Marc Stears (uSyd): “An entire absence of cynicism and contempt”: how citizen behaviour can restore democracy
Seminar
In the early 1920s, the English author and critic D. H. Lawrence arrived in Australia, escaping, as he saw it, from the narrow nationalism and political chaos of post-World War One Europe. Lawrence reflected deeply while in Australia about the factors undermining democratic governance. In his novel…
Tyler Paytas (ACU): Be Not Afraid: Reclassifying Fear as Vice
Seminar
Most virtue theorists hold that fear is evaluatively neutral and that what matters is one’s ability to surmount it when necessary. The viciousness of fear has gone unrecognized due to a failure to adequately distinguish it from related states such as physiological arousal and desiring to avoid a…
Hayden Wilkinson (ANU): Infinite aggregation and risk
Seminar
How should we evaluate worlds containing infinite populations? This is a crucial question for ethical consequentialists - their judgements of acts are determined by the value of the resulting worlds, and some of our best physical theories now predict that our world will inevitably contain an…
Holly Lawford-Smith (ANU): I just work here
Seminar
Privately-owned corporations make a major contribution to climate change. Heede (2014) tracked 63% of cumulative global carbon and methane emissions across a 260 year period to just 90 "carbon majors". Of these carbon majors, 31 were state-owned and 9 were nation-states, leaving 50 (55% of the…
Christopher Hunter-Lean (ANU): Invasive species and naturalized function in ecology
Seminar
Within and outside the academe there is a growing chorus of dissenters arguing that we should not control invasive species. They believe we should disregard preferences for native species and develop an appreciation for the ‘novel ecosystems’ that invasive species create. One mode of reply is to…
Abilities and Possibilities: Wolfgang Schwarz (Edinburgh)
Seminar
Preceded by a pre-talk for graduate students, 1:30PM Benjamin Library Please let Justin know if you'd like to come to dinner following the talk. According to the classical quantificational analysis of modals, an agent has the ability to perform a given act iff (roughly) relevant facts about the…
Philsoc seminars: Lachlan Walmsley (ANU) and James Willoughby (ANU)
Seminar
James Willoughby, "Revising The Revisionist Story" (3.30pm - 4.30pm) Revisionist philosophical theories face an up-hill battle. They deviate from the way the world seems, from our intuitions, from our folk theories, from the common sense view, from the natural things to think, from our pre-…