Sem 2, 2024

• Week 0 , July 24
• Speaker: Neil Mehta, (Yale-NUS College)
• Title: A natural argument for contextualism
• Abstract: In the debate between contextualist and moderate invariantist theories of knowledge, linguistic data have been the primary focus. In this paper, however, I come at the debate from a very different angle: I argue that contextualism is a much more natural theory – it is much better at respecting the objective metaphysical structure of reality – than moderate invariantism. From this, I draw two further conclusions: first, that contextualism is, in one important respect, much more charitable than moderate invariantism; second, that even if moderate invariantism is true, we should replace our invariantist concept of knowledge with its contextualist analog.
• Week 1 , July 31
• Speaker: Sukaina Hirji, (University of Pennsylvania)
• Week 1 , Aug 1
• Speaker: David Enoch, (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
• Title: Why isn’t (purely) epistemic autonomy of value?
• Abstract: In the practical domain, there are some decisions such that it’s more important that the agent make them herself than that they make the best decision. (Think, for instance, about choosing a romantic partner). In such cases, it seems like a rational agent may insist on making the decision themselves, fully recognizing that if they let someone else decide for them, the decision may be (otherwise) better. In the epistemic case, though, there doesn’t seem to be an analogue of this phenomenon. If I wonder whether p; it seems to me when I consider the first-order evidence that p; but I recognize that my chances of getting to a true belief regarding p are much higher if I rely on you instead; and you say that not-p – well, in such a case it seems a belief in p is never epistemically justified. This paper is my (tentative, and not systematic) attempt to think through this disanalogy between the role of autonomy in the epistemic and practical domain.
• Week 2 , Aug 7
• Speaker: Anca Gheaus, (Central European University)
• Title: Parental Partiality in Unjust Circumstances: Inheritance as Insurance
• Abstract: There is broad egalitarian agreement that, in existing societies, inheritance results in distributive injustice and indirectly delegitimises the political process. I assume that we should abolish it and fund, amongst other justice-promoting policies, an adequate and robust safety net. But, I argue, in societies that lack such safety nets parents do no wrong in bequeathing to their children and indeed have weighty moral reason to do so. In such societies, both procreative liability and parental love justify some bequest as insurance against poverty. The justified bequests, while limited both in size and form, may be very substantial in aggregate, and therefore impede egalitarian reforms. I conclude that procreative liability and parental love provide (would-be) parents with special – and powerful – reasons to support adequate public safety nets.
• Week 3 , Aug 14
• Speaker: Holly Lawford-Smith, (University of Melbourne)
• Title: Feminism Beyond Left and Right
• Abstract: Target claim: feminists should not work with the right. This claim has multiple moving parts (‘feminists’, ‘the right’) and involves a moral imperative, to do with working together with others, that is not been particularly well-theorised. I’ll offer a definition of feminism that should be acceptable to many different types of feminists; assess the question of whether ‘the right’ can be given any meaningful content; and draw on some recent philosophical work that can be adapted to answer ethical questions about working together with others in pursuit of shared political ends. I’ll argue that only if we collapse the moral/political distinction and conflate left/right with good/bad can we get any traction on the idea that feminists should not work with the right.
• Week 4 , Aug 21
• Speaker: Hannah Tierney, (University of California, Davis)
• Week 5 , Aug 28
• Speaker: Lok-Chi Chan, (National Taiwan University)
• Week 6 , Sep 4
• Speaker: Caleb Perl, (Australian Catholic University (Melbourne))
• Week 7 , Sep 11
• Speaker: Stephen Finlay
• Week 8 , Sep 18
• Speaker: David Glick, (University of California, Davis)
• Week 9 , Sep 25
• Speaker: David Bronstein, (University of Notre Dame (Sydney))
• Week 10 , Oct 9
• Speaker: David Plunkett, (Dartmouth)
• Week 11 , Oct 16
• Speaker: Ulrik Nissen, (Aarhus)
• Week 12 , Oct 23
• Speaker: Sean Donahue, (ANU)
• Week 12 , Oct 25
• Speaker: James Norton, Finnur Dellsén, Tina Firing, (University of Tasmania, University of Iceland)
• Week 13 , Oct 30
• Speaker: Hong Yu Wong, (Tübingen)
• Week 16 , Nov 13
• Speaker: Jessica Isserow, (University of Notre Dame)

Previous Speakers

Luara Ferracioli (University of Sydney), Thomas Corbin (joint work with Gene Flenady) (Macquarie University), Alex Lefebvre (University of Sydney), Inês Hipólito (Macquarie University), Glen Pettigrove (University of Glasgow), Jordi Fernandez (University of Adelaide), Alex Kocurek (Cornell), Sam Shpall (University of Sydney), Brian Epstein (Tufts), Anna Smajdor (University of Oslo), Peter Millican (Oxford University and National University of Singapore), Kyle Blumberg (University of Melbourne), Emanuel Viebahn (FU Berlin), …