Digest Easter Vacation 2019

digest

 

This pages lists all Philosophy-related events taking place throughout the Easter vacation. 

If you have entries for the Digest, they must be received by Wednesday, midday of the week before the event. Please send information to admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Unless otherwise stated, all events will take place in the Radcliffe Humanities Building on Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG.

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WEH/Ethox seminars | Provisional title: Participatory Visual Methods Workshop | Tuesday 12th March, 10:00 – 12:00 | Seminar Room 1, Big Data Institute 

Speaker: Gill Black, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, Cape Town. (Please note the different day and room).

Full details and abstract are here. Please register by emailing admin@ethox.ox.ac.uk

 

Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Public Lecture | The Ethics of Stress, Resilience, and Moral Injury Among Police and Military Personnel | Tuesday 12th March, 17.30 - 18.45 | Oxford Martin School

Speaker: Seumas Miller (OUC Senior Research Fellow; Professor of Ethics/Philosophy of Technology, TU Delft; and Professorial Research Fellow, Cooperative Research Centre in Cybersecurity, Charles Sturt University) 

Booking: required: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro 

 

ERC Research Seminar on Responsibility | Economic duress | Wednesday 13th March, 10.00 - 12.00 | Philosophy Department, University College London

The target readings are:

- John Hyman. 2015. Action, Knowledge, and Will. Oxford UP. Ch. 4 “Voluntariness and Choice.”
- Dennis M Paterson. 2016. “Rethinking Duress.” Jurisprudence 7 (3): 672–7

Please visit https://rootsofresponsibility.co.uk/ for further details and venue information. 

 

mereology of potentiality

The Mereology of Potentiality | Lucretius On the Nature of Powers | Wednesday 13th March, 17.00 - 18.30 | Reynolds Room, Corpus Christi

Did the Epicureans have a theory of powers? Lucretius’ De rerum natura offers us the most coherent surviving account of Epicurean metaphysics. Although Lucretius was no slavish imitator of Epicurus, his work offers important insights into Epicurean thought on powers and their nature. His ground up approach, beginning from the most fundamental constituents of the universe and proceeding to more complex entities and their activities, allows us the opportunity to follow the logic and development of those ideas. This paper argues that a powers ontology is present in Epicurean metaphysics. It is not quite pandispositionalist, but rather grounded in the fundamental entities, i.e. atoms and void, many of whose properties are powers. While micro level powers casually contribute to properties at the macrolevel, macrolevel powers are strongly emergent. That said, neither macro powers nor their complex macrolevel manifestations are completely causally independent of the processes and potentialities which structure and give rise to them, not even those macro powers with downward causal efficacy. Certain psychological phenomena and their underlying physiological mechanisms are the macro and micro level manifestations of the same power, and require both micro and macro level conditions of activation. Indeed, a macrolevel power exists and operates at least in part through the powers of its constituents. In other words, the phenomenal and the micro levels are two ways of looking at the same power. One cannot be fully explained in terms of the other, but they cannot be understood apart from one another either. This paper will test this theory as a means of explaining perhaps the most notoriously thorny problem in Epicurean scholarship: the swerve and its relationship to free will. Website: https://www.power-parts.website/

 

Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics Public Lecture | Simon's Story: Delusion as a Case Study in Neuroscience and Values-Based Practice | Wednesday 13th March, 17.30 - 19.00 | Oxford Martin School

Speaker: KWM (Bill) Fulford (OUC Distinguished Research Fellow; and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Mental Health, University of Warwick Medical School). 

Booking required: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro. For full information and abstract, please see OxTalks

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 14th March, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

 

Theology Faculty, Philosophy and Theology Stream | Developing a Christian Mind: Seeking Wisdom | 15th – 16th March | New College

Integrating study with worship challenges Christians across the university, but particularly philosophers and theologians. Our work penetrates to the very foundation of our beliefs. Disciplinary assumptions about religion, ethics, and other existential questions can contradict the God we encounter in our daily activities, quiet times, and churches. Meanwhile, courses along with research projects may expose tensions in our views that resist simple solutions. And classmates, colleagues, students, supervisors, or the broader public often push us to concretely serve our neighbours as Christ would. We welcome past as well as new attendees to the Philosophy and Theology Stream on Saturday 16th March. On Friday 15th March, participants are encouraged to attend one of the other Streams: Humanities, Natural Sciences, or Social Sciences. Each combination will advance the philosophical and theological quest for wisdom, supplying a holistic vision of learning in faith.

For further information and to register: https://dcmoxford.org/philosophy-and-theology. Registration required for this event. 
 

Anscombe Bioethics Centre | Elizabeth Anscombe Centenary Symposium: ‘Ethics and Agency’ | Monday 18th March, 13.00 - 16.30 | Blackfriars Hall

Speakers: David Albert Jones Director (The Anscombe Bioethics Centre), Maria Alvarez (Professor of Philosophy, KCL), Roger Teichmann (College Lecturer in Philosophy, St Hilda’s), Lucy Campbell (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Warwick). 

Registration (free of charge): www.bioethics.org.uk. Enquiries: admin@bioethics.org.uk / 01865 610 212. 

 

Model Truths series: modelling, evidence, and truth in science and policy? | Critical appraisal of assumptions in model-based scientific assessment | Monday 18th March, 15.00 | 64 Banbury Road

Please visit Oxford Talks. 

 

ERC Research Seminar on Responsibility | Coercion and consent | 10.00 - 12.00 | Philosophy Department, University College London

With Max Kiener. The target readings are:

- Franklin G. Miller and Alan Wertheimer. 2010. “Preface to a Theory of Consent Transactions: Beyond Valid Consent.” In The Ethics of Consent: Theory and Practice (eds. Franklin G. Miller and Alan Wertheimer; Oxford UP), 79–105.
- Joseph Millum. 2014. “Consent Under Pressure: The Puzzle of Third Party Coercion.” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17: 113–27.

Please visit https://rootsofresponsibility.co.uk/ for further details and venue information. 

 

books can be used

Symposium on David Brink, Fair Opportunity, Responsibility, and Excuse | 20th March 2019, 09.30 | Somerville College

Lisa Forsberg, Karen Margrethe Nielsen, and Anthony Skelton are hosting a symposium on Davd Brink's book manuscript 'Fair Opportunity, Responsibility, and Excuse'. David Brink's monograph engages with a range of issues relating to responsibility, culpability, and excuse at the intersection of moral psychology and philosophy of criminal law. The symposium will comprise a number of short prepared commentaries, to which David Brink will respond. Ample time will be devoted to discussion with the wider audience. Commentators include: Roger Crisp, Gabriel De Marco, Tom Dougherty, Tom Douglas, Lisa Forsberg, Jeff McMahan, Karen Margrethe Nielsen, David Prendergast, Janet Radcliffe-Richards, and Victor Tadros.

More details can be found here: https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/content/book-symposium-david-brinks-fair-opportunity-responsibility-and-excuse. A very limited number of attendee places are available. Those interested in attending should express their interest to lisa.forsberg@law.ox.ac.uk by 1 March. Upon notification of acceptance you will be sent a full draft manuscript of the book which you should read in advance of the symposium.  

 

Careers Service | Careers Conference for Researchers | Wednesday 20th March, 09.30 - 17.00 | Manor Road Building

This conference is aimed at late-stage DPhil students and research staff who are considering career options beyond academia. The event aims to build understanding of trends in key employment sectors, the skills sought by each, and the steps involved in transitioning from academia, or into the interface between academia, applied and/or policy work. Opportunities to network with speakers and other employers who actively recruit researchers will be available during an extended networking lunch. Employers will also be involved in facilitating post-lunch skills workshops covering public engagement, networking, communication skills, applied data analysis, mentoring, portfolio careers and entrepreneurialism, as well as CV check and interview tips clinics.

Booking is essential in advance via the Careers Service platform, CareerConnect. Places are limited. For more information: https://www.careers.ox.ac.uk/researchers/

 

WEH/Ethox seminar | Gender as structural and epistemic vulnerability in global health emergencies | Wednesday 20th March, 11.00 – 12.30 | Seminar Room 0, Big Data Institute. 

Speaker: Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra, Chancellor's Fellow in Legal & Ethical Aspects of Biomedicine; Co-Director, Mason Institute for Medicine; Life Science and the Law, Edinburgh.

Full information and abstract: https://www.weh.ox.ac.uk/upcoming-events/title-tbc-1

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 21st March, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

 

Children's Consent: Philosophy and Law in Conversation | 21st - 22nd March | Exeter College

This workshop, organised by Lisa Forsberg, Isra Black, Jonathan Herring, and Anthony Skelton, brings together academics working in philosophy and law to explore children's consent to medical treatment in addition to a range of closely related issues, including children’s values, wellbeing, responsibility, and decision-making capacity. The event will provide a broader understanding of these matters and of the nature of childhood and of consent more broadly. Full details of the event, including the programme, may be found on the Law Faculty website.

A very limited number of attendee places, including provision for six early-career researchers (graduate students or non-permanent staff), are available. Please express your interest to childrensconsent@gmail.com by 28 February. 

 

The Evolutionary Psychiatry Special Interest Group (EPSIG) 3rd International Symposium | Friday 22nd March, 09.00 | The Royal College of Psychiatrists, London

Full programme here. Online booking here. 

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 28th March, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

 

The Philosophy Faculty at the New College of the Humanities and the Institute of Philosophy at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology | Conference - Improving Public Debate and Political Decision-Making: The Last Democracy Conference before Brexit? | 28th - 29th March | New College of the Humanities, London

Two-day conference: https://www.nchlondon.ac.uk

In Parenthesis Reading Group Talk | Attention to Particulars | Monday 1st April, 19.00 - 21.00 | Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities 

Speaker: Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open University)

In this talk I will discuss a rule of thumb for philosophers of ethics that Anscombe, Foot, Midgley, and Murdoch all followed, and thought it crucial for any philosopher of ethics to follow: attend to the particulars. I shall suggest some ways in which following that rule can be fruitful that point us beyond their writings, in what I take to be good directions for ethics. Women in Parenthesis (www.womeninparenthesis.co.uk) is a research collaboration between Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman. The project is dedicated to the study of the lives and friendships of four women philosophers: Iris Murdoch, Phillipa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Mary Midgley. For questions, please contact sasha.lawson-frost@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

 

Annual Conference of the British Philosophy of Sport Association (BPSA) | 2nd - 5th April | Trinity College

The conference is hosted by the Philosophy Department in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University, UK. The conference will feature keynote presentations from: Tom Hurka (Toronto), Julian Savulescu (Oxford), Angela Schneider (Western Ontario), Sophie-Grace Chappell (Open) and Mike McNamee (Swansea).

For full information and booking, please visit the Eventbrite webpage. For more information, please contact FASS-BPSA-Conference-2019@open.ac.uk. Attendees may also dine with Tom Hurka at the dinner in Trinity, and will need to purchase a dinner ticket from the same website to do so.

 

light bulb can be used

WEH/Ethox seminars | Adolescents' perspectives on the ethics of mental health prediction and early intervention | Wednesday 3rd April, 11:00 – 12:30 | Seminar Room 0, Big Data Institute

Speaker: Gabriela Pavarini, NEUROSEC, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford

Young people are increasingly targets of interventions in mental health, using predictive and preventive tools emerging from genetics, neuroscience, digital technology and big data. Such innovations may well do good, but they also carry significant ethical challenges. This talk considers some of the ethical concerns that mental health prediction and early intervention may pose for young people, particularly in relation to stigma, moral agency and personal identity, and normative conceptions of ‘good’ citizenship. Results from two empirical studies will be presented, which investigated young people’s views on what is means to be good/virtuous, and their moral attitudes towards predictive testing in psychiatry. The talk also highlights digital empirical tools that actively engage young people in ethical reflection, and allow for embodied experiences of ethically relevant scenarios.

Webpage: https://www.weh.ox.ac.uk/upcoming-events/adolescents-perspectives-on-the-ethics-of-mental-health-prediction-and-early-intervention

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 4th April, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

 

British Undergraduate Philosophy Society (BUPS) Annual Conference | 6th - 7th April | St Anne's

More information about keynote speakers and registration will follow shortly. Please visit their Facebook Page or https://bups.org.uk
 

British Undergraduate Philosophy Society (BUPS) Annual Conference | 6th - 7th April | St Anne's

More information about keynote speakers and registration will follow shortly. Please visit their Facebook Page or https://bups.org.uk

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 11th April, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

WEH/Ethox Seminars | It’s Time to Check You Now: Informed Consent and Vaginal Exams of Pregnant Women in Labor | Wednesday 17 April, 11:00 – 12:00 | Seminar Room 0, Big Data Institute

Speaker: Dr. Nada Gligorov, Associate Professor, The Bioethics Program, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

More information is on the WEH website

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 18th April, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

WEH/Ethox Seminar | Telling the Truth about Pain: Informed Consent and the Role of Expectation in Pain Intensity | Wednesday 24 April, 11:00 – 12:30 | Seminar Room 0, Big Data Institute

Speaker: Dr. Nada Gligorov, Associate Professor, The Bioethics Program, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Health care providers are expected both to relieve pain and to provide anticipatory guidance regarding how much a procedure is going to hurt. Fulfilling those expectations is complicated by the cognitive modulation of pain perception. Warning people to expect pain or setting expectations for pain relief not only influences their subjective experience, but it also alters how nociceptive stimuli are processed throughout the sensory and discriminative pathways in the brain. In light of this, I reconsider the characterization of placebo analgesia as pharmacologically inert and the use of it as deceptive. I show that placebo analgesia exploits the same physical mechanisms as proven analgesics and argue that it should be utilized to relieve pain. Additionally, I describe factors to help identify situations in which clinicians have the obligation to disclose the potential for pain coupled with ways of mitigating the risk of high-intensity pain by setting positive expectations.

 

Moral Encroachment Reading Group | Thursday 25th April, 11.00 | G4 Teaching Room in Kendrew Quadrangle, St. John's

The research themes of this reading group include the epistemic significance of statistical evidence, profiling, legal proof, legal epistemology, big data, AI, formal epistemology and judgement, the epistemology of society, moral encroachment, pragmatic influences on belief, and related themes. We often have lunch together afterwards at the college cafe.

To be added to the mailing list and also receive a document with emails, papers and resources, please email georgi.gardiner@philosophy.ox.ac.uk 

 

Workshop: Higher-Order Evidence in Epistemology, Ethics, and Aesthetics | Thursday 25th April, from 09.30 | University of Southampton

Website: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/philosophy/news/events/2019/04/25-ahrc-workshop.page. For full information and to register (before 12th April) please email t.p.storey@soton.ac.uk

 

The Queen’s College & ConceptLab Collaborative Conference | Linguistic Meaning: Metaphysics, Epistemology & Ethics | 25th - 27th April | Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College

The conference aims to bring new work in the metaphysics, epistemology and ethics of meaning into dialogue, revisiting some long-standing and foundational questions in light of the resurgence and development of the idea that a philosopher’s task is to modify aspects of her language for social or theoretical ends, not merely to describe it. An overarching theme of the conference is the question how speakers are related, practically and epistemically, to the languages at their command, and in particular to facts about meaning and conceptual content.
 
Please see the conference webpage for full information: https://sites.google.com/view/linguisticmeaningconference/home
 

Upcoming events

Moral Encroachment Reading Group

Thursdays during vacation, 11.00, St John's College

 

The Queen’s College & ConceptLab Collaborative Conference - Linguistic Meaning: Metaphysics, Epistemology & Ethics

25th - 27th April, The Queen’s College

 

Other events around the University

Please visit http://www.ox.ac.uk/events-list