John Broome (Oxford/ANU): Philosophical Climate Denialism
Seminar
Some people deny that humanity as a whole does harm by its emissions of greenhouse gas. I call these ‘species denialists’. Others deny that individual human beings do harm by their emissions. I call these ‘individual denialists’. Individual denialism is surprisingly popular among moral philosophers…
Stephen Darwall (Yale): What Are Moral Reasons?
Seminar
In The Second-Person Standpoint and subsequent essays, I argue that the deontic moral concepts of obligation, duty, right, wrong, and the like resist analysis in terms of moral reasons for acting. I claim that the “fully deontic” ought of moral obligation has a conceptual connection to…
Perceptual (mostly visual) constancies
Seminar
Color constancy is stability in perceived color across changes in illumination (and scene composition). Visual size constancy is stability in perceived size across changes in distance. What all perceptual constancies have in common is that the varying property affects the local stimulus features…
Rationality and Synchronic Identity
Seminar
Many requirements of rationality rely for their application on facts about identity at a time. Take the requirement not to have contradictory beliefs. It is irrational if a single agent believes P and believes ¬P, but it is not irrational if one agent believes P and another believes ¬P. There are…
The Moral Grounds of Mistaken Self-Defense
Seminar
Mistaken self-defense presents a puzzle: in at least some cases agents are intuitively justified in imposing defensive harm on an apparent aggressor, despite (in fact) facing no genuine threat. I argue that these cases motivate a more expansive view of the moral grounds of permissible self-defense…
Renee Bolinger (ANU): The Moral Grounds Of Mistaken Self-Defense
Seminar
Mistaken self-defense presents a puzzle: in at least some cases agents are intuitively justified in imposing defensive harm on an apparent aggressor, despite (in fact) facing no genuine threat. I argue that these cases motivate a more expansive view of the moral grounds of permissible self-defense…
Gerard Vong (Emory): Diagnosing a Methodological Error in Distributive Fairness Debates: Lotteries, Pluralism and An Impossibility Result
Seminar
Preceded by a pre-talk for graduate students, 1:30PM Benjamin LibraryAbstract and simplified thought experiments are an important methodological tool in philosophy. However I argue that the overreliance on thought experiments of this kind can and has led to both false conclusions and ongoing…