Activities and Events in Philosophy

Philosophy Club

The student Philosophy Club (http://clubs.ncsu.edu/philosophy) hosts a variety of activities during the year, including talks by professional philosophers, chats over coffee and occasional social events with departmental faculty. The faculty adviser for the club is Associate Professor Timothy Hinton.

Public Lectures in Philosophy at NC State

The Department is pleased to host a number of public lectures in philosophy and related fields in three lecture series: the Philosophy Colloquium Series, the Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series, and the GlaxoSmithKline Lectures on Semantics and Ontology. These are sometimes co-hosted by the Philosophy Club. Anyone interested is welcome to attend.

Forthcoming Speakers and Events, 2009/10

Ekow Yankah (Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University), "Obligation to Govern and the State of Terror," Thursday, February 18, 4:30, Daniels Hall, Room 218.

Dorit Bar-On (UNC Chapel Hill and the National Humanities Center), "Expression, Action, and Meaning," Thursday, March 4, 4:30, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Patricia K. Curd (Purdue University and the National Humanities Center), "What Can Humans Know? A Presocratic Answer," Thursday, March 25, 4:30, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Daniel J. Povinelli (University of Louisiana Cognitive Evolution Group), "How the Science of Other Minds Became Science Fiction: An Open Letter to Comparative Psychology," Thursday, April 8, 4:30, Daniels Hall, Room 218 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Recent Lectures and Events

Unless otherwise indicated, talks listed below were in the Philosophy Colloquium Series.

2009/10

Gary L. Comstock (NC State), "Human Singularity," Thursday, February 4, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Rüdiger Bittner (University of Bielefeld and the National Humanities Center), "Some Naturalisms in Ethics," Thursday, January 21, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Ruth Elizabeth Chang (Rutgers and the National Humanities Center), "Do We Have Normative Powers?" Thursday, November 12, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Kit Fine (New York University and the National Humanities Center), "State Space ," Thursday, October 29, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative Ontology Conference, September 25-26, Withers Hall, Room 140. Speakers: Christopher Menzel (Texas A&M), Barry Smith (SUNY Buffalo), Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Yale), Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame), Achille C. Varzi (Columbia), Edward N. Zalta (Stanford). For more information, click here.

Gary H. Merrill (GlaxoSmithKline Semantic Technologies Group), "Ontology, Ontologies, and Science," Thursday, September 3, Withers Hall, Room 344.

2008/9

Karen Neander (Duke), "Re-evaluating Resemblance Theories of Content," Wednesday, April 8, Withers Hall 344 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Stephen Puryear (NC State), "Force, Absolute Motion, and the Threat of Circularity in Leibniz," Thursday, March 26, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Ted Sider (New York University), "The Metaphysics of Fundamentality," Thursday, February 26, Withers Hall, Room 344.

John Doris (Washington University in St. Louis and the National Humanities Center), "A Natural History of the Self," Thursday, February 12, Withers Hall, Room 331 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Darrel Moellendorf (San Diego State Univiersity and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), "Justice and the Mitigation of Climate Change," Thursday, January 15, Daniels Hall, Room 218 (co-hosted by Philosophy Club).

Alan Nelson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Mathesis Universalis: Descartes on Universal Wisdom," Monday, November 3, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Johannes Hafner (NC State), "Kitcher on Mathematical Explanation," Thursday, October 23, Withers Hall, Room 344 (presentation based on a paper by Johannes Hafner and Paolo Mancosu).

Ronald P. Endicott (NC State), "The Functionalist Circle," Thursday, October 2, Withers Hall, Room 344.

Talk by philosopher in NC State School of Design: Mark Johnson (University of Oregon), "Art Incarnate: Aesthetics of Human Understanding," October 2, Burns Auditorium, Kamphoefner Hall.

Thomas Hofweber (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics," Thursday, September 18, Withers Hall 344.

2007/8

J. Michael Dunn (Indiana University), "Logic, Information, Computation," Thursday, April 17, Daniels Hall 218 (GlaxoSmithKline Lecture in Semantics and Ontology).

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Dartmouth), "Moral Intuitions as Heuristics," Thursday, April 3, Withers Hall 344.

Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard), "Origins of Knowledge of Number and Geometry," Monday, February 18, Withers Hall 232A (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Amelie Rorty (Harvard University and National Humanities Center), "On the Other Hand: The Ethics of Ambivalence," Thursday, February 14, Withers Hall 331.

Stephen Yablo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "Truth and Aboutness," Friday, January 25, Withers Hall 140 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Marc Lange (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Mathematical Coincidence and Their Relations to Mathematical Explanations and Proofs," Friday, January 18, Withers Hall 344 (co-hosted by Philosophy Club).

Alan Carter (University of Glasgow), "A Plurality of Values," Thursday, November 15, Withers Hall 344.

Meghan Griffith (Davidson College and National Humanities Center), "How to Go Agent-Causal," Thursday, November 1, Withers Hall 344.

William Lycan (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "More Layers of Perceptual Content," Friday, October 19, Withers Hall 140 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Jeffrey L. Kasser (NC State), "Doubt and Disagreement," Thursday, October 4, Withers Hall 344.

Heather Gert (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), "Wittgenstein's Ruling Family," Tuesday, September 25, Withers Hall 344.

Jesse Prinz (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "The Neural Basis of Consciousness," Thursday, September 6, 2007, Withers Hall 120 (co-hosted by Philosophy Club).

2006/7

John Bickle (University of Cincinnati), "Ruthless Reductionism and Social Cognition," Friday, March 23, 2007, Withers Hall 140 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Connie Sue Rosati (University of Arizona and National Humanities Center), "Objectivism and Relational Good," Thursday, March 1, 2007, Withers Hall 344.

Stephen Stich (Rutgers), "Philosophy, Intuition, and Culture," Tuesday, February 20, 2007, Withers Hall 120 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Johannes Hafner (University of Vienna), "Realism, Reference, and the Axiom of Choice," Thursday, February 8, Withers Hall 344 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Roy Cook (Villanova), "Hume's Big Brother: Counting Concepts and the Bad Company Objection," Friday, February 2, Withers Hall 344 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Mihai Ganea (University of Illinois at Chicago), "Predicative Arithmetic," Friday, January 26, Withers Hall 344 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Daniel Garber (Princeton), "What Happens After Pascal's Wager: Living Faith and Rational Belief," Thursday, January 18, 2007, Withers Hall 344.

Ronald P. Endicott (NC State), "Total Nomic Roles, Embodied Cognition, and the Demise of the Functionalist Paradigm," Thursday, November 30, 2006, Winston Hall 122.

Cliff Joslyn (Los Alamos National Laboratory), "Measuring Semantic Space: Order Theory for Knowledge Discovery and Integration," Friday, November 3, 2006, Winston Hall 114 (GlaxoSmithKline Lecture in Semantics and Ontology).

Richard Kraut (Northwestern), "Politics and Good: Reflections on Rawls," Wednesday, November 8, 2006, Winston Hall 122.

Catherine Driscoll (NC State), "Massive Modularity and the Prospects of Evolutionary Psychology," Thursday, October 19, Winston Hall 122.

Sean McKeever (Davidson College), "States and Reasons," Thursday, October 5, Winston Hall 122.

Douglas M. Jesseph (NC State), "Truth in Fiction: Origins and Consequences of Leibniz's Doctrine of the Fictional Infinitesimal," Thursday, September 28, Winston Hall 122.

Katie McShane (NC State), "Is Awe a Valuing Attitude?", Thursday, September 14, Winston Hall 122.

2005/6

Don J. Garrett (NYU), "The First Virtuous Motive of Justice: Hume's 'Circle Argument' Squared," Thursday, April 20, Winston Hall 122.

Gerald Gaus (Tulane), "The Demands of Impartiality and the Evolution of Morality," Thursday, April 6, Winston Hall 122.

Timothy Hinton (NC State), "Autonomy and the Priority of the Good," Thursday, March 30, Winston Hall 122.

Julia Driver (Dartmouth), "Luck and Fortune in Moral Evaluation," Thursday, March 16, Winston Hall 122.

Kadri Vihvelin (Southern California), "Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Analysis," Friday, February 24, Winston Hall 122.

James van Cleve (Southern California), "Rates of Passage," Friday, February 10, Winston Hall 122.

Teddy Seidenfeld (Carnegie-Mellon), "Multi-Agent Decision Making and Other Settings for Relaxing Bayesian Theory," Wednesday, January 18, Monteith Research Center 246 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Gerd Gigerenzer (Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin), "What is Bounded Rationality?" Tuesday, November 29, Mann Hall 216 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Jaegwon Kim (Brown), "Why There Are No Laws in the Special Sciences: Three Arguments," Friday, November 18, Caldwell Hall G107 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Peter Koellner (Harvard), "On the Question of Absolute Undecidability ," Thursday, November 3, Winston Hall 122 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Barbara Levenbook (NC State), "Misfortune and Harm After Death," Thursday, October 27, Winston Hall 122.

Peter Railton (University of Michigan), "Desire, Happiness, and Morality," Friday, October 14, Winston Hall 122.

Susan Wolf (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Moral Psychology and the Unity of Virtue," Thursday, September 22, Winston Hall 122.

Ronald P. Endicott (NC State), "The Bible and Abortion: A Fundamental Misconception," Friday, September 16, Caldwell Hall G107 (public lecture hosted by the Philosophy Club and the Academic Study of Religion Club).

John Roberts (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), "Laws, Measurements and Counterfactuals," Thursday, August 25, Winston Hall 122(Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

2004/5

David Rosenthal (CUNY), "Consciousness," Tuesday, April 12, Kamphoefner Hall A002B (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Cynthia Macdonald (Canterbury, New Zealand), "The Metaphysics of Mental Causation," Thursday, March 31, Harrelson Hall 210 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Robert Mabrito (Arizona State), "Disagreement and Expressivism," Thursday, March 17, Winston Hall 122.

Ned Markosian (Western Washington), "The Right Stuff," Friday, February 25, Winston Hall 122.

Rebecca Stangl (Notre Dame), "Thinking about the Unthinkable: The Virtuous Agent and the Limits of Sensitivity," Tuesday, February 8, Winston Hall 122.

Douglas Portmore (California State University, Northridge), "Welfare and Posthumous Harm," Friday, January 28, Winston Hall 122.

Tamra Frei (UNC Chapel Hill), "Is the Hypothetical Imperative a Categorical Imperative?" Monday, January 24, Winston Hall 122.

Alex Friedman (MIT), "The Return of the Trolley," Tuesday, January 18, Winston Hall 122.

Rex Martin (Kansas and the National Humanities Center), "Walzer and Rawls on Just Wars and Humanitarian Interventions," Thursday, January 13, Winston Hall 122.

Allen Buchanan (Duke), "Are Human Rights Parochial?" Thursday, November 18, 4:00, Winston Hall 122.

Terence Horgan (Arizona), "Phenomenal Intentionality and the Brain in the Vat," Thursday, November 4, 4:00, Winston Hall 004 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Fred Dretske (Duke), "Perception Without Awareness," Friday, October 15, 4:00, Caldwell Hall G111 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

John W. Carroll (NC State) "Nailed to Hume's Cross?" Thursday, September 23, 4:00, Winston Hall 004.

William R. Carter (NC State), "Markosian's Presentism: The Missing Fact Problem," Thursday, September 2, 4:00, Winston 122.

2003/4

Louise Antony (Ohio State), "A Naturalized Approach to the A Priori," Friday, April 16, 3:30, G107 Caldwell Hall (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Christopher Menzel (Texas A & M), "Varieties of Modal Essentialism," Friday, March 19, 3:30, Winston Hall 114.

Uriah Kriegel (Arizona), "Same-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness," Friday, February 13, 2:00, Winston Hall 122.

Catherine Driscoll (Dartmouth), "How Far Can Learning be Adaptive?" Tuesday, February 17, 3:30, Winston Hall 122.

2004 Meeting of the North Carolina Philosophical Society, held jointly with the South Carolina Society for Philosophy, Friday and Saturday, February 6-7, Caldwell Hall.

Rob Rupert (Texas Tech), "Functionalism, Mental Causation, and the Problem of Metaphysically Necessary Effects," Friday, January 30, 2:00, Winston 122.

Daniel Dennett (Tufts), "Explaining the 'Magic' of Consciousness," Saturday, October 18, 4:00, 216 Poe Hall (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Jonathan Kvanvig (Missouri), "Nozick's Epistemology and the Problem of the Value of Knowledge" Friday, September 19, 3:30, Winston Hall 114.

2002/3

George Lakoff (Berkeley), "The Brain’s Concepts," Thursday, May 1, 4:00, Walnut Room, 4th floor, Talley Student Center (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

George Lakoff (Berkeley), "The Embodied Mind and Metaphorical Thought," Thursday, May 1, 11:30, North Gallery, 2nd floor, Talley Student Center (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

George Graham (Wake Forest), “The Mind of Mental Illness,” Wednesday, April 16, 3:30, Winston Hall 114 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Jerry Fodor (Rutgers), "Having Concepts: a brief refutation of the 20th century," Wednesday, April 9, 3:30, Poe Hall 216 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

Sigrun Svavarsdottir (Ohio State), "Minding One's Commitments," Thursday, March 6, 3:30, Winston Hall 122.

Jesse Prinz (UNC Chapel Hill), “Concept Empiricism,” Wednesday, February 26, 3:30 Caldwell Hall G111 (Cognitive Science Lecture Series).

2001/2

Jessica Wilson (Michigan), "Hume, Neo-Humeans, and the Idea of Causal Efficacy," Friday, December 6, 3:30, Winston Hall 122.

Douglas Jesseph (NC State), "Why You Should Be an Atheist," Wednesday, November 20, 3:30, Winston Hall 029.

William Carter (NC State), "Fuzzy Objects: Sharpening Los Angeles (Not 'Los Angeles')," Thursday, October 31, 3:30, Winston Hall 122.

Mylan Engel (Northern Illinois), "On the Question-Begging Nature of Evil-Demon Arguments for Skepticism," Thursday, October 3, 3:30, Winston Hall 122.

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