Digest Summer Vacation 2026
This page lists all Philosophy-related events taking place throughout the summer vacation.
If you have entries please send information to admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk
Notices - other Philosophy events, including those taking place elsewhere in the university and beyond
Social Philosophy Workshop II
Date: Wednesday 24 June, 2:00 – 5:30pm
Venue: Ryle Room, Schwarzman Centre
Workshop convenor: James Laing
Timetable
- 2:00 – 3.30pm – Jordan Walters (Nuffield), What We Owe to the Dead
- 3:30 – 4.00pm – Break
- 4:00 – 5.30pm – Cara Addleman (Christ Church), Lying, Cheating Bastards: Why Not Lock Them Up?
2026 Lockwood Memorial Lecture and medal presentation
Title: Is Ethical Divestment Possible?
Speaker: Prof David Boonin, University of Colorado Boulder
Date: Thursday 25 June, 5:00 – 6:30pm, followed by a drinks reception
Venue: Geoffrey Thomas Lecture Theatre, Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA
Abstract: A common justification for ethical divestment rests on the claim that your owning stock in an immoral company makes you complicit in the company’s immoral behavior. But there’s something puzzling about this view. Suppose you own such stock. Ethical divestment requires you to sell it. If you sell it to someone, then they’ll own it. If it’s wrong to own the stock, then they’ll be doing something wrong. So if you sell someone the stock you own in an immoral company, you’ll be helping them do something wrong. And it seems wrong to help someone do something wrong. This seems to make it wrong for you to sell the stock to them. How, then, can a company’s immoral behavior make it wrong for you to own stock in the company but not make it wrong for you to get rid of the stock by selling it to someone else? How, in short, can ethical divestment be possible? I will discuss a variety of answers that have been offered to this puzzling question and propose an alternative response.
Bitesize Ethics 2026: Life, death and difficult decisions
Date: Wednesday 24 June 2026 to Wednesday 12 August 2026, 12.35 - 1.20pm
Online via Zoom: https://bookwhen.com/uehiro#focus=ev-scvz9-20260701123500
Description: This 8-week online programme provides a short introduction to some of the ethical issues affecting decisions taken around the beginning and end of life of living things, based on current research from academics at the Uehiro Oxford Institute. Prof Dominic Wilkinson provides a general introduction in week one, and the series continues with a different specialist each Wednesday, addressing themes such as conscience and conscientious objection, age-based decision-making, AI and life extension, the ‘badness’ of death, and difficult decisions in healthcare. The series will finish with a wrap-up discussion looking back at the topics covered, led by Dr Jonathan Pugh.
More information: https://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/bitesize-ethics-summer-2026
Philosophical Moral Psychology Lab Talk
Title: The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts
Speaker: Dr. Matthew Lindauer
Date: Thursday 9 July 2026, 4–5pm
Venue: Suite 1 Seminar Space, 1st Floor, Littlegate House, Oxford OX1 1PT (If you don’t have card access, please buzz for the Uehiro Oxford Institute to be let in, and consider arriving about five minutes early if it’s your first time)
Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/91898283470?pwd=UqL9IQDKPhxVva4ZcLOhgriNHwh5dV.1 ID: 918 9828 3470 | passcode: 580869
Abstract: Can philosophical concepts do real work in improving our world? Should we, when evaluating competing understandings of concepts like ‘justice,’ ‘empowerment,’ and ‘solidarity,’ take into account whether these different understandings can actually help us to fight injustice, empower the oppressed, and promote solidarity between people? In The Fruitfulness of Normative Concepts, I make the first book-length attempt to argue that the answer to both of these questions is an emphatic “yes,” defending a tight relationship between philosophical theory and practice. The book advances the view that moral and political philosophers should be and often are interested in the “fruitfulness” of normative concepts – how well they help us to solve practical problems that we inevitably face as human beings interacting with one another. Philosophers must consult and sometimes conduct new empirical research to address questions of fruitfulness, in particular research in moral psychology. Hence, empirical research is not merely of side interest to moral and political philosophy but central to the philosophical enterprise of concept evaluation in these areas. In this talk, I will present the theory of normative fruitfulness developed in the book, discuss several case studies of empirical research that bears on dimensions of normative fruitfulness, and discuss prominent alternative ways of viewing the relationship between science and moral theory. I will also discuss how the approach taken in the book is compatible with traditional a priori theorizing in general, so long as such work makes room for empirical research to bear on fruitfulness considerations.
Contact: joanna.demaree-cotton@uehiro.ox.ac.uk
