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Speaker Series

Sponsored by the Philosophy and Religion Department, the PPE Program, and the Ethics Institute, our Speaker Series are collaborative and generative events.

Search Results Updated

PPE Speaker Series

PPE Speaker, Manon Garcia

Time: 10:30am-12pm

Location: Renaissance Park 909 Conference Room

Title: “The Joy of consent: A Philosophy of Good Sex”

Abstract: 

On Friday, September 29th, Manon Garcia will be coming to discuss her book “the Joy of Consent: A Philosophy of Good Sex.”

PPE Speaker, Kenan Malik

Time: 10:30am-12pm

Location: Renaissance Park 909 Conference Room

Title: “Not so Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics”

Abstract: 

Kenan Malik (London-based writer, lecturer, broadcaster) will be discussing his new book “Not so Black and White: A History of Race from White Supremacy to Identity Politics.”

PPE Speaker, Sigal Ben-Porath

Time: Starts at 11:45am

Location: Renaissance Park 909 Conference Room

Title: “Should colleges permit hateful speech?”

Abstract: 

Should colleges permit hateful speech? In this talk Sigal Ben-Porath will draw some boundaries for campus speech and argue that they are distinct from the boundaries we draw in democracy more broadly. Sigal will consider the commitment to values such as safety, equality, true knowledge, and dignity as limiting factors for protected campus speech. Sigal Will consider some counter arguments and hope to hear additional counterarguments during the discussion.

PPE Speaker, Chris Zurn

Time: Starts at 4:45pm

Location: TBA

Title: “Splitsville USA”

Abstract: 

Christopher will be talking about his most recent book Splitsville USA. The book argues that, in order to save representative democracy, we need to split up the United States into several new nations, through a mutually negotiated peaceful dissolution. Christopher claims that the roots of the dangers to basic electoral democracy in the current United States are structural, based in our basic political and constitutional institutions. And he argues that the only realistic and effective way to fix those is to dissolve the current US into several new nation states.

Ethics Institute Speaker Series

Ethics Institute Speaker, Elettra Bietti

Time: 12pm-1:30pm

Location: Philosphy and Religion Common Area, Renaissance Park 4th Floor

Title: “Rawls and Anti trust’s Justice Function”

Abstract:

Antitrust law is more contested than ever. The recent push by the Biden Administration to re-orient antitrust towards justice and fairness considerations is leading to public backlash, judicial resistance and piecemeal doctrinal developments. The methodological hegemony of welfare maximizing moves in antitrust makes it theoretically fragile and maladaptive to change. To bridge disagreements and overcome polarization, this talk revisits John Rawls’ foundational work on political and economic justice, arguing that it can facilitate consensus and inform the present and future of antitrust law.

Speaker: Elettra Bietti of Northeastern University

 

Ethics Institute Speaker, Iris Berent

Time: 12pm-1:30pm

Location: Philosphy and Religion Common Area, Renaissance Park 4th Floor

Title: “Can We Get Human Nature Right?”

Abstract:

Few questions in science are as controversial as human nature. At stake is whether our basic concepts and emotions are all learned from experience, or whether some are innate. Here, Berent demonstrate that reasoning about innateness is biased by the basic workings of the human mind.
Psychological science suggests that newborns possess core concepts of “object” and “number”. Laypeople, however, believe that newborns are devoid of such notions, but that they can innately recognize emotions. Moreover, people presume that concepts are learned, whereas emotions (along with sensations and actions) are innate.
Berent traces these beliefs to two tacit psychological principles: intuitive Dualism and Essentialism. Essentialism guides tacit reasoning about biological inheritance and suggests that innate traits reside in the body; per intuitive Dualism, however, the mind seems ethereal, distinct from the body. It thus follows that, in our intuitive psychology, concepts (which people falsely consider as disembodied) must be learned, whereas emotions, sensations and emotions (which are considered embodied) are likely innate; these predictions are in line with the experimental results.
In this talk, Berent demonstrates how these intuitive biases taint our understanding of human nature, derail science, and quite possibly, give rise to the “hard problem” of consciousness.

Speaker: Iris Berent of Northeastern University

“Is Anti-Racism Moralistic?”

  • Speaker: César Cabezas of Temple University
  • Location: Philosophy and Religion Common Area, Renaissance Park 4th floor 

TBA

  • Speaker: Bryan Chambliss of Susquehanna University
  • Location: Philosophy and Religion Common Area, Renaissance Park 4th floor 

Past Speakers

Ethics Institute Speaker, Don Fallis

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, December 2, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Speaker Bio: Don Fallis is a Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science at Northeastern University. His research interests include epistemology, philosophy of information, and philosophy of mathematics. His articles on lying and deception have appeared in the Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. He has also discussed lying on Philosophy TV and in several volumes of the Philosophy and Popular Culture series.

Ethics Institute Speaker, Michael Hannon

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, November 18, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Speaker Bio: Michael Hannon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Director of the Aristotelian Society. From 2022-23, he is an Edmond J. Safra Fellow-in-Residence at Harvard.

Hannon works in epistemology and political philosophy. He has published on topics such as: the role of truth in politics, political empathy, identity-expressive discourse, skepticism, fallibilism, and the value of knowledge. In 2019, Oxford University Press published his first book, What’s the Point of Knowledge?

Ethics Institute Speaker, Robert Hughes

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, November 4, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Speaker Bio: Robert Hughes is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies & Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Hughes’ areas of specialization include applied ethics, philosophy of law, and political philosophy. His work in legal philosophy focuses on the possibility of laws that lack coercive enforcement and the ethical obligation to obey unenforced and under-enforced laws (including the obligation to obey such laws in business contexts). His work in applied ethics focuses on ethical constraints on fair transactions. He has also worked on democratic theory and on issues of justice in medical care and research.

Ethics Institute Speaker, Kay Mathiesen 

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, September 23, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Speaker Bio: Kay Mathiesen is an Associate Professor of Philosophy with a research focus on information and computer ethics and justice. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from University of California, Irvine. She uses her expertise in social epistemology, ethics, social philosophy, and political philosophy to analyze ethical issues related to persons and communities as seekers, sources, and subjects of knowledge and information. She has written a number of papers on human rights and democracy as they relate to information access and control.She is currently working on a book project titled Informational Justice. This project seeks to answer such questions as: Do we have a right to know? If so, what? And what duties does that right place on ourselves, other citizens, and governments? Is freedom of expression sufficient to allow for full participation of marginalized groups in the public infosphere? If not, how can we foster greater inclusion?

Ethics Institute Speaker, Deborah Hellman

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, October 7, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Speaker Bio: Deborah Hellman is Professor of Law, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights at the University of Virginia School of Law. She is the director of UVA Law’s Center for Law & Philosophy. There are two main strands to Hellman’s work. The first focus is on equal protection law and its philosophical justification. She is the author of When Is Discrimination Wrong? (Harvard University Press, 2008) and co-editor of The Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law (Oxford University Press, 2013) and several articles related to equal protection. The second strand focuses on the relationship between money and legal rights. This includes articles on campaign finance law, bribery and corruption, each of which explore and challenge the normative foundations of current doctrine. Her article “A Theory of Bribery” won the 2019 Fred Berger Memorial Prize (for philosophy of law) from the American Philosophical Association. In 2020 she won the Association of American Law Schools Section on Jurisprudence Article Award for “Measuring Algorithmic Fairness,” which was published in the Virginia Law Review.

Ethics Institute Speaker, David Friedell

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm, September 23, 2022

Location: Department Conference Room (428 Renaissance Park)

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Speaker Bio: David Friedell is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Union College.
Friedell’s research is in Metaphysics, Aesthetics, and Philosophy of Language. Most of his research has focused on abstract artifacts. These are immaterial human creations: for example, novels, symphonies, corporations, languages, words, and fictional characters. Some of his papers have appeared in Analysis, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Philosophical Studies, and Ratio. He is currently writing about music, linguistic agency, the meaning of artworks, and personal beauty. Before coming to Union College, he taught at the University of British Columbia, Barnard College of Columbia University, and the University of the West Indies.

PPE Speaker, Margaret Burnham

Time: 10:00am-11:30am, September 20, 2022

Location: Curry Student Center, Senate Chambers

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Speaker: Espen Stabell

Time: 3:30pm-5:00pm

Location: Renaissance Park 426 (Department Common Room)

Title: Moral uncertainty: the two-level view

Abstract: It has been argued that under uncertainty about which first-order moral theory or view is correct, decision-makers should employ a distinct, ‘second-level’ theory for decision-making under moral uncertainty. I call this the two-level view of decision-making under moral uncertainty. In the paper, I discuss a version of the two-level view which says that decision theory should be employed on the second level: if you are uncertain between two (or more) theories, you should ‘hedge your bets’: you should decide based on your preferences and beliefs (credences) with regard to the theories in question. I point out a worry regarding this view: that it can lead to a kind of ‘moral laziness’, where decision-makers avoid work on the first-level and move too quickly to the second level. I connect this worry to a more general issue: how the work on the first level might affect the legitimacy and strength of the ‘second-level oughts’ of moral uncertainty. This, I argue, must be clarified in order to put something like the two-level view to work in our actual decision making.

Speaker: Daniela Gandorfer

Time: 3:30pm-5:00pm

Location: 426 Renaissance Park

Title: “Down and Dirty in the Field of Play: Startup Societies, Cryptostatecraft, and Critical Complicity”
Abstract: Phenomena such as human-induced climate change, global rise of authoritarian regimes, mistrust in democratic structures, and the potential of new digital technologies for producing novel modes of governance are  inducing fundamental shifts in the conditions of existence on earth. Furthermore, they are also constituting normative indeterminacies which are providing a fertile ground for political experiments in organizing, governing, and imagining societies differently. This talk focuses on a particular mode of governance, namely competitive crypto-governance, outlines the implications of its underlying imaginaries, and suggests collaborative approaches towards an alternative understanding of law and governance in the 21st century.
Speaker Bio: Daniela is trained in legal theory, science and technology studies, media studies, as well as process philosophy. Her research focuses on scientific and technological frontier spaces — such as quantum physics, digital and crypto-technologies, and psychadelics — and their implications for emerging forms of normativity and governance. Special interest lies on the possibilities for an ethics of sensing and sense-making (synaesethics) attentive to these phenomena.
She is the recipient of the 2021 ASciNA Young Scientist Award, and has co-edited the Research Handbook in Law and Literature (Edward Elgar Publishing, with Peter Goodrich and Cecilia Gebruers) as well as the Theory & Event special issue “Matterphorical” (Johns Hopkins Press, with Zulaikha Ayub). Her book Matterphorics: On the Laws of Theory is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

PPE Speaker, Alex Gourevitch

Time: 10:00am-11:30am

Location: 909 Renaissance Park

Title: On Necessary Labor: Why a UBI can’t be a path to a post-work future
Abstract: It was once standard to understand socialism as a regime of freedom because it was based on shared labor. The contemporary Left is captured by an alternative ‘post-work’ vision, in which emancipation is equated with being freed not just from work but from a work-based society itself. Policies like a ‘Universal Basic Income’ are now supposed to ground a emancipatory vision of a society in which nobody is forced to work. Promoting a UBI is supposed to re-ignite left-wing politics by guiding the political imagination towards the attractions of a post-work utopia. Unfortunately, this vision is grounded in a series of deceptions about why some labor is necessary. These deceptions are both an intellectual and political liability. Intellectually, the deceptions leave the Left without the ability to properly describe, let alone theorize, the problems that any serious socialist project has to face. The core question is about how to define, organize and distribute necessary labor in a way consistent with human freedom. Politically, Left proponents of a UBI are left unable to see what is utterly reasonable, even valuable, about popular attachments to work. They end up representing socialist views about work and freedom as far more marginal and at odds with widespread views than they need or ought to be. In many ways, the public tacitly understands, better than UBI proponents, the need for some formal organization of necessary labor.
Speaker Bio: Alex Gourevitch is an associate professor of political science in the Department of Political Science. He received his Ph.D in political science from Columbia University in 2010. Gourevitch’s research interests include the history of political and economic thought; theories of freedom; work and leisure; Marxism; rights theory; republicanism; and democratic theory.

Speaker: Justin Bruner 

Time: 3:30pm-5:00pm

Location: Renaissance Park 426 (Department Common Room)

Title: Risk, rules and agreement

Abstract: What does it mean to divide fairly? One approach popular in computer science and economics begins with a fairness rule, a procedure or algorithm that determines how to allocate various goods. Normative criteria are then invoked to compare different rules.  Yet no rule satisfies all normative criteria.  We outline an alternative approach that draws inspiration from the social contract tradition.  Briefly, contractarians take the ideal rules to be those rules rational individuals would agree to in certain circumstances.  With the help of a computer simulation, we explore the fragility of agreement and consider whether consensus still exists when individuals have different attitudes toward risk and, alternatively, have drastically different beliefs about the extent to which their interests overlap.

PPE Speaker, Regine Jean-Charles

Time: 11:45am-1:25pm

Location: Renaissance Park 909 and on Zoom (Register for the Zoom event here.)

Title: Do Something Transformative: Black Feminisms and Social Justice
Abstract: This talk explores how Black feminist authors, activists, and artists have use their work to intervene in social justice issues. Using the example of the Combahee River Collective’s statement of their politics as a guide, we will trace how attention to race, gender, and justice animates and inspires the work of Black feminists over time.

PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker, Dr. Larry Blum

Time: 12:00-1:30pm

Location: In-person (240 Dockser Hall) and Zoom (register here)

Title:“Can School Integration Bring About Equal Education?”

Abstract: Racial integration has been oversold to the American public as a low-cost route to equality of education. Educational equality can be created only by reducing inequality—of both a class and a race nature—in the wider society. Serious reduction of poverty, and challenging the wealthy’s “opportunity hoarding” are necessary. Integration by itself is a diversion from the need to challenge white supremacy, requiring a reparative justice response, and the extreme class-based inequities of our current social order. However, integration is a vital component of the moral, civic, and social aspects of education that have been sidelined in our current neoliberal era. Bringing diverse populations into the same schools and classrooms, as a school like CRLS does, is a necessary foundation for preparing future citizens of our multiracial democracy.

Speaker Bio: Lawrence Blum is (Emeritus) Professor of Liberal Arts and Education and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He works in the areas of philosophy of race, philosophy of education, moral philosophy and social and political philosophy. He is the author of 6 books, including “I’m Not a Racist, But…”: The Moral Quandary of Race, and High Schools, Race, and America’s Future: What Students Can Teach Us About Morality, Diversity, and Community.

PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker, Dr. Robert Talisse

Time: 12:00-1:30pm

Location: Renaissance Park 909 and on Zoom

Title: “Why We Need Political Enemies”

Abstract: When engaged in democratic politics, it often strikes us that our opponents are not only wrong, but in the wrong.  We tend to see them as not merely mistaken, but ignorant, corrupt, and on the side of injustice.  Most accounts of responsible citizenship contend that we must nonetheless uphold civil relations with them.  But why?  When the stakes are high, why not just dismiss our opponents? Why bother trying to maintain civil relations with them?  In this talk, Robert Talisse draws on empirical work concerning belief polarization to argue that we must uphold civil relations with our political enemies, not because we are required to regard them as reasonable, but because in the absence of those relations our political alliances crumble.

Speaker Bio: Robert B. Talisse is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. He specializes in democratic theory, with an emphasis on justice, citizenship, public deliberation, and political disagreement. His most recent research is focused on polarization and partisan animosity. His new book is titled Sustaining Democracy: What We Owe to the Other Side.  It explores the challenges of treating one’s political opponents as nonetheless one’s equals.

PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker, Sabelo Mhlambi

Title:  Can AI Ethics actually fix AI?

Abstract:

Big Tech and Universities have initiated several efforts to mitigate AI bias and the unintended harmful effects of AI in healthcare, social networks, and the criminal justice system through AI Ethics boards, Ethics AI research, Diversity & Inclusion efforts – however do these efforts address the disparities in the distribution of power, agency, and resources within society and between societies, and are they sufficient to produce tangible results especially for the communities who are most likely to be negatively impacted by ever increasing widespread use of AI? This talk will examine the driving forces behind AI, Ethics AI, and the question of power through a racial and Decolonial lens.

Mhlambi is the founder of Bhala, an AI startup that democratizes the advances of AI to millions of Africans through Natural Language Processing of African languages and African visual languages. This event is the first in our fall PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker Series. Mhlambi is also the founder of Bantucracy a public interest organization that focuses on ubuntu ethics and technology.  Mr Mhlambi currently a fellow at the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet & Society, a Fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab, and a 2019-2020 Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker, Michele Moody-Adams

Title: Does Democracy Have A Future?

Abstract:

Echoing Plato’s argument in Book VIII of The Republic, some thinkers contend that democracies have an unavoidable tendency to destroy themselves from within. Familiar Platonic concerns have been strengthened by the demise of print-journalism, the emergence of the “post-truth” era, the economic challenges of globalization and the digital economy, and the dangers of racist and xenophobic fear and resentment. But this talk will argue that even if democracy is on life support, the means of saving it from destruction are still within our grasp. We must be to reinvigorate democratic civic virtues such as collective compromise, civic sacrifice, horizontal trust, and allow mutual respect and compassionate concern to reshape our interactions in the “public square.”

 

Speaker Bio:

Michele Moody-Adams is currently Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011. Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as an Associate Dean.

Moody-Adams has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy (Harvard Press 1997). Her current work includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, and democratic disagreement. Her next book, coming out in late 2021, is entitled Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope (under contract with Columbia University Press). . She is also working on a project entitled Renewing Democracy and a book on the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Moody-Adams has a B.A. from Wellesley College, a second B.A. from Oxford University, and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. She has been a British Marshall Scholar, an NEH Fellow, and is a lifetime Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.

 

Register here: https://forms.gle/92hdFiA5ddvPWeLLA

PPE/Ethics Institute Speaker, Olufemi Taiwo

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University.

 

Title: The Case for Climate Reparations

 

Abstract: A partnered investigation between ProPublica and the New York Times has revealed the writing on the wall. We are at the beginnings of a “Great Climate Migration” that will transform the world. There are two ways forward: climate colonialism and apartheid or climate reparations. Climate apartheid describes the fact that we can expect a new kind of social division to arise within countries and communities: between those who can pay to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and those who cannot. Climate colonialism simply considers this same phenomenon on an international scale.

 

Reparations is a way forward through the climate crisis that doesn’t double down on these dismal precedents. A reparatory approach to climate migration would involve an overhaul of climate policy in both nation-states and multinational institutions. It would be broadly redistributive of wealth and power, both within and across countries. That redistribution would be historically informed: we would reject both the ‘rescue’ framing of state elites’ naked pursuit of self interest in refugee policy and the “voluntary repatriation” centered model that allows them to act on it with international authorization. Ultimately, we endorse the argument, developed and defended by legal scholar E. Tendayi Achiume, that corrective, distributive justice demands recognition of the entitlement of “Third World persons” to “a form of First World citizenship”.

However extreme this renegotiation of state sovereignty and citizenship may strike some readers, it’s nowhere near as extreme as the logical conclusion of the status quo’s violent alternative: mass famine, region-scale armed conflict. Compared to the horrors of climate apartheid and colonialism, having more neighbors is a small price to pay.

We suggest to read an article he wrote in Foreign Policy on this topic, The Case for Climate Reparations

 

*This event was recorded