to register people. The bibliography below gives an indication of some of the work that may be discussed. The speakers giving brief discussion-introducing talks to issues raised in Margalit’s work will be: Quassim Cassam, John Dunn, Assaf Sharon, Moshe Halbertal, Ulrike Heuer, Michael Waltzer. (David Enoch will be joining us by zoom).

Publications

Books

· Idolatry (jointly with Moshe HalbertalLink opens in a new window), Harvard University PressLink opens in a new window, 1992.

· The Decent Society, Harvard University Press, 1996.

· Views in Review: Politics and Culture in the State of the Jews, Farrar, Straus and GirouxLink opens in a new window, 1998.

· The Ethics of Memory, Harvard University Press, 2002. ISBNLink opens in a new window 978-0-674-00941-7Link opens in a new window (A partial German version of this book, Ethik der Erinnerung, was published by Fischer Taschenbuch VerlagLink opens in a new window in 2000.)

· Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies (with Ian BurumaLink opens in a new window), New York: The Penguin PressLink opens in a new window, 2004. ISBNLink opens in a new window 978-0-14-303487-2Link opens in a new window

· On Compromise And Rotten Compromises, Princeton University PressLink opens in a new window, 2010

· On Betrayal, Harvard University Press, 2017

28/05 11am-6pm: Special Symposium on 'Truth and Truthfulness'

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 20 May 2025 12:39:18 GMT

When: 11am - 6pm, Wed, 28 May '25

Where: MB0.07

Weds. 28th May (Week 6), MB0.07, 11:00-18:00

Special Symposium on Bernard Williams' Truth and Truthfulness:

To register, please email wma@warwick.ac.uk with your name and affiliation. Featuring:

Maria Alvarez (KCL)
Andrew Huddleston (Warwick)
Tim Lewens (Cambridge)
Guy Longworth (Warwick)
Adrian Moore (Oxford)
Mark Philp (Warwick)
Alexander Prescott (Oxford)
Johannes Roessler (Warwick)

01/05 4pm-5pm: Truth and Truthfulness Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:33:45 GMT

When: 4pm - 5pm, Thu, 01 May '25

Where: s1.50

In preparation for the WMA Symposium on Bernard Williams' Truth and Truthfulness in week 6, the WMA is hosting a reading group on the book. We aim to cover two chapters of the book each week, all are welcome to join. Any questions please email wma@warwick.ac.uk

24/04 3pm-4:30pm: Truth and Truthfulness Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:33:01 GMT

When: 3pm - 4:30pm, Thu, 24 Apr '25

Where: s1.50

08/05 3pm-4:30pm: Truth and Truthfulness Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:33:01 GMT

When: 3pm - 4:30pm, Thu, 08 May '25

Where: s1.50

15/05 3pm-4:30pm: Truth and Truthfulness Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:33:01 GMT

When: 3pm - 4:30pm, Thu, 15 May '25

Where: s1.50

22/05 3pm-4:30pm: Truth and Truthfulness Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 11:33:01 GMT

When: 3pm - 4:30pm, Thu, 22 May '25

Where: s1.50

07/05 2pm-6pm: MEEP Mini-Workshop: Philosophy of Barbarism

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 09:46:59 GMT

When: 2pm - 6pm, Wed, 07 May '25

Where: Wolfson Research Exchange, Floor 2 Lib extension.

Weds. 7th May (Week 3), Wolfson Research Exchange (Library), 14:00-18:00

MEEP Mini-Workshop: "Philosophy of Barbarism"

14:00 - 15:45 Maria Boletsi (Leiden)

16:15 - 18:00 Quassim Cassam (Warwick)

Dinner and drinks at Radcliffe will follow. Any questions, please contact lorenzo.serini@warwick.ac.uk and oscar.north-concar@warwick.ac.uk

14/03 4pm-6pm: WMA Seminar: The Cultural Evolution of Speech Act Norms

Rachel Harrington — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 15:55:02 GMT

When: 4pm - 6pm, Fri, 14 Mar '25

Where: A0.23

Mitch Green (Connecticut) - The Cultural Evolution of Speech Act Norms

After characterizing the notions of information, signal, and verbal signal, I note that since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, speech act theory has been carried on with little attention to how speech acts might have come about in the evolution of communication. I then explain some of the central ideas of cultural evolutionary theory. In that light I sketch a cultural-evolutionary account of the modern practice of assertion according to which that practice emerges from a series of increasingly adaptive “proto”-assertoric speech acts. I then offer a similar though more compact reconstruction for the evolution of imperatives. If these reconstructions are plausible, they suggest that assertoric and directive practices are adaptive in the communities in which they occur. They are therefore not arbitrary, contrary to one commitment incurred by conventionalist approaches to speech acts.

19/02 2:30pm-6pm: MEEP Internal Mini-workshop: 'Other MiInds, Practical Reason and McDowell's Heterodox Reading'

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 18:59:41 GMT

When: 2:30pm - 6pm, Wed, 19 Feb '25

Where: S0.21

MEEP Internal Mini-workshop

19 February, 2.30-6.00, S.021

2.30-3.45

Eliza Little: 'Other Minds, Practical Reason and McDowell's Heterodox Reading'.

3.45-4.15

Tea/coffee

4.15-5.00

Guy Longworth: Practical Knowledge of Other Minds.

5.00-5.45

Naomi Eilan: Self-consciousness and Objectivity: On the Role of Other Minds

14/02 11am-6pm: MEEP Workshop - Autobiographical Memory

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 09:46:46 GMT

When: 11am - 6pm, Fri, 14 Feb '25

Where: A1.05

WMA MEEP Workshop

Autobiographical Memory and Moral Agency

February 14, A1.05

The workshop is based on contributions to Daniel Vanello’s forthcoming collection, Autobiographical Memory and Moral Agency: an Interdisciplinary Perspective, Routledge, which he put together while he held a Leverhulme Fellowship here. The chapters on which the talks will be based are available for pre-read at:

Autobiographical memory workshop - papers

Programme

11-12

The Integrity of Moral Witnesses: Understanding Evil Through Autobiographical Memory, Daniel Vanello, UCL

12-1

Moral Agency and Responsibility in Autobiographical Remembering, Anthony Marcel and Lia Kvavilashvili, University of Hertfordshire

Lunch break

2-3

Episodic memory, memories, and the pleasures of remembering, Christoph Hoerl, University of Warwick

3-4

Autobiographical memory in narratives of addiction and recovery, Thomas Crowther, University of Warwick

Tea break

4.30-5.30

Auld Acquaintance: Remembering People, Naomi Eilan, University of Warwick.

29/01 11am-12pm: Stocker Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:50:57 GMT

When: 11am - 12pm, Wed, 29 Jan '25

Where: S1.50

Week	Date	Chapter(s)	Room
2	15/01	1: Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life	S1.50
3	22/01	2: Moral Immorality	S1.50
4	29/01	3 + 4: Moral and Value Conflict	S1.50
5	05/02	5: Evaluative and emotional coherence	S1.50
7	19/02	6: Plurality and Choice	S1.50
8	26/02	7: Akrasia	S1.50
9	05/03	8: Monism, Pluralism and Conflict	S2.77
10	12/03	9 + 10: Conceptual and Evaluative Problems with Maximisation	S1.50

15/01 11am-12pm: Stocker Reading Group

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 14:49:47 GMT

When: 11am - 12pm, Wed, 15 Jan '25

Where: S1.50

Week	Date	Chapter(s)	Room
2	15/01	1: Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life	S1.50
3	22/01	2: Moral Immorality	S1.50
4	29/01	3 + 4: Moral and Value Conflict	S1.50
5	05/02	5: Evaluative and emotional coherence	S1.50
7	19/02	6: Plurality and Choice	S1.50
8	26/02	7: Akrasia	S1.50
9	05/03	8: Monism, Pluralism and Conflict	S2.77
10	12/03	9 + 10: Conceptual and Evaluative Problems with Maximisation	S1.50

22/01 2pm-7pm: WMA Mini Workshop "Experience and Rationality"

Rachel Harrington — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 15:33:37 GMT

When: 2pm - 7pm, Wed, 22 Jan '25

Where: S0.19

09/12 4pm-7pm: WMA Event with Paula Rubio Fernandez

Rachel Harrington — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 13:00:37 GMT

When: 4pm - 7pm, Mon, 09 Dec '24

Where: Lib2

On December 9th my group will host a talk from Paula Rubio Fernandez (https://www.mpi.nl/people/rubio-fernandez-paula). Paula has in recent years done important work on the relationship between pragmatics and theory of mind, on cross cultural differences in the organisation of intersubjective space, and on the collaborative foundations of reference.

Her talk will take place at 4pm on December 9th in Lib2 in the library. It's a large room and the talk is out of term time, so please feel free to share details of the talk with anyone who might be interested.
All are welcome. Title and abstract are below.
All the best;

Richard

The Cognitive Trinity of Common Ground

Paula Rubio-Fernandez

Human communication is built around interlocutors’ common ground (CG), or the information they assume to share. Despite having been the focus of intense interdisciplinary research for more than 60 years, we do not yet understand how CG works, or even what exactly it is. In this talk I will introduce a new research program that is essential to understanding CG: I propose to study CG as a product of cultural evolution. This approach requires identifying (i) those cognitive capacities that are required for the emergence of CG in human cognition, and (ii) how those capacities interact in (a) the development of CG through children’s social learning across cultures; (b) its formation through social interaction across the lifespan, and (c) its management in conversation across languages. I hypothesize that forming and using CG is a complex human ability that emerges from the interaction of three cognitive capacities — joint attention, shared memory, and the use of reference systems — under a rationality principle. This is what I informally call the Cognitive Trinity of Common Ground, which could also be described as a naïve model of rational memory.

27/11 12:30pm-2pm: WMA Seminar: "Joint Attention to Flavour"

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:16:19 GMT

When: 12:30pm - 2pm, Wed, 27 Nov '24

Where: S2.77

Giulia Martina (Dortmund) - "Joint Attention to Flavour"

Contact: eve.poirier@warwick.ac.uk

21/11 6pm-9pm: WMA Party

Rachel Harrington — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:27:24 GMT

When: 6pm - 9pm, Thu, 21 Nov '24

Where: The Graduate, The Dirty Duck

Please join us for dinner and (a) drink to celebrate making it (almost) to the end of term 1 2024/25!

Please RSVP here!

contact: eve.poirier@warwick.ac.uk

10/10 4pm-6pm: WMA Seminar: Understanding ADHD

Rachel Harrington — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 11:47:14 GMT

When: 4pm - 6pm, Thu, 10 Oct '24

Where: A0.23

Roberta Locatelli (Tübingen) - "Understanding ADHD and Bridging the Gap Between the Neurodiversity Model and the Disorder Model"

13/11 2:30pm-6pm: WMA Mini-Workshop: Address

Rachel Harrington — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 10:43:20 GMT

When: 2:30pm - 6pm, Wed, 13 Nov '24

Where: S0.20

14:30 - 16:00 Richard Moore - Three Ways of Addressing Others

16:30 - 18:00 Naomi Eilan - Address and The Second Person

Contact: eve.poirier@warwick.ac.uk

16/10 2:30pm-6pm: WMA Mini Workshop: Self-Identification and Self-Alienation

Rachel Harrington — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 10:42:34 GMT

When: 2:30pm - 6pm, Wed, 16 Oct '24

Where: S0.20

WMA Mini-Workshop: Self-Identification and Self-Alienation

16th Oct (Wed Wk3), S0.20, 14:30 - 18:00

To kick off our programme of events for this year, we are delighted to welcome from Nottingham both Dr. Craig French and Warwick alumnus Dr. Joe Cunningham for our Mini-Workshop on Self-Identification and Self-Alienation.

Programme:

14:30 - 16:00 Craig French (Nottingham) - "Experiences of Derealization: A Naïve Realist Account"

16:30 - 18:00 Joe Cunningham (Nottingham) - "What is the Deep Self?"

Please feel free to join us for drinks afterwards, likely in the Radcliffe bar on campus.

Contact: eve.poirier@warwick.ac.uk

16/10 11:30am-12:30pm: WMA Management Committee Meeting

Rachel Harrington — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 14:10:50 GMT

When: 11:30am - 12:30pm, Wed, 16 Oct '24

22/06 10am-23/06 4pm: MindGrad Conference 2024

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 10:15:23 GMT

When: 10am, Sat, 22 Jun '24 - 4pm, Sun, 23 Jun '24

Where: MB0.07

Keynotes:

Matt Soteriou (KCL)

Léa Salje (Leeds)

Contact: eve.poirier@warwick.ac.uk

26/06 10:30am-1:30pm: Mini-Workshop on Address

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:21:11 GMT

When: 10:30am - 1:30pm, Wed, 26 Jun '24

Where: S0.09

Weds 26th June

Mini-Workshop on Address

Speakers will include Naomi Eilan, Richard Moore, Giulia Palazzolo.

Full programme TBC.

Contact: giulia.palazzolo.1@warwick.ac.uk

05/06 4pm-6pm: MEEP Seminar “On the Metaphysical and Epistemic Contrasts between Real and Fake Testimony”

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:18:54 GMT

When: 4pm - 6pm, Wed, 05 Jun '24

Where: S0.11

Weds 5th June

MEEP Seminar (location TBC)

4-6pm:“On the Metaphysical and Epistemic Contrasts between Real and Fake Testimony”

Elizabeth Fricker (Oxford)

Contact: oscar.north-concar@warwick.ac.uk

08/05 2pm-5:30pm: CANCELLED! WMA Mini-Workshop on Self-Identification and Self-Alienation

Rachel Harrington — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:15:58 GMT

When: 2pm - 5:30pm, Wed, 08 May '24

Where: TBC

CANCELLED: This event has been cancelled. HOWEVER, keep the slot of 2pm-6pm free in your diary. We are looking into the possibility of doing something else during this time and will circulate a message if that materialises.

29/05 2pm-4pm: WMA Graduate Research Seminar: pre-MindGrad reading

Rachel Harrington — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 14:05:05 GMT

When: 2pm - 4pm, Wed, 29 May '24

Where: S1.39

WMA Graduate Research Seminar: pre-MindGrad reading

in weeks 4-7 and 9, Wednesdays 14:00-16:00.

Room S1.39

link: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/news/seminars/consciousness