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Events

     

    Philosophy Talks

    2023-24

    • Daniel Drucker (UT Austin): "How comparing and not comparing compare" (September 15; 3:30-5:00pm; Architectural Annex, Room 07)
    • Lukas Meyer (Graz): "Supersession and compensation" (October 5; 4:00-5:30pm; Squire Students Center, Brush Mountain B)
    • VT Philosophy MA Research Showcase (October 10, 12; 3:30-5:30; Major Williams 225)
    • Thimo Heisenberg (Rice): "Hegel on childless marriage" (October 20; 3:30-5:00pm; Architectural Annex, Room 07)
    • Dee Payton (Virginia): "Gender and personhood" (November 10; 3:30-5:00pm; Architectural Annex, Room 07)
    • Rosalind Chaplin (UNC Chapel Hill): "Shame and partial concern for character (February 16; 3:30-5:00pm; Holden Hall 234)
    • Michael Pelczar (National University of Singapore): "Requiem for Hal"  (March 15; 3:30-5:00pm; Holden Hall 234)
    • Burian-McNabb Lecture (co-sponsored with Society, Technology, and Society): Janet Browne (Harvard): "Those finches again: the story of an evolutionary icon" (April 12; 1:30-3:00pm, Newman Library 124)
    • C. Thi Nguyen (Utah): "What the algorithm misses: how data and metrics shape our values" (April 26; 3:30-5:00pm; Multipurpose Room, Creative and Innovation Distinct Living and Learning Communities (CID LLC))
    • Colin Chamberlain (University College London): "Staying alive: Malebranche on mechanism, action, and the preservation of life" (May 3; 3:30-5:00pm; Patton 215)

    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)