Events

The Guelph Lecture in Philosophy is an opportunity for the general public to experience interesting, high-calibre philosophy. Whether the topic is timely or timeless, the Guelph Lecture will provoke reflection and introduce new ideas.   For further details please see our Guelph Lecture in Philosophy page.

Department Speaker Series 2011-2012

Everyone is welcome to attend talks in our departmental speaker series.  Typically a talk is about 45 minutes long, after which we have about 45 minutes for discussion, followed by drinks at the Faculty Lounge, at which anyone who attended the talk is welcome. 

September 23    Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo

“Moral coherence and value pluralism”

This paper considers two things often discussed, but not often discussed together: the demand for coherence in a moral theory and value pluralism. Most broadly, the question I am concerned with is that of what value pluralism tells us about the pursuit of moral coherence as a method of moral reasoning. In this paper, I focus on the status of the norm of “systematicity”—or the demand that our principles be as few and as simple as possible—and I restrict my attention to epistemic ways of supporting such an norm. I argue that, given certain facts about the pluralistic ways we value, these ways of supporting systematicity do not succeed. Because it is sometimes suggested that coherence functions in moral reasoning as it does in scientific reasoning, the argument considers analogies and disanalogies between moral reasoning and scientific reasoning. In my view, these considerations give us reason not to reject moral coherence reasoning, but rather to formulate it in a way appropriate for pluralistic contexts—as focused on a more “minimal” requirement to judge like cases alike.

(MacKinnon 305, 3:30pm)

October 7     Richard Hamilton, The University of Notre Dame (Australia)

“Aristotle on the potty: ethical formation as biological development”

Naturalism is the default position in most branches of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy. Moral Philosophy offers a curious exception, where 57 varieties of non-naturalism run rampant. In this context, the program of neo-Aristotelian naturalism appears highly promising. Thinkers such as John McDowell, Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and Alasdair MacIntyre have attempted to navigate the treacherous terrain between a reductive scientistic naturalism on the one hand and a “mysterious transcendence of biology” on the other. In this paper I will argue that without paying due heed to the biological sciences, the neo-Aristotelian project will collapse into the very “mysterious transcendence of biology” which McDowell ostensibly hopes to avoid. Ethical formation, the process whereby one becomes a mature practical reasoner, responsive to considerations of virtue and vice, is the form that biological development takes in our species. In order to develop my thesis I consider an opposing view which originates in the work of Rousseau and Kant, which suggests that human ethical life consists in our ability to deny biological imperatives. While this view captures an obvious truism about ethical life, as it stands it treats the process of enculturation as a deus ex machina. In the second half of this paper, I will therefore draw upon recent work in biological and anthropological sciences to offer a naturalistic alternative. I will suggest that the characteristic occasions on which we resist the call of nature are all in those areas in which we were trained in infancy by our caregivers, as part of our initiation into social life. Contrary to ultra-rationalist accounts of ethical life, I will argue that ethical formation is not a separate process from that whereby we learn to eat, sleep and use the toilet like humans do—hence my somewhat puzzling title.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

October 14    James Robert Brown, University of Toronto

“What do we see in a Thought Experiment?”

What is it that we actually see in a thought experiment? We will look at some standard examples and raise a few questions, for instance, we visualize something in a thought experiment, but how realistic should it be? We will look at some (non-technical) examples from special relativity and note that the actual appearance of rapidly moving objects is one of rotation, not contraction, as is widely but mistakenly believed. It turns out that the mistaken belief is much better for understanding and that a realistic view would obscure the thought experiment completely. I will conclude by drawing some morals for various senses of idealization.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

November 1    Jay Lampert, University of Guelph

“Simultaneity and delay”

This is a preview of my forthcoming book, Simultaneity and Delay (Continuum 2012). The theme of the book is that simultaneity and delay are intertwining concepts, in spite of their apparent opposition, and that when paired, they describe a sense of time that contrasts with continuous succession. After outlining the general idea, I present an excerpt from the book dealing with Kant’s schematism of simultaneity in the Critique of Pure Reason. For Kant, we experience two things to be simultaneous (like the rooms in a house) if we can experience them in any order we choose. We do not usually take the time actually to reverse the order of our perceptions, so the test of simultaneity normally remains a virtual possibility, delayed in practice. I then present another excerpt from the book, dealing with Deleuze’s critique in Difference and Repetition of Freud’s theory of delayed reaction. For Deleuze, delayed reaction means that an original event operates simultaneous with the later reaction. To ground this point, I look briefly at Deleuze’s (Bergsonian) argument that the pastness of an event co–exists with its presentness. Putting the Kantian and Deleuzian analyses together suggests that simultaneity is constructed out of delays, and delay is constructed out of simultaneities.

(MacKinnon 313, 4:30pm)

November 10    David Bourget, Research Fellow, University of London

“A regimented language of consciousness: why and how”

A chief aim of the science of consciousness is to discover general principles that determine exactly which states of phenomenal consciousness occur in exactly which conditions. In this paper I argue that making progress towards the discovery of such principles requires developing a new regimented language for describing phenomenal states. This language should allow us to describe phenomenal states in a way that is commensurable with our descriptions of physical states. I suggest one way of doing this. My approach extends and sharpens the language used in the scientific literature to describe phenomenal states. The end result is a representational language of consciousness without the metaphysical baggage of a representational theory of consciousness

(MacKinnon 230, 3:30pm)

November 25    Gurpreet Rattan, University of Toronto

“Interpersonal Understanding in Deep Disagreement”

What should one do in the face of awareness of disagreement with someone one takes to be an epistemic equal? This is the question of the epistemic significance of disagreement. Some have suggested that to properly answer this question, one must take account of the first-person perspective in disagreement. I think that this is right, but as I have argued elsewhere, I do not think that anyone has explained the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective. I want to explain the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective. It is this: the first-person perspective marks the epistemic limit to interpersonal understanding encountered in deep disagreement. On the basis of this account of the epistemic relevance of the first-person perspective for disagreement, I argue that the epistemic significance of disagreement is to highlight the existence of an active mental state that shifts between the irrationality of persisting in confidence in one’s opinions in the face of challenges that one cannnot answer, and the ultimate incomprehensibility of another’s deeply conflicting perspective.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

January 20    Karen Wendling, University of Guelph
Post-research-leave talk

“Changing the subject of ethics”

I argue that applied ethics and the philosophies of the equality-seeking movements and animal rights (which I call, collectively, “the newer branches of ethics”) have changed the subject of ethics. I mean “subject” in two senses: First, I argue that the newer branches of ethics have changed the subject-understood-as-moral-individual of ethics. Traditionally, ethics has focussed on agents who are rational (and, in liberalism, also free and equal). However, the newer branches of ethics show us that moral agents are not always (fully) rational, free, or equal, and that moral patients as well as agents can be ethical subjects. Second, I argue that the newer branches (particularly medical, business and professional, and feminist ethics) cover what is known in ethics as “special obligations” or “special relationships”—obligations owed to, or relationships with, particular individuals rather than all individuals. I argue that there is nothing at all “special” about these relationships, and that the traditional subject matter of ethics—impartial rules applied to rational, free, and equal agents—is really the special case, covering a relatively small and non-standard subset of ethical issues.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

 February 10    Emilia Angelova, Trent University

“The ethicality of ethics in Heidegger and Levinas”

Levinas’s two lecture courses of 1975–76 tell more than has been previously explored regarding the question of ethics and its links to alterity. In this context attention to a contrast between Levinas and Heidegger on the concept of time is especially important. Specifically, attention to the notion of hope’s temporality in these lectures, as crucial to an ethics that exceeds Kantian apriorist ethics, helps rectify misinterpretations of Levinas’s later work (notably around the concept of time’s diachrony and assignation). I approach the Levinas lectures with this in mind. I also connect this with recent scholarship on Heidegger of the late 1920s, and the question whether Heidegger does have an ethics, to show how the lectures suggest a more genuine and previously unexpected proximity between the two thinkers concerning ethics, particularly around facticity and the event, Ereignis.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm) 

 March 16    Dan Selcer, Duquesne University (Pittsburgh)

“Singularization and individuation in Spinoza”

One reason for the recent surge of interest in Spinoza’s metaphysics is its nuanced account of a permeable and even temporary notion of individuality constituted out of a collective field of action, power, corporeality, and thought. Getting straight on Spinoza’s position with respect individuation is difficult because his discussion in the Ethics uses several vocabularies: individual bodies are composites defined by complex patterns of motive variation; they are expressions or modulations of affective power, understood sometimes on the model of resistance to disruption and sometimes on that of purely positive desire; and they are complexes of ‘operational’ causal power individuated retrospectively by virtue of the singular effects they produce. With specific attention to Spinoza’s claims about singular things, individuals, and their connections, this paper presents an account of Spinoza’s stance on individuation as well as its broader implications for his metaphysics and politics.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

March 23    Eric Marcus, Auburn University (Alabama)

“To believe is to know that you believe”

Most agree that believing a proposition normally or ideally results in believing that one believes it. Whether or not this second–order belief constitutes knowledge is then a further question. This paper argues for a much stronger thesis: it is part of the metaphysical profile of belief that the subject has knowledge of her belief. It is impossible to believe without such knowledge. I defend this thesis without relying on a specific theory of belief. But I do sketch a theory that ultimately helps to explain the tight connection between belief and doxastic self–knowledge: believing is a matter of viewing a proposition as what one ought to believe.

(MacKinnon 308, 3:30pm)

Philosophy Goes Public

Department members - both faculty and advanced graduate students - give public talks at the Guelph Public Library as part of our "Philosophy Goes Public" Series. 

 January 31  Brooke Struck, Phd Student, University of Guelph

"Occupy'd"

The Occupy movement has garnered a lot of public attention and has led to a critical reflection on corporations. In this talk, David Brooke Struck will aim to highlight some of the issues that we ought to take into account in our reflections on this issue, specifically regarding the external and internal pressures on corporations to act appropriately. He’ll give a brief background for why the economic ambitions of corporations ought to be curbed, discuss how structures to curb that ambition have broken down, and outline some possible repairs to those structures. One of those repairs is intimately tied into the Occupy movement, though one of their central tenets will be called into question.  

 February 28 

"Myth, Nature and the Struggle for Balance in Ancient Greece and Today"

 March 27  Andrew Robinson, PhD Student, University of Guelph

"Feminism and Men Today" 

Feminism has come a long way in the last 100 years. As feminism has changed, so too has the relation of men to feminism. Join Andrew for a discussion about what men today can do to help achieve feminist aims. 

 April 24  Jehanger Saleh, MA Student, University of Guelph

What Does It Mean to be ill"