Past Lectures and Colloquia

Spring 2023

Thomas Kelly (Princeton University) "Bias, Perspective and Introspection"

Tamar Schapiro (MIT) "Making Sense of Kantian Constitutivism" (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Fall 2022

Jessica Moss (NYU) "Knowledge-that is knowledge-of"

Antonia Peacocke (Stanford University) "How (Not) to Explain Epistemic Normativity"

Spring 2022

Kevin Dorst (University of Pittsburgh) "Breaking Bayes"

Karánn Durland (Austin College) "Analogies and Unobservables in Natural Philosophy, Natural Theology, and Hume's “Of a Particular Providence""

Tim Williamson (Oxford University) "Knowledge by sight and knowledge by proof"

Fall 2021

Sally Haslanger (MIT) "On Being Part of a Social System: Coordination and Resistance"

Ashley Atkins (Western Michigan University) "Grief at the Edge of the Living World"

Isidora Stojanovic (Institut Jean Nicod) "Exploring Valence in Aesthetic Judgments"

May Sim (College of the Holy Cross) "Epictetus and Zhuangzi: Indifference Toward Health"

Spring 2021

Regina Rini (York University) "Epistemology and Tragedy"

Abby Jaques (Stanford University) "The underspecification problem and AI"

Fall 2020

Thi Nguyen, (University of Utah) "Transparency is Surveillance"

Sandy Goldberg (Northwestern University) "On the Epistemic Significance of Practical Reasons to Inquire"

Sean Valles (Michigan State University) "The need for humble collaboration while rebuilding the US health system after the pandemic"

Spring 2020

Fall 2019

Justin Morton (U.C. Davis) "The Division of Moral Labor and the Metaphysics of Moral Virtue"

Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech) "Love in the Face of Death: The Before Trilogy as Memento Mori"

Hilary Malatino (Pennsylvania State University) "F*ck Feelings: on Trans Experiences of Numbness, Dissociation, and Withdrawal"

Dan Bonevac (UT-Austin), "Universality, Generality, and the Goals of Inquiry"

Ted Sider (Rutgers University) "Equivalence from a Metaphysical Point of View"

Spring 2019

Robert Stalnaker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) "Context and Conversational Strategy" (Graduate Conference Keynote Address)

Jason Turner (University of Arizona) "Holists Won't Learn: A Problem for (Global) Ontological Nihilism"

Fall 2018

Brandon Warmke (Bowling Green State University) "Who's in Charge? How the World Around Us Threatens Our Freedom" and "Forgiveness for Free Will Skeptics"

Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie University) "Du Bois on Art, Morality, and Truth" and "Race and Egalitarianism in Du Bois' Darkwater"

 

Spring 2018

Breno Hax (Federal University of Paraná) "The Fundamental Principle of Metaphysics"

Amy Flowerree (Texas Tech University / University of Cologne) "Evidentialism in Action"

Fall 2017

Andres Santa Maria (Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Santiago, Chile) "A philosopher among engineers: What am I doing here?"

Arezoo Islami (Stanford University) "Is God a mathematician?" and "A Match Not Made in Heaven: on the applicability of mathematics in physics"

Hannah Ginsborg (UC Berkeley) "What beauty can tell us about knowledge: a Kantian perspective" and "What has the normativity of meaning to do with truth or warrant?"

Jonathan Drake (Texas Tech) "On Believing One's Reasons"

Spring 2017

Jonathan Dorsey (Texas Tech University) "Are point particles possible?"

Francesca di Poppa (Texas Tech University) "Spinoza and Gender Inequality"

Joe Gottlieb (Texas Tech University) "Verbal Disputes in the Theory of Consciousness"

Fall 2016 

Laurie Shrage (Florida International University) "Sex for Pay: Decriminalization vs. Legalization" and  "Integration vs. Desegregation"

John Haldane (St. Andrews) "Taking History Seriously", "Virtue and Ethics in the Medieval Period", and "Some Problems for Virtue Ethics"

Jacoby Adeshei Carter (John Jay College, CUNY) "Inter-American Philosophy of Race: José Vasconcelos, Alain Locke, and José Martí on Race and Nationality" and "Alain Locke's Critical Pragmatist Philosophy of Ethnic Race"

Jameliah Shorter Bournahou (Georgia College and State University) "Universalism and Postraciality" and "The Illusion of Equality in Kantian Cosmopolitanism"

Spring 2016

Costica Bradatan (TTU Honors College) "In Praise of Failure"

Roberta Millstein (UC Davis) "Rethinking Aldo Leopold's Land Community Concept" (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Mark Webb (TTU) "Communication v. Excommunication: a gap in Alston's Doxastic-Practice Epistemology"

R. Lanier Anderson (Stanford University) "Is Clarissa Dalloway Special?" and "Kant's Analytic/Synthetic Distinction and the Critique of Metaphysics"

Peter Muhlberger (University of Nebraska-Lincoln Public Policy Center / OECD Global Science Forum Member--Experts Group on New Data Social Research) "Big Data Changes Everything: The Shifting Ethical Ground of Big Data Social Research"

Fall 2015

Francesca di Poppa (Texas Tech University) "Superstition and Piety in Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise"

Anne Eaton (University of Illinois, Chicago) "A Lady on the Street But a Freak in the Bed: On the Distinction Between Erotic Art and Pornography" and "Artifact Function"

Howard Curzer (Texas Tech University) "The Admirable, Vicious, Miserable Social Activist Saves Contemporary Aristotelian Virtue Ethics"

Trent Dougherty (Baylor University) "Faith and Reason: Friends or Foes?"

Spring 2015

Pamela Hieronymi (UCLA) "The Intuitive Problem of Free Will and Moral Responsibility" and "The Embodiment of Agency"

Mark Schroeder (USC) "A Common Subject for Ethics" (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Sharon Lloyd (USC) "Not Your Father's Hobbes: Why What Hobbes Really Thought Matters Today" and "Hobbes on the Duty Not to Act on Conscience"

Wayne Myrvold (Western Ontario) "Probabilities in Statistical Physics: What are they?" (Physics Colloquium) and "What happened to phlogiston? Reconsidering the Chemical Revolution"

Gregory Bakos (Sapientia College of Theology) "How To Think The Otherness of Medieval Thought: On Decortian Hermeneutics and Nicholas of Cusa's Manuductive Project"

Fall 2014

Jonathan Dorsey (Texas Tech University) "Four conceptions of the hard problem of consciousness"

Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech University) "The Musilanguage Hypothesis and the Origins of Poetry"

Alex Grzankowski (Texas Tech University) "A Relational Theory of Non-Propositional Attitudes"

James Weatherall (U.C. Irvine LPS) "The Physics of Wall Street" (Physics Colloquium) and "Inertial Motion, Explanation, and the Foundations of Classical Space-time Theories"

Spring 2014

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke University) "Are Psychopaths Responsible?" and "Is Morality Unified?"

Fall 2013

Shannon Spaulding (Oklahoma State University) "On Whether We Can See Intentions" and "Imaginary Desires"

Darren Hick (Texas Tech University) "Owning Your Voice"

Stephen Stich (Rutgers University) "Moral Disagreement, Moral Relativism & Moral Nihilism" and "Taking Diversity Seriously"

Spring 2013

Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona) "Two Senses of Self" and "Rational Learners and Non-utilitarian Rules"

Christopher Hom and Jeremy Schwartz (Texas Tech University) "What the Frege-Geach Problem is Not"

Susan Haack (University of Miami) "The Integrity of Science: What It Means, Why It Matters" (Institute for Study of Western Civilization Lecture Series) and "The World According to Innocent Realism: The One and the many, the real and the imaginary, the natural and the social"

Joel Velasco (California Institute of Technology) "The Tree of Life: Metaphor, Models, and Reality" and "Evolutionary and Newtonian Forces" 

Fall 2012

Francesca diPoppa (Texas Tech University) "Some Remarks on Religious Exemptions for Health Care Professionals"

Michael Serra (Texas Tech University Psychology) "Cue-Utilization in Metacognitive Judgments of Learning"

Adam Sennet (University of California, Davis) "Whither Philosophy of Language?" and "Expressivism and Subjunctive Conditionals"

Cynthia Freeland (University of Houston) "Icon and Index Revisited: Artistic Explorations of Medical Imaging Technologies" and "Revisiting Plato on Images and Art"

Helen Hattab (University of Houston) "What Was God Doing Before He Created the World?: Ancient Time Paradoxes and the Origins of Modern Time Concepts" and "Descartes' Mechanistic Explanations as Mathematical Demonstrations"

Sherri Irvin (University of Oklahoma) "Making Contemporary Art: Fabrication and Negotiation" and "Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Critique of Sexiness (co-authoring with Sheila Lintott of Bucknell University)"

Roslyn Weiss (Lehigh University) "Justice and Moderation in the Republic 4" and "Two Kinds of Philosophers in Plato's Republic"

David Resnik (National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences) "The Ethics of Patenting Human DNA"

Jonathan Dancy (University of Texas at Austin) "An Unprincipled Morality" and "From Thought to Action"

Fall 2011

Dustin Tucker (TTU), "Understanding in a Paradoxical World"

Christopher Hom & Jeremy Schwartz (TTU) "Unity and the Frege-Geach Problem"

Cynthia M. Grund (University of Southern Denmark) & William Westney (TTU Music) "Music, Meaning - and Machines"

Jonathan Dorsey (TTU) "The Intermediate Problem of Consciousness"

Brad Thompson (Southern Methodist University) "The Subjectivity and Objectivity of Color and Space Perception" and "The Indexicality of Perceptual Content"

James Shaw (University of Pittsburgh) "Sometimes There Are No Answers" and "De Re Belief and Cumming's Puzzle"

Spring 2011

Joan McGregor (Arizona State University) "Emerging Technology and Sustainability: Are Transhumanists Thinking Like Mountains?"

José Diez (University of Barcelona) "The Structure of the Theory of Natural Selection and the Vacuousness Objection" and "Who Got What Wrong? Guide Principles and Explanatory Models in Natural Selection"

Fall 2010

Ernie Lepore (Rutgers) "Switching Contexts, Sharing Contents" and "In Search of Meaning in Another's Words: Communication and Knowledge of Language"

Robin Fiore (University of Miami) "Beyond Conflicts of Interest: A Moral Hazards Analysis of Industry Funded Research"

Jacob Beck (TTU and Washington University-Saint Louis) "The Problem of Animal Minds" and "Sense, Mentalese, and Ontology"

Kevin Coffey (TTU) "Comical Underdetermination as a Guide to Realism"

Ben Minteer (Arizona State University) "Nature as a Moral Resource: Recovering Aldo Leopold's Public Philosophy"

Fall 2009

Niko Kolodny (University of California--Berkeley) "A Problem with If-Then Arguments" and "Incidental Transmission"

Peter Railton (University of Michigan) "Happiness, Satisfaction, and Morality" and "Rationality in Belief and Desire: A Unified Account"

Christopher Hom (Texas Tech University) "A Puzzle about Pejoratives"

Darren Hudson Hick (Texas Tech University) "Toward an Ontology of Authored Works"

David Miguel Gray (Texas Tech University) "From Experience to Delusions: Non-phenomenal Contributions to Delusional Reports of Alien Control in Schizophrenia"

Jacob Beck (Texas Tech University) "Analog Magnitudes: A Case Study in Non-Conceptual Cognition"

Peter Carruthers (University of Maryland) “Self-Knowledge of Affective Attitudes is De Re, not De Dicto” (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Jeremy Schwartz (TTU) and David Hayes (European College of Liberal Arts, Berlin) "Piety as Gratitude in Plato's Euthyphro"

Daniel Nathan (Texas Tech University) "Making the Subject Objective: Toward a Naturalist Theory of Beauty"

Spring 2009

Benjamin Sachs (National Institutes of Health) "The Timing and Currency of Equality of Opportunity"

Jeremy Schwartz (Texas Tech University) "Practical Analytic Judgments"

Noel Carroll (Graduate Center of the City University of New York) "Dead Ends of Enlightenment Aesthetics" and "Comic Amusement, Emotion and Cognition"

Gregory Currie (University of Nottingham) "One Million BC"

Stephen Davies (University of Auckland) "Humans' Aesthetic Appreciation of non-Human Animals"

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill) "The Nature of Normative Concepts" (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Fall 2008

Kendall L. Walton (University of Michigan) "Poets as Thoughtwriters; Music without Personae" and "Fictionality and Imagination: Mind the Gap"

Mathias Frisch (University of Maryland) "Russell Revisited: Skepticism about Causes" and 'The most sacred tenet': Causal Reasoning in Physics"

Paul Katsafanas (University of New Mexico) "Activity and Passivity in Deliberative Agency"

Spring 2008

Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech University) "Aesthetic Luck"

John Hawthorne (Oxford University) "Religious Belief: Some Epistemological Reflections" and "Names"

Fall 2007

Chris Hom (Texas Tech University) "Hating and Hysteria: Social Misconceptions of Racial Epithets" and "Hating and Necessity: Semantic Misconceptions of Racial Epithets"

Mark Scala (Texas Tech University) "Theories of Persistence: What the heck are we saying when we say that Muhammed Ali is Cassius Clay" and "Parthood and Persisitence"

Francesca DiPoppa (Texas Tech University) "Spinoza as Process Philosopher?"

Baird Callicott (University of North Texas) "Naturalizing the Boundary Between Humanity and Nature" and "From the Land Ethic to the Earth Ethic: Environmental Ethics and Global Climate Change"

Aaron Meskin (University of Leeds) "Comics, Literature, and Performance"

Spring 2007

Howard Curzer (Texas Tech University) "Aristotelian Good Temper vs. Unconditional Forgiveness"

Hugh Benson (University of Oklahoma) "Socratic Learning (or Cleitophon's Challenge)" and "Knowledge, Virtue, and Method in Republic 471c-502c"

Simon Feldman (Connecticut College) "Locating Conscience: Conflict, Integrity and the Limits of Morality" and "The (Limited) Appeal of Amoralism"

Ann Cudd (University of Kansas) "Wanting Freedom" and "Truly Humanitarian Intervention"

Edward Hinchman (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee) "The Assurance of Warrant"

Andrea Westlund (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee) "Love and Shared Identity" (Graduate Conference Keynote)

Fall 2006

Stephen Darwall (University of Michigan) "Responsibility Within Relations" and "Authority and Second-Personal Reasons for Acting"

Robert Howell (Southern Methodist University) "Anti-Depressants and Personal Identity" and "The Two-Dimensionalist Reductio"

Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor University) "Religious Pluralism and the Buridan's Ass Paradox" and "Rationality and Evidence"

Spring 2006

Peter Lewis (University of Miami) "Quantum Mechanics and the Prospects for Immortality"

Matthew Shockey (Kalamazoo College)

Robert Kane (University of Texas) "Are All Values Relative?: Seeking Common Ethical Ground in a Pluralist Society" and "Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem"

Fall 2005

Allan Hazlett (Texas Tech University) "Knowledge and Conversation"

Al Martinich (University of Texas) "Seven Solutions to the Problem of Evil in the Book of Job" and "Reference, Nonexistence and Fiction"

Robert Bishop (Texas Tech University) "I Don't Know How to Defend Physicalism" 


Mathew Weiner (Texas Tech University) "Does Knowledge Matter?"

Neal Judisch (Texas Tech University)"Determinism and Epiphenomenalism"

Spring 2005

Marcia Baron (Indiana University) "Excuses, Excuses"

Mini-conference in Honor of Edward Averill, "Color, Color-Perception, and the Nature of Properties": David Hilbert (Illinois at Chicago), Jonathan Cohen (UC-San Diego), Edward Averill (TTU), Robert Rupert (TTU)

Alfred Mele (Florida State University) "Free Will: The Current State of the Debate" 
and "Free Action, Moral Responsibility, and Alternative Possibilities"

Fall 2004

Zachary Ernst (Florida State University) "Playing Games in Ethics"

Alex Neill (University of Southampton) "Philosophers on the Art of Tragedy" and "Schopenhauer on the Aesthetic Method of Consideration"

Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) "Has Neuroscience Solved the Mind-Body Problem?" and "Dining with Cannibals: Moral Convictions and the Challenge of Relativism"

Sara Chant (Texas Tech University) "When We Act Together"

Spring and Summer, 2003

David Chalmers (University of Arizona) "The Matrix as Metaphysics" and "Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap"

Luc Faucher (Université du Québec à Montréal) "Developmental System Theory and Mental Disorders"

Mariam Thalos (University of Utah) "From Human Nature to Moral Philosophy" and "The Natural History of Knowledge" 

Robert Cummins (University of California, Davis) "Evolution and Cognition: The Puzzling Mix of Learning, Selection and Development" and "Representation and Indication"

Alastair Norcross (Rice University) "Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases" and "Harming in Context" 

Paul Studtmann (University of Canterbury) "Time, Tolstoy and the Logic of Freedom"

Colin Allen (Texas A&M University) "What Can Artificial Moral Agents Teach Us about Morality?"

Academic year 2003-04

Jonathan Weinberg (Indiana University) "The A Priori, Externalism, and the Purposes of Justification"

James Hardy (Texas Tech University) "Chasing Infinity"

James Hamilton (Kansas State University) "Understanding Plays" and "Performers' Intentions"

Claudia Card (University of Wisconsin, Madison) "Is Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes a Good Idea?" and "Torture in Ordinary Circumstances"

Nicholas Smith (Lewis and Clark College) "Socrates in the Agora: A Talk about Talking"
 and "Persuade or Obey"

Carl Gillett (Illinois Wesleyan University and University of Notre Dame) "A Third Way for Functionalists: The Nature of Mentality and the Perils of Ramseyfication"

Danny Scoccia (New Mexico State University) "Slippery Slope Objections to Legalizing Voluntary Euthanasia" and "Toleration, Skepticism, and the Religious Fanatic"

 

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