[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Luara Ferracioli, (University of Sydney)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Luara Ferracioli, (University of Sydney)

The title of the talk is "Justice in Gestation and Moral Integrity: A Dilemma". 
Here is an abstract for the talk:

Political philosophers have recently turned to the topic of justice in 
gestation, emphasising that the uterine environment contributes to future 
health outcomes and talents enjoyed in adulthood. In this presentation, I argue 
that bringing justice to bear on gestation is more difficult than it may seem 
at first glance. The fact that there are no unmediated channels between 
foetuses and the state makes foetuses among the least accessible subjects of 
justice. It also means that for the state to protect the interests of foetuses, 
it must command full compliance on the part of pregnant women, which comes at a 
very high cost to this group. I show that even the most plausible principle of 
justice in gestation leads to the state demanding the unthinkable from some of 
its citizens. I conclude the discussion by defending a solution that allows the 
state to realise justice for biological parents and their foetuses.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday May 22 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Thomas Corbin (joint work with Gene Flenady), (Macquarie University)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Thomas Corbin (joint work with Gene Flenady), (Macquarie University)

The title of the talk is "Teaching Philosophy in the Age of GenAI". Here is an 
abstract for the talk:

Generative AI (GenAI) has made teaching philosophy difficult. As the technology 
improves, and as other departments and faculties develop discipline appropriate 
adaptations, thing will get worse. One reason for this is simply that many of 
the solutions being proposed in other disciplines, for instance ‘authentic 
assessment’, work-integrated-learning, and practice-based assessments, do not 
easily apply to us.

This difficulty demands at least two things of philosophy teachers and 
departments. Firstly, an awareness of philosophy’s unique position within the 
‘GenAI University’. Secondly, an awareness of the challenges GenAI either 
creates or shines a light on.

This talk covers both of these issues and will suggest three areas that demand 
our attention in particular: AI grading and tutoring systems, AI and 
assessment, and AI and philosophical reading. This talk will explain what is at 
stake in each of these three areas and present, if not solutions, at least ways 
of appropriately articulating the problem and the kinds of solutions available.

Thomas Corbin is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in Assessment and 
Digital Learning (CRADLE) at Deakin University. His main focus is on Generative 
AI, particularly with a view to assessment. Dr Corbin leads a multi-institution 
research team working on the project "Teaching the Humanities in the Age of 
GenAI," which explores the challenges and opportunities presented by GenAI in 
humanities education, particularly within philosophy units operating in 
Australian Universities.

Gene Flenady is a lecturer in philosophy at Monash University. His research 
concerns the structure and social conditions of human rational agency, 
mobilising the resources of the German idealist tradition to normatively assess 
the implications of new technologies for meaningful work and tertiary pedagogy.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday May 15 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Alex Lefebvre, (University of Sydney)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Alex Lefebvre, (University of Sydney)

The title of the talk is "Liberalism as a Way of Life". Here is an abstract for 
the talk:

This presentation is based on my forthcoming book, Liberalism as a Way of Life, 
and is about how liberal values and practices can be the basis for a personal 
worldview, way of living, and spiritual orientation. You don’t have to be 
liberal and something else, such as Christian, Buddhist, Kantian, hedonist, 
utilitarian, or whatever else. It is fully possible and rewarding to be liberal 
through and through. This means that the values and attitudes enshrined in 
liberal political institutions, and ubiquitous in the background culture of 
liberal democracies – such as reciprocity, tolerance, personal freedom, 
impartiality, equality of opportunity, and irony – have the potential to inform 
a much more general sensibility, one that is supple enough to be realized in 
all different aspects of life: from family to the workplace, from friendship to 
enmity, from humour to outrage, and everything in between.

Alexandre Lefebvre is Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the University of 
Sydney. He is the author of Liberalism as a Way of Life (Princeton 2024), Human 
Rights and the Care of the Self (Duke 2018), Human Rights as a Way of Life: on 
Bergson’s Political Philosophy (Stanford 2013), and The Image of Law: Deleuze, 
Bergson, Spinoza (Stanford 2008).

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday May 8 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Inês Hipólito, (Macquarie University)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Inês Hipólito, (Macquarie University)

The title of the talk is "The Human Roots of AI". Here is an abstract for the 
talk:

In the era of intertwined human and AI-generated content, understanding their 
impact on cultural practices is crucial. AI-driven decision-making systems 
significantly influence cognition and societal well-being, yet biases towards 
Western perspectives risk neglecting diverse knowledge systems and cultural 
identities. Philosophical inquiries into AI's ontology raise profound societal 
implications, while viewing AI as a cultural product offers insights into its 
reciprocal relationship with cultural practices. This paper explores the 
interplay among culture, cognition, and AI to understand their implications for 
knowledges, cultural identities, and human narratives.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday May 1 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Glen Pettigrove, (University of Glasgow)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Glen Pettigrove, (University of Glasgow)

The title of the talk is "The Well-Tempered Musician: On the Virtue of 
Obedience and the Value of Tradition". Here is an abstract for the talk:

At the time Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologia, no one would have been 
surprised to find him arguing that obedience is a moral virtue. They are not 
even likely to have been taken aback by the claim that it ‘is more praiseworthy 
than the other moral virtues’ (ST II-II, Q 104, A 3). Eight centuries later, 
the situation is decidedly different. Far from arguing for its pre-eminence, 
the average 21st century western reader is more likely to be sceptical about 
the claim that obedience is a virtue. We will admit that in some domains a 
readiness to take orders is necessary, such as within a military command 
structure. But even here we are likely to think it more a necessary evil than a 
kind of excellence. The one exception might be among children, and it is a 
trait we expect them to grow out of.

Against this backdrop, Christine Swanton’s recent call for virtue theorists to 
revive the virtue of obedience will come as a surprise (2021, 270-271). Swanton 
recommends thinking about obedience as a role-based virtue. This strikes us as 
promising. If there is such a virtue, it makes sense to think of it as partly 
defined by social roles. Our aim is to explore the contours of obedience and 
consider whether it can help us address a lively debate in the philosophy of 
music regarding the obligations of classical performers.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Apr 24 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] Update: University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Jordi Fernandez, (University of Adelaide)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

Please disregard the previously advertised room change for today’s talk. The 
initially planned works are no longer going ahead. The talk will take place in 
the usual location, the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Jordi Fernandez, (University of Adelaide)

The title of the talk is "Imagination and the paradox of fiction". Here is an 
abstract for the talk:

When we engage with fiction, we seem to have emotions towards fictional 
characters. However, one would think that, in order to have an emotion towards 
someone, it is necessary to believe that they are real. And we do not believe 
that fictional characters are real. I argue that a solution to this puzzle can 
be found in a certain view about imaginative content. This is the view that, 
when one reads about a situation or an event involving some fictional 
character, and one forms a mental image as a result, what one imagines, 
strictly speaking, is that if one experienced the relevant situation or event, 
then that experience would be, for one, like having the mental image that one 
is entertaining. I motivate this view, and use it to propose a solution to the 
paradox of fiction. The proposal is that, when we engage with fiction, we do 
not have emotions towards fictional characters after all. At best, we entertain 
those emotions by having other higher-order mental states which are about them, 
namely, our imaginative episodes. The proposed solution, I argue, can explain 
why it feels to us as if we are having emotions towards fictional characters 
when we engage with fiction, and why, nevertheless, we are not disposed to 
behave in any particular way towards those characters.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on  Wednesday Apr 17 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Jordi Fernandez, (University of Adelaide)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Jordi Fernandez, (University of Adelaide)

The title of the talk is "Imagination and the paradox of fiction". Here is an 
abstract for the talk:

When we engage with fiction, we seem to have emotions towards fictional 
characters. However, one would think that, in order to have an emotion towards 
someone, it is necessary to believe that they are real. And we do not believe 
that fictional characters are real. I argue that a solution to this puzzle can 
be found in a certain view about imaginative content. This is the view that, 
when one reads about a situation or an event involving some fictional 
character, and one forms a mental image as a result, what one imagines, 
strictly speaking, is that if one experienced the relevant situation or event, 
then that experience would be, for one, like having the mental image that one 
is entertaining. I motivate this view, and use it to propose a solution to the 
paradox of fiction. The proposal is that, when we engage with fiction, we do 
not have emotions towards fictional characters after all. At best, we entertain 
those emotions by having other higher-order mental states which are about them, 
namely, our imaginative episodes. The proposed solution, I argue, can explain 
why it feels to us as if we are having emotions towards fictional characters 
when we engage with fiction, and why, nevertheless, we are not disposed to 
behave in any particular way towards those characters.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wendesday Apr 17 in the Western Tower 
Meeting Room of the Quadrangle (**please note non-standard location**)

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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SydPhil mailing list

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Alex Kocurek, (Cornell)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Alex Kocurek, (Cornell)

The title of the talk is "Verbal Disputes and Metadisputes". Here is an 
abstract for the talk:

Impasses in philosophical discourse often prompt us to question the very nature 
of the dispute at hand. Is there a fact of the matter as to which side is 
right? Or does the answer simply turn on, as Carnap would put it, a choice of 
linguistic framework? Such questions have given rise to metadisputes, which, 
ironically, have become just as intractable as the first-order disputes they 
are about. This talk explores the possibility that these metadisputes 
themselves might be verbal. I propose a general framework for analyzing verbal 
disputes that can shed light on this possibility and argue that identifying 
whether a dispute is verbal ultimately hinges on one’s metasemantic views and 
that, in some instances, might entail there is no factual resolution to the 
question. I’ll consider how to theorize about such higher-order matters and 
explore some of the ramifications this view would have for philosophical 
methodology.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Apr 10 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Sam Shpall, (University of Sydney)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Sam Shpall, (University of Sydney)

The title of the talk is "Limerence". Here is an abstract for the talk:

I explore the psychologist Dorothy Tennov's (1979) largely neglected account of 
limerence—or, very roughly, the experience of being in love. I argue that 
several core features of Tennov's account are distinctive and insightful; that 
the concept of limerence helps us address deep confusion in our thinking about 
sex and love; and that reflecting on limerence may give us useful perspective 
on significant relationship practices like cohabitation, monogamy, and 
co-parenting.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Mar 27 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Brian Epstein, (Tufts)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Brian Epstein, (Tufts)

The title of the talk is "How to theorize about social construction". Here is 
an abstract for the talk:

The claim that basic kinds and categories in the world are “socially 
constructed” is perennially debated in philosophy and social theory. Over the 
years, lots of categories—races, genders, sexes, morality, commodities, 
corporations, and many more—have been put forward as cases of social 
construction. But what is social construction, and how is a theory of social 
construction to be developed and assessed? I propose a framework for 
understanding the metaphysics of social entities by distinguishing questions of 
social construction (i.e., what socially constructs the entity to be what it 
is) from questions about the characteristics of the entity (i.e., what is the 
product of social construction). Focusing on the former, I consider families of 
theories of social construction and argue for the demands that a theory of 
social construction should meet.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday March 20th in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au


Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Anna Smajdor, (University of Oslo)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Anna Smajdor, (University of Oslo)

The title of the talk is "Epigenetics and the non-identity problem". Here is an 
abstract for the talk:

The ‘non-identity problem’ has profoundly influenced the ways in which 
philosophers think about harm in reproductive ethics. Suppose, for example, 
that a woman is undergoing treatment for syphilis. If she becomes pregnant now, 
rather than waiting until she is cured, the child will suffer from congenital 
syphilis. Derek Parfit suggests that our intuition that the child is harmed if 
the woman fails to wait, is false. If she waits, she will have a different 
child: one conceived with different gametes. Parfit’s point has been taken by 
many commentators, to indicate a specifically genetic account of identity. But 
with increased understanding of epigenetics, it is not so clear that genetic 
identity is fixed from conception. A variety of environmental factors determine 
whether specific genes are silenced, or active before conception and after, and 
to what degree. This process - epigenetics - calls into question the 
relationship between genes and identity. Accordingly, the distinction between 
harmful and identity-changing genetic interventions becomes difficult to 
sustain. In this paper, I will explore several approaches to understanding the 
relationship between genes, harm and identity, in ways that preserve our 
fundamental intuitions. Ultimately, I conclude that it is not possible to 
sustain both a genetic understanding of identity, and a belief that some 
genetic interventions are harmful (or therapeutic) and others 
identity-changing, whether in the conception phase or afterwards.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday March 13th in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Peter Millican, (Oxford University and National University of Singapore)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Peter Millican, (Oxford University and National University of Singapore)

The title of the talk is "Hume and Hájek on Miracles". Here is an abstract for 
the talk:

My aim here is to outline and then assess the force of Hume’s famous argument 
against the credibility of testimony for miracles, particularly in the light of 
Alan Hájek’s influential recent defence of the argument against what he 
describes as ‘the single most common sort of objection’ to it. Hájek’s defence, 
I maintain, hinges on a confusion between prior and posterior probabilities (of 
which there is also a hint in Hume’s text), and once this is recognised, we can 
see that Hume’s “general maxim” cannot easily be revised to evade the 
objection. The principle behind Hume’s argument nevertheless retains 
significant force against testimony for events that are acknowledged to be 
initially improbable (with various significant caveats regarding ‘analogical 
probability’ which Hájek insightfully explores). But it is not clear that this 
force can legitimately be carried over – as Hume seems to assume – to the case 
of miracles as he defines them. Instead, I suggest, rational rejection of 
miracles depends primarily on rejection of the ‘invisible agents’ that are 
supposed to perform them, appealing more to the considerations in the second ‘a 
posteriori’ part of Hume’s essay than to the ‘a priori’ first part.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Mar 6 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Kyle Blumberg, (University of Melbourne)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Kyle Blumberg, (University of Melbourne)

The title of the talk is "Fictional Reality (joint work with Ben Holguín)". 
Here is an abstract for the talk:

This paper defends a theory of fictional truth. According to this theory, there 
is a fact of the matter concerning the number of hairs on Sherlock Holmes' 
head, and likewise for any other meaningful question one could ask about what's 
true in a work of fiction. We argue that a theory of this form is needed to 
account for the patterns in our judgments about attitude reports that embed 
fictional claims. We contrast our view with one of the dominant approaches to 
fictional truth, which originates with David Lewis. Along the way we explore 
the relationship between fiction, counterfactuals, and vagueness.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Feb 28 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Emanuel Viebahn, (FU Berlin)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

The University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series returns this week.

This week's speaker is Emanuel Viebahn, (FU Berlin).

The title of the talk is "Is lying morally wrong?". Here is an abstract of the 
talk:

While few hold that lying is always morally wrong all things considered, many 
take lying to be pro tanto (or prima facie) morally wrong. This talk will 
explore whether the view that lying is pro tanto morally wrong can be grounded 
in features essential to lying. The talk will focus on two features commonly 
thought to be essential to lying: deceptive intent and assertoric 
responsibility. Taking into account recent work on the nature of lying and 
assertion, I will argue there are cases in which neither deceptive intent nor 
assertoric responsibility can ground the pro tanto moral wrongness of lying.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Feb 21 in the Philosophy 
Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Matthew Slater

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Matthew Slater (Bucknell University).

The title of Matthew’s talk is “A Four Day Work Week for Natural Kinds”. Here’s 
the abstract for the talk:

What sort of philosophical work are natural kinds suited for? Scientific 
realists often contend that they provide the “aboutness” of successful of 
scientific classification and explain their epistemic utility. Various other 
side hustles have been suggested, but I will focus on this. Recent history has 
revealed it to be a tricky job — particularly in the present naturalistic 
climate of philosophy of science. As a result, we’ve seen an explosion of 
different sorts of theories. This phenomenon that has suggested to some that 
philosophical theorizing about natural kinds has reached a sort of “scholastic 
twilight” and that the concept (or family of concepts) has outlived its 
utility: perhaps there’s no work natural kinds are suited for. While I think 
this pessimistic take is unwarranted, I will argue that it is worth rethinking 
the roles to which a reasonably naturalistic account of natural kinds can be 
fruitfully put. Natural kinds just need a shorter work week.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 29th of November at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

This will be the last seminar for 2023.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: A. C. Grayling

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Professor A. C. Grayling (Northeastern University London).

Professor Grayling will be presenting material from an extract of his 
forthcoming book The Metaphysics of Experience entitled “Truth and Assertion”. 
Professor Grayling has provided the following preliminary note:

The following is an extract from a book in preparation, The Metaphysics of 
Experience, which argues that truth, reference and constraints on practices of 
enquiry are discourse-relative matters, that discourses project ontologies (an 
adaptation of the ‘natural language ontology’ approach), but that this does not 
entail a relativistic form of antirealism about ‘reality’ but reshapes 
questions about the choice of ontology to be identified as explanatorily and 
causally privileged as ‘ultimate’ (i.e. such that all explanatory and causal 
reductions terminate in it); that in a technical sense of deferment defined in 
the book the question of ontological ultimacy has to be ‘deferred’, but that 
commitment to reality’s being independent of thought and experience is both 
well-motivated and undischargeable and that therefore, in the primary sense of 
proof in contingent cases, proved. One of the key points in this project is to 
demonstrate that to show that the relations between discourses and the domains 
over which they range are internal ones is not the same as a denial of realism 
about scientific entities or the empirical targets of perceptual experience; 
the conflation of these projects – the semantic and the metaphysical – has 
distorted the debate, and obscured the fact that the ontologies of discourses 
are semantic constructs while the question of the relations between discourses 
(intertranslatability and incommensurability) and the question of the reductive 
relations between their ontologies (for a notable example: addressing the 
problem of expressing such quantum theoretical notions as superposition, 
duality, entanglement etc. in classical terms) is rendered more difficult 
thereby. So the real question in the metaphysical project is which discourse is 
(to be) ontologically privileged, and why; and in what sense such a privileging 
is anyway possible given the constraints imposed by the starting point of 
enquiry at its proximal end.
A corollary of the deferment claim is that although what naïve realism 
nominates as the touchstone of the real – the entangled domains of the 
environment of perceptual experience and the social realities which superpose 
upon it – does not satisfy the conditions of ‘ultimacy’ sought in ontology, 
nevertheless its nomination as such is far from arbitrary, and shares the 
status of undischargeability of the concept of the real in general.
Points to note: ‘truth’ is analysed in this thesis as a 
discourse-relative property – a property of ‘positive epistemic evaluation’ 
individuated by discourse, and therefore fully describable in a theory of 
assertion – but ascriptions of the property are heavily constrained by the 
canons of enquiry in each discourse, hence it is far from an ‘anything goes’ 
view as implied by versions of relativism, and it is therefore pertinent also 
to the question of which ontology to treat as fundamental.
A final point: in the book cases are made for choices about what to think of 
reference, the role of descriptions, natural kinds, canons of enquiry, 
reductionism, the modalities, universal grammatical categories, and meaning, as 
all bearing on the target question: ‘What is to be said about ultimate 
reality/the concept of ‘ultimate reality’?’

A copy of the extract “Truth and Assertion” is available on request (email: 
ryan@sydney.edu.au). Professor Grayling has 
also made an introductory chapter available on request.

The talk will take place on Wednesday November 22nd at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Natalja Deng

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Natalja Deng (Yonsei University).

The title of Natalja’s talk is “Time as ineffable”. Here’s the abstract for the 
talk:

The relation between time and temporal experience lends itself to 
interdisciplinary study, and interdisciplinarity sometimes involves difficult 
methodological choice points. In the case of time, a central choice point 
concerns how to treat the question of whether time really passes, or flows, or 
is dynamic in a way that space is not. Analytic metaphysics gives this question 
pride of place, in a McTaggart-inspired A- versus B-theory formulation, which 
arguably has roots stretching all the way back to Heraclites and Parmenides. 
Meanwhile, philosophers of physics either ignore it or explicitly call for 
philosophers of time to ‘move past’ the As and Bs. This talk will explore a 
metaphysical view with an anti-metaphysical upshot. The view is somewhat 
radical with respect to mainstream philosophy of time paradigms. In a nutshell, 
it says that time’s nature with respect to the question of dynamicity is 
ineffable, or beyond the conceptual grasp. My motivation is to provide a 
foundation for the kind of stance that aims to transcend (and move beyond) the 
As and Bs, but in way that takes the question seriously and thereby manages to 
stay relevant to metaphysics. I will suggest that this stance is already 
implicit in both the metaphysics and philosophy of physics literatures, in the 
guise of a variety of ‘Tenseless Passage’ approaches that aim to somehow locate 
dynamicity within the block universe. Given current frameworks, TP approaches 
can’t really amount to more than a cheap re-labelling of (B-)succession as 
‘(A-)passage’. But there is a genuine insight contained in TP. Ineffability 
allows us to make it explicit.

The talk will take place on Wednesday November 8th at 3:30 p.m.  in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

Note: there is no seminar next week (the 15th of November). The next seminar in 
the series is A. C. Grayling (Northeastern University London) on Wednesday the 
22nd of November. The final seminar for 2024 will be Matthew Slater (Bucknell 
University) on Wednesday the 29th of November. These seminars will be 
advertised as usual in the coming weeks.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au




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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Teresa Baron

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Teresa Baron (University of Nottingham).

The title of Teresa’s talk is “Justice for ‘thwarted fathers’? Problems for 
retrospective parental rights claims”. Here’s the abstract for the talk:

This paper examines the legitimacy of retrospective parental rights-claims 
through the lens of so-called ‘thwarted father’ cases: men who are unaware of 
their progeny’s existence until the window for establishing legal parentage 
(and associated rights) has passed. In some famous cases of thwarted fathers, 
courts have found that an injustice has been done which must be rectified by 
awarding retrospective parental rights and custody to those men, even when 
their genetic child has already lived for some extended time period with their 
adoptive parents. In this paper, I critically examine Norvin Richards’ 
liberty-based defence of the parental rights of these fathers. He argues that 
the decision to overturn an adoption in a ‘thwarted father’ case is justified 
if we agree that a man’s contribution of sperm was indeed the first act of a 
parenthood project that he should have had the liberty right to continue. 
Although Richards’ account might allow us to say that a thwarted father has 
been wronged, justice cannot demand that the situation be rectified through 
specific performance (as in cases when property is stolen and justice requires 
that it be returned). Rather, if the genetic father did have a liberty right to 
continue the project in question, this would amount to a right to begin rearing 
the child. This right is more akin to a right of first refusal than a property 
right, and is thus eroded if exercised by others.

The talk will take place on Wednesday November 1st at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Kristin Gjesdal

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Kristin Gjesdal (Temple University).

The title of Kristin’s talk is “A Malady of the Soul: Germaine de Staël on 
Passions, Politics, and Fanaticism”. Here’s the abstract for the talk:

Over a period of more than two decades, Germaine de Staël tackles the 
philosophical dimensions of political fanaticism and our responses to it. 
Discussions of enlightenment approaches to fanaticism typically ignore her 
contribution. Similarly has Staël’s discussion of fanaticism been overlooked 
within scholarship on her work. This presentation seeks to highlight Staël’s 
contribution to the philosophical discussion of fanaticism. While accepting the 
basic enlightenment phenomenology of fanaticism (its dangers and its 
challenges), Staël launches her analysis of fanaticism from within her larger 
moral psychology. She sees fanaticism as part of a web of passions with which 
we are all familiar and suggests, from within this framework, a set of 
productive responses. In this way, she challenges Voltaire’s identification of 
fanaticism and religion and his notion of the fanatic as being beyond both 
reason and the worthiness of tolerance. Staël’s model is philosophically 
robust, politically relevant, and indeed worthy of our attention when we seek 
to map the phenomenon of fanaticism and the historical roots of our responses 
to it.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 25th of October at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

The talk will be immediately followed by the book launch 
event
 featuring Associate Professors Luke Russell & Luara Ferracioli at the Chau 
Chak Wing Museum.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Brian Hedden

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Brian Hedden (ANU).

The title of Brian’s talk is “Parity and Pareto”. Here’s the abstract for the 
talk:

Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong 
Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another  for someone and 
at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the 
other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with "not worse" in 
place of "at least as good." In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), 
this results in a strictly stronger Pareto principle, which I call Super-Strong 
Pareto. Super-Strong Pareto, however, yields cyclic betterness and is therefore 
false. I point out a number of influential arguments - concerning population 
ethics, collective action problems, and decision-making in the face of parity 
and uncertainty - that crucially rely on Super-Strong Pareto and are therefore 
unsound. I then turn to the most influential argument against the possibility 
of parity - Broome's collapsing argument - and argue that it likewise relies on 
Super-Strong Pareto reasoning and is therefore question-begging. Finally, I 
turn to the much-neglected question of how to justify Strong Pareto. The answer 
I arrive at, which emphasizes tie-breaking, yields a striking insight, namely 
that Super-Strong Pareto amounts to the denial of insensitivity to mild 
sweetening. That is what makes it problematic in the presence of parity.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 18th of October at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Supriya Subramani

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Supriya Subramani  (Sydney Health Ethics, University of Sydney).

The title of Supriya’s talk is “Othering and Ethics of Belonging: Why it 
Matters for Migrant Healthcare?”. Here’s the abstract for the talk:

At a time when national identities are reasserted in western Europe alongside 
intellectual visions about a cosmopolitan order more inclusive than 
nationalism, what does belonging mean for immigrants who are non-Europeans, 
particularly for women from the South Asia, African and Middle East regions? 
Based on the lived experiences of 23 first generation women immigrants on their 
healthcare experiences in Zurich, Switzerland, I illustrate through embodied 
migrant experiences how othering and a sense of belonging is experienced within 
the web of chaotic meanings and social space one navigates. By employing a 
moral phenomenological-sociological approach, I present how embodied migrant 
experiences can capture the experiences of being an ‘other’, as well as how 
moral emotions such as shame and humiliation can influence one's moral self and 
its significance to everyday moral discourse. In this paper, I will analyse 
cosmopolitanism's possibilities by focusing on othering/belonging experiences. 
Furthermore, I will illustrate how ethics of belonging is practiced in everyday 
interactions by immigrants and briefly discuss its significance to healthcare 
debates.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 11th of October at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Michael Nielsen

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Michael Nielsen (University of Sydney).

The title of Michael’s talk is “Simple Probability”. Here’s the abstract for 
the talk:

It is widely held that our credences should have the structure of mathematical 
probabilities and that the probabilistic structure of our credences can be 
infinitely complex. Against this, I argue that our credences should be simple: 
there is a precise sense in which our credences should be of finite complexity. 
If this conclusion is correct, then many longstanding puzzles in probabilistic 
epistemology admit of straightforward solutions. In this talk, I will present 
some of these puzzles, give my main argument for simplicity, and show you how 
simplicity solves the puzzles. All of this will be done in a pretty informal, 
non-technical way, with an emphasis on the philosophical problems rather than 
the mathematical details.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 4th of October at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Michael Devitt

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Michael Devitt (CUNY).

The title of Michael’s talk is “Ostrich Nominalism”. Here’s the abstract for 
the talk:

“Ostrich Nominalism” is Armstrong’s (1978) pejorative name for the Quinean 
response to the venerable One over Many problem. Instead of offering a solution 
to this problem, as do Realists and traditional Nominalists, the Ostrich 
dismisses the problem as pseudo. The paper discusses the early responses to 
Armstrong, particularly Devitt (1980) and Lewis (1983). These responded to 
Armstrong’s request for ontological commitment. The paper then turns to 
Armstrong’s request for “truthmakers”, a request that has dominated later 
discussions. Truthmaking is standardly understood semantically as a version of 
the correspondence theory, but it can be understood metaphysically. Understood 
semantically, the Ostrich dismisses Armstrong’s request as a misguided attempt 
to derive a metaphysics from a semantics. Understood metaphysically, as a 
demand for “groundings”, the Ostrich is again dismissive: this is another bit 
of unnatural metaphysics. The paper defends this dismissiveness in discussing 
Rodriguez-Pereyra (2000, 2005). Finally, the paper considers Imaguire’s 
Priority Nominalism (2018).

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 20th of September at 3:30 p.m. in The 
Quad Board Room (S445) in the Quadrangle. Note the unusual venue. Also note 
that there will be no  Zoom session.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au




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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Caroline West

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Caroline West (University of Sydney).

The title of Caroline’s talk is “Happiness as a psychological good”. Here’s the 
abstract for the talk:

Theories of happiness generally divide into those that analyse ‘happiness’ as a 
purely descriptive psychological term, and those that take ‘happiness’ to be an 
evaluative term roughly synonymous with ‘leading a good life.’ I argue that 
happiness is most accurately and usefully analysed as a fusion of these. 
Specifically, happiness is the psychological state, whatever it is, that we 
ought to seek for its own sake. Substantive first-order debates about the 
nature of happiness are then best understood as implicit disputes about exactly 
which of a range of semantically eligible states individuals have most 
prudential reason to pursue. I argue that this may vary (somewhat) from 
individual to individual and hence that happiness is differentially realizable: 
the nature of happiness may differ (somewhat) from person to person. This 
contrasts with orthodox ‘circumscriptionist’ analyses, according to which there 
is just one way to be happy.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 13th of September at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au



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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Alex Horne

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Alex Horne (Sydney).

The title of Alex’s talk is “The Self-improvement machine”. Here’s the abstract 
for the talk:

Suppose that in the not-too-distant future, scientists invented a 
self-improvement machine. The machine adds a chip into your brain which 
contains lots of new information and helps you conform more readily with the 
norms of epistemic and practical rationality. As a result of the procedure, 
many of your priorities, interests, values and tastes are quite different from 
what they were before entering the machine. Despite the obvious benefits, I am 
reluctant to step into the self-improvement machine. That is, I am reluctant to 
risk losing my present attachments, values, preferences and desires even where 
I know that losing them in the machine meant they were irrational. This sounds 
odd and yet, I suspect I am not alone in feeling a degree of disquiet at the 
prospect of undergoing such a procedure. My hunch is that exploring the source 
of this disquiet can help us better understand the relationships between 
agency, identity, morality and self-improvement of the more “organic” variety.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 6th of September at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: No Seminar this Week

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

The University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is on hiatus this week. We 
resume next week with a talk from Alex Horne (University of Sydney). The usual 
advertisement for the talk will be sent out next Monday.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Joseph Rouse

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Joseph Rouse (Wesleyan University).

The title of Joseph’s talk is “Radical Naturalism: Giving up a Fourth Dogma of 
Empiricism”. Here’s the abstract for the talk:

Around mid-20th Century, naturalism supplanted empiricism as the dominant 
meta-philosophical approach within the Anglophone tradition. David Macarthur 
and Mario de Caro have since identified a telling split between scientific and 
liberal versions of a naturalistic orientation. For the past 25 years, I have 
instead developed an alternative strategy, worked out in Articulating the World 
(2015) and Social Practices as Biological Niche Construction (2023). My 
presentation of this more radical naturalism begins with how philosophers of 
science now mostly reject key features of conceptions of scientific 
understanding shared by many scientific and liberal naturalists. It then argues 
that the alternative approach to naturalism within recent philosophy of science 
extends two influential criticisms of earlier empiricisms. Sellars, Goodman, 
and Hempel argued that scientific understanding was counterfactually robust and 
could not do without modal conceptualizations. Quine and Davidson challenged 
the analytic/synthetic and scheme/content distinctions as unjustified dogmas of 
empiricism. Naturalists should also give up a fourth dogma of empiricism, which 
tries to separate an anormative, scientifically intelligible nature from any 
normative concerns. My presentation concludes with three key features of a 
radical naturalism that rejects this fourth dogma but retains the commitment to 
understand ourselves and all we encounter within the conceptual horizons that 
disclose the natural world as scientifically intelligible.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 23rd of August at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Tom Hercules Davies

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Tom Hercules Davies (University of Melbourne).

Tom is the Seymour Reader in Ancient History and Philosophy at Ormond College 
and the University of Melbourne. He works on philosophy and science in the 
ancient world, especially in Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India.

The title of Tom’s talk is “Aristotle (and his interpreters) on Nature and 
Explanation”. Here’s the abstract for Tom’s talk:

Why does fire go up? Because that it is nature. What is the nature of fire? To 
go up. Aristotle would accept both these answers, and in 1686, Robert Boyle 
accused him of circular explanation on these grounds: appealing to a thing's 
Nature to explain its behaviour is "equally applicable to the resolving of all 
difficulties" and "not useful to disclose the thing, but to delude the Maker of 
the Question, or hide the ignorance of the Answerer." This talk defends 
Aristotle from the charge of circularity. But if Aristotle did not make this 
mistake, we might ask: why did so many early modern readers believe he did? The 
talk therefore also sketches a genealogy of Boyle's criticism, tracking the 
charge to late-antique Alexandria.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 16th of August at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Just a reminder that Arash Abizadeh (McGill University) will be presenting, 
today, Monday the 14th of August at 3:30 p.m.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Arash Abizadeh

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

On Monday the 14th of August at 3:30 p.m. we have a special edition of the 
University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series. Our speaker is Arash Abizadeh, 
R.B Angus Professor of Political Science and Associate Member of the Department 
of Philosophy, McGill University.

The title of Arash’s talk is “Agential Power and Structural Power, Causal and 
Non-Causal”. Here’s the abstract for Arash’s talk:

Many theorists of social power assume that agents’ power operates only by way 
of their intentional actions and their causal role in effecting outcomes. The 
former assumption is true of agential power, the latter of causal power, but 
neither is true of the social power of agents in general. Distinguishing 
between agential and structural power, I defend a notion of structural power as 
a type of non-intentional, passive power agents have in virtue of their 
position in a social structure and independently of their intentional actions. 
Distinguishing between causal and non-causal power, I also defend a non-causal 
type of power by which agents effect or elicit outcomes without causing them. 
Agential and structural power, moreover, are internally related: structural 
power is in certain contexts latently agential.

The talk will take place on Monday the 14th of August at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Tom Dougherty

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Tom Dougherty (University of North Carolina).

The title of Tom’s talk is “Social Scripts”. Here’s the abstract for Tom’s talk:

Social scripts specify the normal way for people to interact in certain 
situations. For example, a social script for a restaurant conversation explains 
why the world over, these conversations take a similar form. I will discuss 
what social scripts are, how they can scaffold or constrain people’s behavior 
(e.g. by leading people to voluntarily take part in sexual encounters that they 
would ideally like to avoid), and how these constraints could be ameliorated by 
more empowering scripts.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 9th of August at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

Please note that there will be two talks in the seminar series next week. Arash 
Abizadeh (McGill University) will be presenting on Monday the 14th of August at 
3:00 p.m. Tom Davies (University of Melbourne) will be presenting on Wednesday 
the 16th of August at 3:00 p.m.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Michaela Manson

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

The University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series returns for Semester 2 this 
Wednesday. This week’s speaker is Michaela Manson (Monash University).

The title of Michaela’s talk is “Equality and Elitism: Early Modern Women and 
the Philosophy of Friendship”. Here’s the abstract for Michaela’s talk:

A significant condition for Aristotleian character friendship is that potential 
friends both be virtuous. Implicit in this is a kind of equality claim, namely 
that such would-be friends are sufficiently similar or equal in respect of 
virtue. However, subsequent philosophers of friendship from Cicero to Nehemas 
have rejected the Aristotleian conception as too demanding; ordinary 
observation seems to yield countless counterexamples to the effect that two (or 
more) people can be genuine friends despite not being perfectly virtuous or 
even equals in other relevant respects. Indeed to claim that true friendship is 
the unique province of the virtuous is liable to invite a charge of elitism. 
This charge is especially forceful when considering one group who supposedly 
could not achieve the good of true friendship; as Montaigne wrote, “the 
ordinary capacity of women is inadequate for that communion and fellowship 
which is the nurse of this sacred bond.”
However, in the early modern period, women philosophers took on the subject of 
friendship in a way that challenged elements of this elitism. Still, many of 
these writers retained the equality condition in their accounts of friendship. 
In this talk, I consider the accounts of three early modern sources, two women, 
Mary Beale and Mary Astell, as well as one anonymous source, a newly discovered 
late seventeenth century manuscript. In so doing, I seek to articulate a 
response to the elitism objection that nonetheless justifies the equality 
condition in response to the apparent wealth of counterexamples that are 
readily cited.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 2nd of August at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Supplementary Seminar: Daniel Muñoz

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week we are hosting a Supplementary Seminar to the usual University of 
Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series. Please note the unusual day and time below. 
(Also note that the scheduled time of the seminar has changed since the 
previous announcement).

Our speaker is Daniel Muñoz (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). The 
title of Daniel’s talk is “Is Self-Wronging Superstitious?”. Here’s the 
abstract for Daniel’s talk:

Duties to oneself have a distinguished history in moral philosophy. They can 
also smell a bit fishy. To some extent, the defenders of duties to oneself have 
cleared the air in recent years by developing solutions to the 'paradox of 
self-release'. But there remains another, more normative problem. Many classic 
duties to oneself -- like Kant's prohibition on recreational sex -- depend on a 
dubious kind of natural teleology. And while modern theories are less priggish, 
it is not clear that they are any more principled. In this talk, I argue that 
we can give principled and plausible accounts of a range of classic duties to 
self, such as the duty to develop one's talents, by basing our theory on the 
Self-Other Symmetry, the view that we owe the same basic duties to ourselves as 
to anybody else.

The talk will take place on Friday the 2nd of June at 1:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Daniel Halliday

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Daniel Halliday (University of Melbourne).

The title of Daniel’s talk is “The Foundations and Limits of Employer 
Authority”. Here’s the abstract for Daniel’s talk:

Employment is among the more entrenched and pervasive legal relationships that 
we participate in. It is also associated with a host of injustices: Employers 
can dominate workers, invade their privacy, terminate the relationship for bad 
reasons, or otherwise make objectionable demands. At the same time, it is 
undeniable that, even under ideal conditions, employment has to be some kind of 
hierarchical relationship whereby people agree to cede some (limited but real) 
control over their lives to an employer.

Political philosophers tend to work on questions of how to remedy some 
problematic feature of employment without theorising more generally about what 
sort of relationship employment is, or must be. In this talk, I argue that the 
employment relationship often occupies a middle ground (or can vacillate 
between) two opposed categories of cooperative relationship. On the one hand, 
cooperation can occur between parties that share little in common, and where 
the goal is merely to coordinate activity for mutual advantage. At the other 
end are relationships whose success requires a substantial sharing of ends or 
values. Employment is tricky because it is not always clear where it lies on 
this spectrum. The solution is to recognise that firms very often cannot 
function via explicit commands from managers, but on what is misleadingly 
called ‘workplace culture’. This can be disambiguated as the degree to which a 
sharing of ends among employees is necessary for the firm to produce its 
outputs. The limits of employer authority, and thus the range of demands that 
an employer can legitimately make, should be thought of as sensitive to how 
well this condition is satisfied.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 17th of May at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

This is the final talk in the seminar series for Semester 1. The next scheduled 
seminar is an out-of-semester seminar by Daniel Munoz (UNC) scheduled during 
STUVAC on Friday June 2 at 3:00pm. The usual reminder will be released on 
SydPhil the week of the seminar.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au



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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Jonathan Sholl

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Jonathan Sholl (Bordeaux).

The title of Jonathan’s talk is “Is anything in nutrition future proof?”. 
Here’s the abstract for Jonathan’s talk:

In her 2021 book Why Trust Science?, Naomi Oreskes claims that when skeptics 
distrust scientists because they keep “getting things wrong,” they readily 
refer to “the changing and seemingly contradictory recommendations of 
nutritionists.” This skeptical sentiment is shared by nutrition journalists, 
scientists, and likely a large portion of the general public. Addressing 
similar skepticism about the stability of science more generally, Peter Vickers 
has recently argued that it is possible to find claims in science about which 
there is no reasonable room for doubt, which he calls “future proof science”. 
In this talk, I will assess whether anything in the supposedly contradictory 
realm of nutrition reflects such a solid international consensus to be 
considered an established fact. I offer several candidates for such claims and 
go into detail about those pertaining to healthy dietary patterns and the 
diet-heart hypothesis. I end with some suggestions as to why the skeptical view 
of nutrition persists.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 10th of May at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Shang Long

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Shang Long (NUS/Monash).

The title of Shang’s talk is “The Individual Goods of Attention and How to 
Distribute Them”. Here’s the abstract for Shang’s talk:

We live in an age where attention is a central commodity – where social media 
companies like TikTok and Facebook take this attention as a product to be sold 
to interested buyers, and where attention is inextricably tied up with 
knowledge work (such as that of programmers, architects, and academics). While 
the economics and psychology of attention are well-explored, philosophers have 
only recently started thinking systematically about the ethics and political 
philosophy of attention. In this talk, I hope to contribute to this project: 
first, I argue that there are two distinct goods associated with attention – 
what I call attentional resources and attentional receipts – which have quite 
different normative profiles. Secondly, I argue from the nature of these goods 
to the appropriate rules for distributing them – a libertarian rule and a 
sufficientarian-plus-desert rule respectively – and trace out some normative 
implications for real-world cases.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 3rd of May at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at a nearby venue. 
All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Clas Weber (UWA)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Clas Weber (University of Western Australia).

The title of Clas’s talk is “Determinacy of the Self and Imagination from the 
Inside”. Here’s the abstract for Clas’s talk:

The persistence of ordinary objects allows for indeterminacy. There is a strong 
intuition that our own persistence in contrast has to be determinate. The 
determinacy intuition conflicts with a commonsense view of human persons. In 
this talk, I offer an account of the source of the determinacy intuition which 
grounds it in the special character of first-person imagination. In short, we 
are inclined to believe that our persistence must be determinate because we 
cannot imagine indeterminate survival from the first-person perspective. I then 
explore the implications of this account for the metaphysics of the self. I 
make the case that indeterminate survival may be a genuine possibility for us 
in spite of our inability to imagine it from the inside. Hence, the account 
proposed here allows us to debunk the intuition and maintain a commonsense view 
of ourselves.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 26th of April at 3:30 p.m. over Zoom 
(Clas will be presenting from Western Australia) in the Philosophy Seminar Room 
(N494) in the Quadrangle. Participations are welcome to either join in person 
or over Zoom (https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848).

There will be no after-seminar events this week.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Mark Alfano

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Mark Alfano (Macquarie University).

The title of Mark’s talk is “Trust from mistrust”. The full abstract for Mark’s 
talk is included below.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 19th of April at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

---

Title: Trust from mistrust
Speaker: Mark Alfano (Macquarie University).
Abstract:

Nietzsche poses the question, “How could anything originate out of its 
opposite? Truth from error, for instance? Or the will to truth from the will to 
deception?” (BGE 2) He suggests that many people cannot bring themselves to 
accept that things of great value might be “derived from this ephemeral, 
seductive, deceptive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and 
desire.” But, he contends, possibly “whatever gives value to those good and 
honorable things has an incriminating link, bond, or tie to the very things 
that look like their evil opposites.”

Nietzsche’s interest in the origins of epistemic values in their opposites 
dates back to HH AOM 215, where he attempts to trace the “integrity of the 
republic of the learned” to patterns of trust and mistrust among scientists. He 
claims that scientific progress is made possible because “the individual is not 
obliged to be too mistrustful in the testing of every account and assertion 
made by others in domains in which he is a relative stranger,” but that this 
trustingness is licensed by the fact that “in his own field everyone must have 
rivals who are extremely mistrustful and are accustomed to observe him very 
closely.” The looming presence of these rivals makes it unrewarding and 
unappealing to engage in fraud or sloppy reasoning. And when scientists engage 
in questionable research practices under such conditions, they are liable to be 
caught and corrected.

Though he was writing before the era of modern peer review, Nietzsche 
anticipated some of its structural features. In this paper, I offer a more 
detailed account of the origins of warranted trust in systems and psychologies 
that cultivate mistrust. I contend that trust in experts by laypeople resembles 
trust in scientists by other scientists, and that more attention needs to be 
paid to the geometry of networks of trust and mistrust. I go on to characterize 
several ways to improve such networks through strategic (global) and tactical 
(individual) rewiring, as well the disposition to adopt more or less trusting 
attitudes depending on the group one finds oneself in. Thus, I adopt a 
role-based virtue epistemology modeled on Astola (2021), who argues for the 
importance of what might be seen as a vicious role when one’s group lacks the 
mistrust that makes trust reasonable. Or, as Nietzsche puts it in BGE 34, “As 
the creature who has been the biggest dupe the earth has ever seen, the 
philosopher pretty much has a right to a ‘bad character.’ It is his duty to be 
suspicious, to squint as maliciously as possible out of every abyss of 
mistrust.”

I conclude by presenting empirical evidence (n=989) that people who report a 
disposition to adopt this gadfly role are more likely to reject medical 
misinformation and unwarranted conspiracy theories, more likely to accept sound 
medical information warranted conspiracy theories, more likely to perform well 
on tests of numeracy, cognitive reflection, and intelligence, and more likely 
to correct their own errors in light of social feedback.
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

Due to strike action this Wednesday (April 5th), there will be no seminar in 
the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series this week.

We will return after the mid-semester break on the Wednesday April 19th with a 
talk from Mark Alfano (Macquarie University).

This week’s previously scheduled speaker, Jonathan Sholl (Bordeaux), will be 
presenting later in the semester on Wednesday May 10th.

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Alastair Wilson

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Alastair Wilson (University of Birmingham).

The title of Alastair’s talk is “Priority, Emergence, and Structural Realism”. 
Here’s the abstract for Alastair’s talk:

I argue for a distinction between two kinds of priority in metaphysics:  
metaphysical fundamentality and metaphysical naturalness. Drawing this 
distinction allows for perfectly natural properties at non-fundamental levels. 
I show how the distinction between fundamentality and naturalness can be 
implemented in a simple subject-matter-based framework, and then apply the 
distinction i) to account for the elusive notion of metaphysical emergence and 
ii) to characterize the attractive but slippery thesis of structural realism in 
the philosophy of science.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 29th of March at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Jennifer Mensch

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Jennifer Mensch (Western Sydney University).

The title of Jennifer’s talk is “Kant’s Four Examples: On South Sea Islanders, 
Tahitians, and Other Cautionary Tales for the Case of ‘Rusting Talents.’”. 
Here’s the abstract for Jennifer’s talk:

In this discussion I start with one of Kant’s most familiar texts, the 
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in order to focus on his example of 
moral failure presented by the person who has chosen an easy path in life; one 
who has let their ‘talents rust,’ to use Kant’s phrase. I contend that this is 
an odd example, but once we follow the trail back to Kant’s immediate context, 
we can begin to make better sense of Kant’s choice to include it. I then 
identify four subsequent counter examples offered up by Kant during this 
period, each meant to offer negative portraits of non-Europeans in a manner 
that can provide further moral instruction for his readers on this point. This 
is significant insofar as it reveals the way in which Kant’s racism and his 
urge toward moral guidance were wholly compatible from his own point of view; a 
conclusion that is not so easily shrugged off in light of any change of heart 
in the last years of his life, and one which certainly calls into question 
claims regarding a purported deep contradiction between Kant’s moral and 
anthropological views.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 22nd of March at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Kathryn MacKay

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Kathryn MacKay (University of Sydney).

The title of Kathryn’s talk is “Institutions and Virtues”. Here’s the abstract 
for Kathryn’s talk:

This paper proposes a theory of virtue for socio-political institutions. 
Utilizing Oliver Williamson’s (2000) taxonomy of institutions and their 
structures, I will argue that socio-political institutions have an 
under-appreciated and under-theorised role in creating and maintaining the 
conditions for virtue at the community level. Social institutions have a 
widely-recognized role in creating, enforcing, or maintaining the laws, 
policies, regulations, expectations, customs, and contracts that govern 
behaviour and shape the pathways people can take through life. This role means 
that they ought to ensure that these structures tend toward political virtue, 
and away from political vice. So, a theory of political virtue (that is, 
virtues of the polis, not of politicians) should be incorporated into how we 
think about the ethics of institutions. Adapting Philippa Foot and adding a 
dash of Julia Annas, I propose that political virtues are detectable 
characteristics of institutions, which are beneficial to the whole of society, 
corrective to vicious states of affairs, and excellences of collective agency, 
where excellence is understood as expressive of a collective commitment to 
goodness.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 15th of March at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au



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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Jessica Gelber

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Jessica Gelber (University of Toronto).

The title of Jessica’s talk is “Aristotle on Interspecies Relations”. Here’s 
the abstract for Jessica’s talk:

Scientific explanations of the relations that hold between kinds (what I am 
calling “relational facts”) is challenging (if not impossible) by the lights of 
Aristotelian science. However, Aristotle is aware that there are many such 
facts:


  *   In Historia Animalium, various ways that kinds of living organisms are 
related to other kinds of living organisms – being predators of one kind or 
prey for another, for example — appear to be treated as regularly occurring 
features of their lives, just as the shapes and sizes of their body parts or 
their manners of reproduction are.
  *   In his Politics, Aristotle even seems to claim that living kinds that 
humans use (for food and assistance) are naturally there to be used by us.

I argue that we ought to take these reports about relational facts at face 
value, rather than try to contextualize or dismiss them. I propose that 
Aristotle has a much richer conception of the natures or essences of living 
beings than is traditionally thought, and consequently he does have the 
resources to explain the relations between living kinds using the principles 
that his science countenances.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 8th of March at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au


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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Tyler Doggett

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

This week’s speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is 
Tyler Doggett (University of Vermont).

The title of Tyler’s talk is “Knowing and Linking”. Here’s the abstract for 
Tyler’s talk:

We have limited resources. We can’t help everyone. This talk is partly about 
the roles that friendship, affection, and acquaintance play in determining whom 
to save. Also, it’s partly about popularity in philosophy. (These two parts are 
connected.)

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 1st of March at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848.

The talk will be followed by drinks and informal discussion at the Rose. All 
welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au

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[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series: Mandi Astola (Wednesday 22nd Feb, 3:00 p.m.)

[Ryan Cox via SydPhil]

Hi everyone,

We’re very excited to be kicking-off the University of Sydney Philosophy 
Seminar Series for 2023 next week (on Wednesday the 22nd of February at 3:30 
p.m.) with our first speaker, Mandi Astola (Delft University of Technology).

The title of Mandi’s talk is “Moral Creativity”. Here’s an abstract of the talk:

Moral creativity is a type of creativity which concerns the domain of moral 
action. A morally creative person is able to imagine various courses of action 
in response to a moral problem or dilemma. Importantly, it also includes the 
invention of novel and non-habitual courses of action which fulfil moral 
obligations as much as possible to others, even when fulfilling all obligations 
seems impossible at first glance. I consider moral creativity to be a virtue 
and in this talk I sketch a way in which moral creativity could be integrated 
into Aristotelian virtue ethics. In Aristotelian virtue ethics, the good life 
is understood as a life led by a person who possesses the virtues. The virtues 
are habitual good character traits like courage, magnanimity and generosity. 
All the virtues are controlled by a super-virtue (also sometimes called an 
executive virtue) called practical wisdom, or phronesis. Phronesis is 
conceptualized roughly the ability to know what types of actions are 
appropriate for particular circumstances. Practical wisdom has always been very 
difficult to conceptualize and descriptions of it in literature remain quite 
vague. I explore whether it is possible that practical wisdom is best 
conceptualized as moral creativity. This would mean that creativity is 
essential for being a good person.

The talk will take place on Wednesday the 22nd of February at 3:30 p.m. in the 
Philosophy Seminar Room (N494) in the Quadrangle and will be simulcast via 
Zoom: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88699564848. The talk will be followed by 
drinks and informal discussion at the Rose and then, depending on interest, 
dinner with the speaker. All welcome!

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to 
ryan@sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan@sydney.edu.au
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