CEPPA Talk (in person) – Ben Sachs-Cobbe (St Andrews)

Location: Edgecliffe G03 and Teams Title: What’s wrong with teaching our children to be good citizens? Abstract: Character education is a common part of schooling in the U.S. and U.K., and one popular argument in favour of character education is that it is conducive to producing citizens who have the virtues that make someone a ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Sally Haslanger (MIT)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: Ideology, Culture, and Social Meaning Abstract: My aim in this paper is to sketch a conception of ideology that draws on the critical theory tradition. This conception of ideology is a response to a particular challenge for those working on social justice: Why is it that most of us, most ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Nancy Fraser (The New School)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: Three Faces of Capitalist Labor: Uncovering the Hidden Ties among Gender, Race, and Class Abstract: Dissatisfied with identity-based politics, many activists and intellectuals are now seeking larger paradigms that can unify disparate struggles. Aiming to advance that project, I propose that labor forms the hidden link between gender, race, and ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Jason Brennan (Georgetown)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: Laissez-Faire Democracy? Reasons to Regulate Votes Abstract: Most economists and political philosophers accept a simple argument for empowering governments to regulate citizens’ and private firms’ economic activity: Markets, they say, suffer from various market failures. In many such cases, governments can correct or prevent these market failures through various interventions ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Shelly Kagan (Yale)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: "Death, Deprivation, and Rational Regret" Abstract:  Is death a bad thing? According to the deprivation account, death is bad because the dead don't get the various goods that they would have if only they were still alive. But it's not normally a misfortune when a merely possible good doesn't come ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Heather Battaly (University of Connecticut)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: Can Fanaticism be a Liberatory Virtue? Abstract: Quassim Cassam (2022a) and Paul Katsafanas (2019) have argued that fanaticism and extremism are normatively negative concepts—characterized by, e.g., perverted ideals, vicious closed-mindedness, and unwarranted intolerance. I suggest an alternative approach that: (i) explains what makes fanaticism and extremism vicious in the very many cases ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – David Boonin (University of Colorado Boulder)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: Two Puzzles About the Ethics of Divestment Abstract: Suppose you own stock in Acme Corp. and you learn that it consistently acts in seriously immoral ways. What should you do? A common answer maintains that owning stock in Acme Corp. makes you complicit in its immoral behavior and that you ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (in person) – Jules Holroyd (Sheffield)

Edgecliffe G03 The Scores, St Salvator's Quad

Location: Edgecliffe G03 Title: Proleptic Praise Abstract: What is praise? I argue that we can make progress by examining what praise does. Functionalist views of praise are emerging, but I here argue that by foregrounding cases in which expressions of praise are rejected by their direct target, we see that praise has a wider, and ... Read more

CEPPA Talk (online only) – Tyler Cowen (George Mason University)

Location: Teams (online only) Title: The Philosophy of Effective Altruism Abstract: What are the strengths and weaknesses of Effective Altruism as both a moral philosophy and practical guide to action? Is it best thought of as an optimizing approach? How important is existential risk, especially relative to maximizing economic growth? How does the new form of ... Read more