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Philosophy Events

*All events are in 501 War Memorial Hall from 3:30 to 5:00pm unless otherwise noted.  

2024-25

  • Ram Neta (UNC Chapel Hill): "Research, inquiry, and free agency" (October 4, GYM 332)
  • VT Philosophy MA Research Showcase (October 22, 24; 3:30-6:20)
  • Angela Sun (Washington and Lee): "The role of anti-snitching norms" (November 1)
  • Justin Bledin (Johns Hopkins): "Free choice with arbitrary variables" (December 6)
  • Nathan Adams (Virginia): TBA (January 1)
  • Robert Smithson (UNC Wilmington): TBA (February 14)
  • Jim Klagge Retirement Conference (March 8; 10:00-11:45am; 1:45-4:30pm, Brush Mountain A (Room 305), Squires Student Center)
  • Insa Lawler (UNC Greensboro): TBA (April 18)
  • Megan Hyska (Northwestern): TBA (May 2) 

2023-24

  • Daniel Drucker (UT Austin): "How comparing and not comparing compare" (September 15)
  • Lukas Meyer (Graz): "Supersession and compensation" (October 5)
  • VT Philosophy MA Research Showcase (October 10)
  • Thimo Heisenberg (Rice): "Hegel on childless marriage" (October 20)
  • Dee Payton (Virginia): "Gender and personhood" (November 10)
  • Rosalind Chaplin (UNC Chapel Hill): "Shame and partial concern for character (February 16)
  • Michael Pelczar (National University of Singapore): "Requiem for Hal"  (March 15)
  • Burian-McNabb Lecture (co-sponsored with Society, Technology, and Society): Janet Browne (Harvard): "Those finches again: the story of an evolutionary icon" (April 12)
  • C. Thi Nguyen (Utah): "What the algorithm misses: how data and metrics shape our values" (April 26)
  • Colin Chamberlain (University College London): "Staying alive: Malebranche on mechanism, action, and the preservation of life" (May 3)

2022-23

  • Well Being and the Good Life Workshop (sponsored by the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) (August 4)
  • Daniel Munoz (UNC Chapel Hill): "Against police abolition" (September 2)
  • The Statistics Wars and Their Causalties (sponsored by the Foundation for the Study of Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science (E.R.R.O.R.S); the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), London School of Economics; Virginia Tech Department of Philosophy): September 22-23; December 1, 8; virtual)
  • VT Philosophy MA Research Showcase (October 4, 6)
  • Michaela McSweeney (Boston University): "Understanding, experience, and standpoint" (October 11)
  • Camil Golub (Rutgers): "The good, the bad, and the meaningful" (October 28)
  • James Klagge (Virginia Tech): "Is Wittgenstein still an analytic philosopher?" (November 4)
  • Andea Woody (Washington) "Descriptive and prescriptive: reflecting on molecular concepts" (December 2; virtual)
  • Burian-McNabb Lecture (co-sponsored with Society, Technology, and Society): Jane Maienschein (School of Life Sciences, Arizona State): "Thinking about regeneration: why do we think we want it?" (January 26)
  • Ross Cameron (Virginia): "Infinite regress, explanation, and plenitude" (January 27)
  • Elanor Taylor (Johns Hopkins): "A problem for social essentialism" (March 17) 

2021-22

  • VT Philosophy MA Research Showcase (September 17-19)
  • Darrell Rowbottom (Lingnan): "Can meaningless statements be approximately true? On relaxing the semanic component of scientific realism" (October 15)
  • Kevin Richardson (Duke): "The metaphysics of gender is (relatively) substantial" (October 29)
  • Rebecca Stangl (Virginia): "Moral exemplars and human virtue" (Novermber 5)
  • Michael Townsen Hicks (Birmingham): "An inference problem for potentiality" (December 3)
  • Avery Archer (George Washington): "What is angosticism?" (January 28)
  • VT Humanities Week Keynote Lecture: Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU): "Living well: the humanities as a preparation for life" (February 10)
  • Andrew Lee (Oslo): "Degrees of consciousness" (February 18)
  • Lindsay Brainard (Alabama): "What is creativity?" (March 4)
  • The Center for Humanities Faculty Research Associate Colloquia Series: Philip Yaure (Virginia Tech): "Seizing citizenship: Fredrick Douglass' abolitionist republicanism" (March 31)
  • PPE Research Panel: Decision Theory, Behavioral Phenomena, and Network Economics (sponsored by the Kellogg Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics): Dan Hoek, Matthew Kovach, and Sudipta Sarangi (April 13)
  • Burian-McNabb Lecture (co-sponsored with Society, Technology, and Society): Alan Love (Minnesota): "New perspectives on biological teleology: concepts and controversies" (April 22)
  • Tim Fuller (Virginia Tech): "Can we stop representing race? Should we?" (April 29)

2020-21

  • Regina Rini (York): “Moral disagreement is special” (September 21, virtual)
  • Devin Curry (West Virginia): “Psychometric g as a bridge model of intelligence” (October 30, virtual)
  • David Chalmers (NYU): “Sentience and moral status” (February 19, virtual)
  • Nora Berenstain (Tennessee, Knoxville): “Modality and structural oppression” (March 5, virtual)

2019-20

  • Michael Moehler (Virginia Tech): “Diversity, stability, and contractarian moral theory” (September 27)
  • Tom Dougherty (UNC Chapel Hill): “External constraints on consent” (October 25)
  • Katherina Kinzel (University of Vienna): “Hermeneutics and Neo-Kantianism: Heinrich Rickert and Ernst Cassirer on historical understanding and cultural meaning” (November 8)

2018-19

  • Marjorie Grene Lecture: Katherine Brading (Duke): “Emilie Du Châtelet and the foundations of physical science” (September 28)
  • Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference: Philosophy of Race, Gender, and Social Groups (October 19–20)
  • Minorites and Philosophy (MAP) Speaker: Derrick Darby (Michigan): “Why white liberals won’t back black reparations” (November 9)
  • Robin Dembroff (Yale) “Reimagining trans” (February 22)
  • Renee Bolinger (Australian National University): “Explaining evidential asymmetries” (April 5)
  • Matthias Armgardt (Konstanz): “Causation in the law, overdetermination, and normative ideal worlds” (May 16)
  • Summer Seminar in Philosophy of Statistics (July 28–August 11)

2017-18

  • Quayshawn Spencer (Pennsylvania): “A radical solution to the race problem” (September 8)
  • Marjorie Grene Lecture: Roberta Millstein (UC Davis): “Types of experiments and causal process tracing: what happened on the Kaibab Plateau in the 1920s?” (September 15)
  • Vanessa Wills (George Washington University), “Race, ethics, and policing in the context of injustice” (October 27)
  • Virginia Tech Gradaute Philosophy Conference: Realism and the Real World (November 10–11)
  • Louis DeRosset (Vermont): “Skepticism about grounding” (November 13)
  • Andrea Pitts (UNC Charlotte): “Countermemory and critical historiography: resistant imaginaries in Latin American feminist philosophy” (November 17)
  • Gillian Russell (UNC Chapel Hill), “Speech acts and speaking up” (March 2)
  • Ross Cameron (Virginia): “Ontological commitment and second-order logic” (March 16)
  • Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech): “Statistical inference as severe testing: how to get beyond the statistics wars” (April 6)
  • Whitney Schwab (Maryland, Baltimore County): “Towards the Forms” (April 20)
  • Workshop in Ancient Greek Philosophy: Aristotle on the “for the sake of” (April 21)

2016-17

  • Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference: Puzzles and Paradoxes (October 28–29)
  • Sam Cowling (Denison): “How to Benacerraf a Goodman-Lewis” (December 2)
  • Sarah McGrath (Princeton): “Moral perception and its rivals” (January 27)
  • Elizabeth Barnes (Virginia): “Disability and the concept of health” (February 17)
  • Duncan Richter (Virginia Military Institute): “The ethics of communication” (March 3)
  • Marija Jankovic (Davidson College): “Knowledge and linguistic communication” (March 17)
  • Josh Schechter (Brown): “The epistemology of basic deductive rules” (March 31)
  • Early Career Metaphysics Workshop (April 7–8)
  • Walter Ott (Virginia): “Content, not character: disentangling secondary qualities from phenomenal character” (April 19)

2015-16

  • Virginia Tech Graduate Philosophy Conference: Topics in Contemporary Metaphysics (November 6–7)
  • Daniel Kraemer, “Natural probabilistic information” (January 30)
  • Andrew Alwood (Virginia Commonwealth University): “Personal well-being” (April 10)
  • Ioan Muntean (Notre Dame & UNC Asheville): “Artificial moral cognition” (April 17)
  • Philosophy of Mind Workshop (April 24–25)
  • Bryce Huebner (Georgetown): “Mechanical processes and normative cognition” (May 1)
  • Anne Margaret Baxley (Washington University St. Louis): “Kant’s account of happiness as conditionally valuable” (May 8)

2014-15

  • Allan Franklin (UC Boulder) “What makes a good experiment?” (October 3)
  • David Faraci (Georgetown): “A hard look at moral perception” (October 17)
  • Virginia Tech Gradaute Philosophy Conference: Pragmatism (November 14–15)
  • Holly Smith (Rutgers): “The ‘epistemic problem’ for morality” (February 21)
  • Sahar Akhtar (Virginia): “What’s wrong with benign apartheid?” (March 21)
  • Alan Nelson (UNC Chapel Hill): “The human standpoint in Spinoza’s metaphysics” (April 11)