Past Lectures and Colloquia
Spring 2009
Benjamin Sachs (National Institutes of Health)
Public Lecture: The Timing and Currency of Equality of Opportunity
Thursday, February 57:30 pm, Eng/Phil LH-01
Jeremy Schwartz (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: Practical Analytic Judgments
Friday, February 55:00 pm, Phil 264
ABSTRACT:
According to traditional interpretations of Kant, moral judgments are synthetic a priori. Implicitly, this traditional interpretation suggests that the analytic/synthetic distinction, originally developed to characterize theoretical judgments, applies equally to the practical sphere. This raises the question of whether there are analytic practical judgments which might contrast to the synthetic practical judgments of morality. It is natural at this point to look to Kant's hypothetical imperatives as a potential source of practical analytic judgments. In opposition to most commentators, I defend this natural suggestion and argue that 1) there is a generalization of Kant's traditional analytic/synthetic distinction according to which hypothetical imperatives are indeed analytic, but that 2) such a generalization requires us to postulate the existence of formal practical laws analogous to the rules of inference of theoretical reason. I conclude with textual evidence that Kant would be sympathetic to the postulation of such formal practical laws.
Philosophy and Fine Arts Speaker Series
“Philosophy, Beauty, and the Arts”
(co-sponsored by the Fine Arts Doctoral Program)
Noel Carroll (Graduate Center of the City University of New York)
Public Lecture: "Dead Ends of Enlightenment Aesthetics"
Thursday, March 267:00 pm (room TBA)
ABSTRACT:
This lecture concerns the way in which the aesthetic theory of art emerged as an attempt to repair the Modern System of the Arts that arose in the late eighteenth century. I argue that the aesthetic theory of art is an impediment to the contemporary philosophy of art and that the attempt to rationalize the Modern System of the Arts by means of theories such as the aesthetic theory of art are misguided, in part, because the Modern System of the Arts is no longer a system but at best a collection.
Departmental Colloquium: "Comic Amusement, Emotion and Cognition"
Friday, March 274:00 pm, Phil 264
Gregory Currie (University of Nottingham)
Public Lecture: "One Million BC"
Thursday, April 97:00 pm (room TBA)
ABSTRACT:
The origin of art is conventionally identified as the period of European cave art in the Upper Palaeolithic. With the discovery of Chauvet cave in southern France, this is now dated around 32,000 years ago. I argue that art is older--much, much older. Perhaps one million years old, certainly half a million years old. Older than language, symbolism and most things we would look for as signs of culture. More specifically, I argue that certain stone implements of the Acheulean technology can fairly be counted as art--in one legitimate sense of that troubled notion. I respond to various objections to this claim, notably the idea that it depends on an ethnocentric conception of art--it doesn't. Without denying that art is a cultural phenomenon, I argue that it is also a biological one.
Stephen Davies (University of Auckland)
Public Lecture: "Humans’ Aesthetic Appreciation of non-Human Animals"
Thursday, April 23rd,7:00 PM (room TBA)
ABSTRACT:
We have always lived in intimate contact with non-human animals and understand many aspects of their lives. We eat them, put them to work, farm then, use them for sport, and have them as pets. As well, we admire them and many humans identify non-human animals as gods and tribal ancestors. The earliest European cave paintings are mainly of animals. It is no more surprising that we have aesthetic attitudes to non-human animals, then, than that we have them to fellow humans and to landscapes and environments.Our aesthetic interest in animals probably has several sources, dating back to our origins as hunter-gatherers: we extend to them aesthetic preferences we have for certain human characteristics; the rare or unusual can have aesthetic appeal; their roles in our ancestors' lives affects whether they are seen as attractive or repulsive; we admire their adaptedness; our senses and perceptual triggers resonate with their mutual displays; we view them literally as God's artworks or imaginatively as pseudo-artworks; or we abstract their appearances from their natural context in order to engage aesthetically with these as formal or sensory arrays.
Graduate Student Philosophy Conference
Keynote Address
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill)
Public Lecture: "The Nature of Normative Concepts"
Friday, April 3rd, 8:00 PM (Eng/Phil LH01)
Fall 2008 Speaker Series
Kendall L. Walton (Charles L. Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, University of Michigan)
Public Lecture: "Poets as Thoughtwriters; Music without Personae"
Thursday, October 9
7:30 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
ABSTRACT:
It may seem obvious that all or almost all works of literary fiction have narrators, characters who, in the fiction, utter or write the words of the text "seriously," thereby reporting the events of the story. I explore a very different way of understanding literary works, one applicable especially to poetry. Music can be understood in a similar manner, and doing so nicely explains several important characteristics of listeners' experiences.
Departmental Colloquium: "Fictionality and Imagination: Mind the Gap"
Friday, October 10
4:00 pm, Philosophy 264
ABSTRACT:
Imaginings, unlike beliefs, come in clusters, clusters corresponding to different fictional worlds. This obvious fact has not been taken into account sufficiently in recent discussions of the functional roles of beliefs and imaginings in our cognitive architecture.
Fictionality is relative to clusters—a proposition is fictional in one fictional world or another. I previously understood a proposition to be fictional just in case there is a prescription to imagine it: It is fictional that p, in the world of a given novel or picture, for instance, just in case appreciators of that work are to imagine that p. This is mistaken. A variety of interesting examples show that prescriptions to imagine are necessary but not sufficient for fictionality.
I am not sure what more is necessary, what it takes to fill the gap between prescriptions to imagine and fictionality. But whatever it is, is likely to provide a nice solution to the "seeing-the-unseen" problem, the worries about cases in which we are to imagine seeing something which, fictionally, is unseen. In observing Michelangelo's Creation we are to imagine seeing the creation, but we are also to imagine that no one sees it. These imaginings are linked to different fictional worlds, however, they belong to different clusters; so there is no conflict between them.
Mathias Frisch (University of Maryland)
Public Lecture: "Russell Revisited: Skepticism about Causes"
Thursday, Oct 16, 7pm (room TBA)
ABSTRACT:
According to a widespread view, causal notions have no legitimate role to play in mature physical theorizing. This view, which can be traced back to Russell's famous attack on the notion of cause, has proponents even among those who believe that causal notions have an important place in the special sciences and in our folk conception of the world. In this talk I critically examine a range of general arguments for the view, argue that none of them succeed and propose two routes by which asymmetric causal assumptions can be legitimated even within the context of a physics with time-symmetric laws.
Departmental Colloquium: "'The most sacred tenet': Causal Reasoning in Physics"
Friday, October 17, 4pm, Philosophy 264
ABSTRACT:
According to a view widely held among philosophers of science, the notion of cause has no legitimate role to play in mature theories of physics. In this talk I examine a case where physicists themselves appeal to what they identify as a causal principle. I argue that contrary to the popular view causal principles can function as genuine factual constraints.
Paul Katsafanas (University of New Mexico)
Public Lecture: TBA
Thursday, October 13th
Departmental Colloquium: "Activity and Passivity in Deliberative Agency"
Friday, October 14th, 4PM, Philosophy 264
Spring 2008
Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Aesthetic Luck"
Wednesday, April 3rd
5:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
John Hawthorne (Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford University)
Public Lecture: "Religious Belief: Some Epistemological Reflections"
Thursday, April 24th
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "Names"
Friday, April 25th
4:00 pm, Philosophy 264
Fall 2007
Chris Hom (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Hating and Hysteria: Social Misconceptions of Racial Epithets"
Thursday, October 4th
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "Hating and Necessity: Semantic Misconceptions of Racial Epithets"
Friday, October 5th
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Mark Scala (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Theories of Persistence: What the heck are we saying when we say that Muhammed Ali is Cassius Clay"
Thursday, October 18tht
7:00 pm, Engllish/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "Parthood and Persisitence"
Friday, October 19th
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Francesca DiPoppa (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Spinoza as Process Philosopher?"
Thursday, November 1
7:30 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium:
Friday, November 2
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Baird Callecott (University of North Texas)
Public Lecture: "Naturalizing the Boundary Between Humanity and Nature"
Thursday, November 15
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "From the Land Ethic to the Earth Ethic: Environmental Ethics and Global Climate Change"
Friday, November 16
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Aaron Meskin (University of Leeds)
Public Lecture: "Comics, Literature, and Performance"
Thursday, November 29
7:00 pm, Philosophy 264
Spring 2007
Howard Curzer (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Aristotelian Good Temper vs. Unconditional Forgiveness"
Thursday, January 25th
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Hugh Benson (University of Oklahoma)
Public Lecture: "Socratic Learning (or Cleitophon's Challenge)"
Thursday, March 1st
7:00 pm, Philosophy 160
Departmental Colloquium: "Knowledge, Virtue, and Method in Republic 471c-502c"
Friday, March 2nd
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Simon Feldman (Connecticut College)
Public Lecture: "Locating Conscience: Conflict, Integrity and the Limits of Morality"
Thursday, March 22
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "The (Limited) Appeal of Amoralism"
Friday, March 23
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Ann Cudd (University of Kansas)
Public Lecture: "Wanting Freedom"
Thursday, April 12
7:00 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Departmental Colloquium: "Truly Humanitarian Intervention"
Friday, April 13
3:30 pm, Philosophy 264
Edward Hinchman (University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee)
Departmental Colloquium: "The Assurance of Warrant"
Thursday, April 26
7:00 pm, Philosophy 264
Andrea Westlund University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee)
Graduate Conference Keynote Address: "Love and Shared Identity"
Friday, April 27
5:15 pm, English/Philosophy LH01
Fall 2006
Stephen Darwall (University of Michigan)
Public Lecture: "Responsibility Within Relations"
Thursday, September 14
7:30 p.m., LH 001
Abstract:
For the last thirty or so years, an important line of thought associated with Iris Murdoch, Bernard Williams, and feminist ethical philosophy has criticized orthodox moral theories on the grounds that they insufficiently appreciate the way in which personal relationships involve concern for particular individuals. There is much to learn from these critcisms. But it also possible to understand moral theories such as utilitarianism and Kantianism as beginning with the phenomena of particularized benevolence and respect, respectively, and then extending these, rather than as arising in abraction from these phenomena. More interestingly, the distinctive character of personal relationship may itself presuppose an infrastructure of more general, moral concern. I consider specific ways in which personal relationships depend upon a background of mutual respect.
Departmental Colloquium: "Authority and Second-Personal Reasons for Acting"
Friday, September 15
3:30 p.m., PHIL 264
Robert Howell (Southern Methodist University)
Public Lecture: "Anti-Depressants and Personal Identity"
Thursday, October 5
7:30 p.m., LH 001
Abstract:
It is not unusual to hear about someone taking anti-depressants and becoming a "different person" because of them. While this is in part the promise of anti-depressants-those who take them don't want to remain as they were, after all-it might also seem to be part of their threat. To alleviate the symptoms of depression by taking pills that make one into someone else seems foolish overkill. Don't we want to feel better while being ourselves? Doesn't abandoning oneself to become someone else amount to a strange sort of character suicide? In this talk I discuss the several senses of "becoming a different person" that are at issue here, and argue that once we are clear on what we mean when we voice our worries, there might be very little to worry about after all.
Departmental Colloquium: "The Two-Dimensionalist Reductio"
Friday, October 6
3:30 p.m., PHIL 264
Abstract: In recent years two-dimensional semantics has become one of the most serious alternatives to Millianism for the proper interpretation of modal discourse. I argue that though there is probably something salvageable from two-dimensionalism as a way to explain the content of thought, as a metaphysical tool it should be abandoned. In this talk I aim to establish this point by reductio: if "metaphysical" two-dimensionalism and its concomitant modal rationalism is assumed, it can be shown to be false. Instead of modal rationalism, therefore, I suggest we adopt what I call metaphysical modal monism, a view I intend to describe briefly at the conclusion of the talk.
Jonathan Kvanvig (Baylor University)
Public Lecture: "Religious Pluralism and the Buridan's Ass Paradox"
Thursday, November 9
7:30 p.m., LH 001
Departmental Colloquium: "Rationality and Evidence"
Friday, November 10
3:30 p.m., PHIL 264
Fall 2005
Allan Hazlett (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Knowledge and Conversation"
Thursday, September 22
7:30 p.m., PHIL 160
Al Martinich (Roy Allison Vaughan Centennial Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas)
Public Lecture: "Seven Solutions to the Problem of Evil in the Book of Job"
Thursday, October 20
7:30 p.m., Business Administration 67
Departmental Colloquium: "Reference, Nonexistence and Fiction"
Friday, October 21
3:00 p.m., PHIL 264
Robert Bishop (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "I Don’t Know How to Defend Physicalism"
Thursday, October 27
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH-001
Mathew Weiner (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Does Knowledge Matter?"
Thursday, November 11
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH-001
Neal Judisch (Texas Tech University)
Public Lecture: "Determinism and Epiphenomenalism"
Thursday, November 17
7:30 p.m., PHIL 160
Spring 2006
Peter Lewis (University of Miami)
Public Lecture: "Quantum Mechanics and the Prospects for Immortality"
Thursday, February 09
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH-001
Matthew Shockey (Kalamazoo College)
Public Lecture: TBA
mid March
ENG/PHIL LH-001
Robert Kane (University of Texas)
Public Lecture: "Are All Values Relative?: Seeking Common Ethical Ground in a Pluralist Society"
Thursday, April 06
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH-001
Departmental Colloquium: "Free Will: New Directions for an Ancient Problem"
Friday, April 07
3:00 p.m., PHIL 264
Spring 2005
Marcia Baron (Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University)
Departmental Colloquium: "Excuses, Excuses"
Monday, February 7
4:00 p.m., PHIL 264
Mini-conference in Honor of Edward Averill, "Color, Color-Perception, and the Nature of Properties"
Friday, April 8
11:00-12:10 David Hilbert (Illinois at Chicago
1:30-2:40 Jonathan Cohen (UC-San Diego)
2:50-4:00 Edward Averill (TTU)
4:10-5:20 Robert Rupert (TTU)
Saturday, April 9
10:00-12:00 panel discussion of color, with Hilbert, Cohen, and Averill
All events will be held in Room 160, English and Philosophy Building at Texas Tech University, Lubbock.
Alfred Mele (William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University)
Public Lecture: "Free Will: The Current State of the Debate"
Monday, April 25
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH-001
Departmental Colloquium: "Free Action, Moral Responsibility, and Alternative Possibilities"
Tuesday, April 26
3:30 p.m., PHIL 160
Fall 2004
Zachary Ernst (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University)
• Departmental Colloquium: "Playing Games in Ethics"
Friday, October 8
4:00 p.m., PHIL 264
Alex Neill (Senior Lecturer, University of Southampton)
Public lecture: "Philosophers on the Art of Tragedy"
Monday, October 25
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental Colloquium: "Schopenhauer on the Aesthetic Method of Consideration"
Tuesday, October 26
4:00 p.m., PHIL 264
Jesse Prinz (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
Departmental Colloquium: "Has Neuroscience Solved the Mind-Body Problem?"
Monday, November 1
3:30 p.m., PHIL 264
Public lecture: "Dining with Cannibals: Moral Convictions and the Challenge of Relativism"
Monday, November 1
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Sara Chant (Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Texas Tech University)
Departmental Colloquium: "When We Act Together"
Thursday, November 18
5:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Academic year 2003-04
Jonathan Weinberg (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University)
Public lecture: "The A Priori, Externalism, and the Purposes of Justification"
Thursday, September 18
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
James Hardy (Visiting Assistant Professor, Philosophy, Texas Tech University)
Public lecture: "Chasing Infinity" Tuesday
October 14, 2003
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
James Hamilton (Professor of Philosophy, Kansas State University)
Public lecture: "Understanding Plays"
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental Colloquium: "Performers' Intentions"
Thursday, October 30, 2003
5:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Claudia Card (Emma Goldman Professor of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Public lecture: "Is Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes a Good Idea?"
Thursday, March 4, 2004
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental Colloquium: "Torture in Ordinary Circumstances"
Friday, March 5, 2004
3:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Nicholas Smith (James F. Miller Professor of Humanities, Lewis and Clark College)
Public lecture: "Socrates in the Agora: A Talk about Talking"
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental Colloquium: "Persuade or Obey"
Thursday, April 1, 2004
3:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Carl Gillett (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Illinois Wesleyan University and Post-Doctoral Fellow, The Center for Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame)
Departmental Colloquium: "A Third Way for Functionalists: The Nature of Mentality and the Perils of Ramseyfication"
Friday, April 16, 2004
2:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Danny Scoccia (Associate Professor of Philosophy, New Mexico State University)
Public lecture: "Slippery Slope Objections to Legalizing Voluntary Euthanasia"
Wednesday, July 28
2:30 in PHIL 160
Departmental Colloquium: "Toleration, Skepticism, and the Religious Fanatic"
Thursday, July 29
2:30 in PHIL 160
Spring and Summer, 2003
David Chalmers (Professor of Philosophy, Research Professor of Cognitive Science, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona)
Public lecture: "The Matrix as Metaphysics"
Tuesday, February 18
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental colloquium: "Phenomenal Concepts and the Explanatory Gap"
Wednesday, February 19
3:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Luc Faucher (Assistant Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal)
"Developmental System Theory and Mental Disorders"
Thursday, February 27, 2003
5:15 p.m. Philosophy 264
Mariam Thalos (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Utah)
Public lecture: "From Human Nature to Moral Philosophy"
Thursday, March 6
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental colloquium: "The Natural History of Knowledge"
Friday, March 7
3:00 p.m., PHIL 163.
Robert Cummins (Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Davis)
Public lecture: "Evolution and Cognition: The Puzzling Mix of Learning, Selection and Development"
Tuesday, March 25
7:30 p.m., ENG/PHIL LH001
Departmental colloquium: "Representation and Indication"
Wednesday, March 26
3:00 p.m., PHIL 160
Alastair Norcross (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Rice University)
Public lecture: "Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases"
Thursday, April 3
7:30 p.m., in ENG/PHIL LH001
Philosophy Department colloquium: "Harming in Context"
Friday, April 4
3:00 p.m., ENG/PHIL 163
Paul Studtmann (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Canterbury)
Philosophy Department colloquium: "Time, Tolstoy and the Logic of Freedom"
Thursday, April 10,
5:15 p.m., LH001
Colin Allen (Professor of Philosophy, Texas A&M University)
Departmental Colloquium: " What Can Artificial Moral Agents Teach Us about Morality?"
Friday, July 25
4:00 p.m., PHIL 160
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