Colloquium Schedule 2009-2010

Friday September 11th Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin, will give a talk entitled "Evils and Inexcusable Wrongs" in the Tanner Library, CTIHB 459 at 3.00pm.

Friday September 18th Carol Rovane, Columbia University, will give a talk entitled "Ethical Relativism Requires Alternatives, not Disagreement or Relative Truth" in the Tanner Library, CTIHB 459 at 3.00pm.

Friday October 2nd Robert Rupert, University of Colorado, Boulder, will give a talk entitled "Do groups have mental states?" in the Tanner Library, CTIHB 459 at 3.00pm. Professor Rupert's talk is supported by Mariam Thalos' Dee Foundation Grant.

Friday October 23rd Sherrilyn Roush, University of California, Berkeley, will give the Aldrich Lecture in Philosophy in the Tanner Library, CTIHB 459 at 3.00pm. Talk title: "Optimism about the Pessimistic Induction."

Abstract: I argue that pessimistic inductions over the history of science have not made the case that the failures of our predecessors give us reason to dial down our confidence in our scientific theories. Moreover, the kind of attitude that can thus survive the pessimistic induction is all the realism we need. Simple points about induction, the preface paradox, and reliability, show that the only way to make any pessimistic induction work is to argue that 1) the supposed unreliability of our predecessors is relevant to what we should think about our own reliability, and 2) if we believe that we are lacking reliability – a second-order property – then we are rationally obligated to withdraw confidence in our first-order beliefs. On the pessimist’s behalf I explain why the second is true. However, I argue that the fact that we use different methods than our predecessors can be used to undermine the pessimistic induction from their unreliability to ours.

Tuesday Nov 3rd Bryan Norton, Georgia Tech, will give a talk entitled "The Third Dogma of Empiricism" at 3.00pm in the Tanner Library, 459 CTIHB. Professor Norton's visit is supported by Anya Plutynski and Edward Barbanell's Dee Foundation Grant.

Friday Nov 6th Don Ross, University of Alabama and Tim Ketelaar, New Mexico State University will both give talks in the Tanner Library, 459 CTIHB (time tba). Professors Ross and Ketelaar's visits are supported by Mariam Thalos' Dee Foundation Grant.

Wednesday Nov 11th Ben Minteer, Arizona State University, will give a talk entitled "Move it or lose it" in at 4.00pm in the Tanner Library, 459 CTIHB. Professor Minteer's visit is supported by Anya Plutynski and Edward Barbanell's Dee Foundation Grant.

Feb. 5, 2010. Philosophy Departmemt Colloquim featuring Carl Craver, Washington University, St. Louis in the Tanner Library. 3:00-5:00pm

Agency and Amnesia: Toward a Clinical Moral Psychology

Episodic memories are commonly defined as memories of events accompanied by awareness that the subject has formerly experienced the event. Some believe that the phylogenic appearance of episodic thought marks a crucial difference between human beings and nonhuman animals, both as moral agents and as moral patients. Some believe, further, that the ontogenetic appearance of episodic thought is a crucial developmental milestone in the emergence of the moral self, the emergence of a reflective agent capable of learning from past moral experience and projecting one’s self into future moral scenarios. In order to understand the importance of episodic thought to moral agency, I consider some preliminary evidence concerning how specific neurological deficits in episodic thought affect and (more surprisingly) fail to affect one’s status as a moral agent. Though I shall discuss Lockean theories of personal identity, the primary object of this talk is to direct our attention to a more agential perspective on the contribution this sub-personal memory system makes to our status as people: to our understanding of our place in time, to our capacity to reason about the future, to our ability to take and sustain a long-range perspectives on our goals and plans. The goal of this talk is to reintroduce amnesia as a case-study of how sub-personal and personal-level explanations might be integrated in a clinical investigation of moral psychology.