CEPPA Talk

Please join us on for the Second edition of the Philosophy of Climate Science (PhiCliSci) working group, which will bring together philosophers and climate scientists to discuss central themes relating to the climate crisis. In the first session, climate scientist Simon Lee and philosopher Viviane Fairbank will give presentations on the topic of ‘Climate Modelling ... Read more

Title: Multiple Aims of Science and the New Demarcation Problem Abstract: TBC Location: Edgecliffe G03

Title: The Democratic Soul in Plato and Whitman Abstract: In Books II-IV of the Republic, Plato famously proposes an analogy between the constitution of the Greek city-state and the constitution of the human soul. The methodological assumption that underlies the architecture of the Republic is that philosophical questions about topics that we might today group under the heading ... Read more

Title: Hypocrisy as Evasion Abstract: Hypocrites attract moral condemnation and are widely thought to lack standing to criticise others. This paper argues against attempts to explain this that appeal to moral conditions on blaming and notions of moral authority, proposing instead an account based on a conception of moral interactions as fundamentally dialogical in character. According to ... Read more

Title: Revisiting the Spinoza Controversy in an age of Environmental Crisis Abstract: Modern scientific naturalism arguably tries to ontologically describe or account for the entirety of the natural world using necessity. Scientific naturalism presents logical causal necessity as constituting how nature "makes" things exist, and it presents necessity in the more general or abstract sense ... Read more

Title: The Incomparable Value of the Individual Abstract: Kant believed that every human being should be treated as an end in itself. In the Groundwork, Kant explains many of our duties by arguing that their violation would involve treating a human being as a mere means. But we cannot explain all of our duties that way. Nor ... Read more

Title: Autonomy and control over one’s social self-consciousness Abstract: Humans have the capacity to absorb – to feel – others’ feelings. More particularly we feel others’ feelings about ourselves: at least as long as we are awake, we are subject to being self-consciously affected in our interactions with others. We are capable of social self-consciousness, and ... Read more

Title: Hope and the Powers of Shared Agency Abstract: This paper argues that Kant’s theory of radical evil exalts the powers of organized, shared and institutional, agency. In section 1, I illustrate the paradoxicality of radical evil and the novelty of Kant’s “empowering” conception focused on human agency. In section 2, I argue that radical evil ... Read more

Title: The (Aesthetic) Value of Environmental Activism Abstract: TBC Location: Edgecliffe G03

Title: Merely Imagined Moralities Abstract: Artworks and other cultural products (films, novels, operas, pop songs, etc.) often express heroic, pessimistic, melancholy, or dark ways of looking at the world (also referred to as ‘perspectives’). Sometimes, these worldviews appear politically inflected; we may, for instance, describe a work as "feminist" or "patriotic" according to the worldview ... Read more