Miriam Schoenfield (MIT): Meditations on Beliefs Formed Arbitrarily
Seminar
This paper addresses the concern of beliefs formed arbitrarily: for example, religious, political and moral beliefs that we realize we possess because of the social environments we grew up in. The paper uses accuracy-based considerations to motivate a set of criteria for determining when the fact…
Public Lecture: Animal Bodies & Animal Minds - Launching the Centre for Philosophy of Sciences
Lecture
Abstract: The brains, and hence minds, of animals evolved to complement their bodies. The diversity of those bodies, and their histories, tell us something about the nature and origins of the mind. This lecture will discuss a range of cases, with special attention to the octopus. Bio: Peter…
Amy Kind: Imaginative Experience
Seminar
Philosophical attempts to understand imagination sometimes focus on its nature – what imagination is – and sometimes focus on its phenomenological character – what imagination is like. This paper takes up the latter project. I explore three different views one encounters in the…
Preston Greene (NTU Singapore): 'It Doesn’t Matter Because One Day It Will End'
Other
The idea that life does not matter because it will end continues to be a source of despair for many reflective people, and its widespread influence can be seen in literature and in philosophy. Given its power and prominence, alleviating the despair would not only be an intellectual achievement, but…
Andy Egan (Rutgers): "What I Probably Should Have Said About Epistemic Modals"
Seminar
I argued in [REFs] for a de se relativist account of epistemic modals, primarily based on arguments from eavesdropper’s assessments of the truth-values of epistemic modal claims taking place in the conversations they’re eavesdropping on. While I still believe that the view I advocated there is…
Can we be Rational and Fair Under Risk and Uncertainty? - 2017 Passmore Lecture
Lecture
The Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory and the School of Philosophy at ANU present the 2017 Passmore Lecture with Speaker Marc Fleurbaey (Princeton).
Cailin O'Connor (UC Irvine): The Dynamics of Inequity
Other
It is no secret that some people get more and others get less. In most societies, seemingly irrelevant personal factors like gender and race importantly determine patterns of resource distribution. In this talk, I will use social models to explain the ubiquity of such patterns. As I will argue, in…