Fall 2012/Spring 2013 Colloquia - Scott & Heather Kleiner Lecture Series

Sept 14, 2012 - Kyle Powys Whyte (Michigan State)

"The Responsibilities of Nation States to Indigenous Nations and Their Implications for Climate Change Adaptation"

Philosophers have debated whether Indigenous communities are entitled to special rights within the nation states like the United States and Australia. I show how the debate looks rather different when we ask what rights, liberties, and responsibilities nation states and their citizens are justified in having within Indigenous nations. I argue that before we can answer this question we first have to understand the kind of entity nation states are within Indigenous nations. Nation states are best viewed as brokers of Indigenous political affairs whose mediation and representation were never consented to by Indigenous nations and can never really be terminated, especially in the near term. Based on this understanding, I defend a set of responsibilities to Indigenous nations that nation states must honor because of their nonconsensual but permanent embeddedness in Indigenous political affairs. The arguments in this presentation are situated practically in relation to climate change adaptation issues.

Oct. 19, 2012 - G.R.F. Ferrari (Berkeley)

"The Philosophic Life in Ancient Greece"

also supported by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts

In this talk I defend the way of life recommended by the Greek philosophers from the charge that it lacks humanity or fellow-feeling, and contrast it favorably with the way of life proposed in the typical modern self-help book. The problem I address is this: If what counts for the philosopher is achieving, through a process of self-perfection, a happiness that cannot be disrupted by what others do or by what happens to others, why should the philosopher care at all about the happiness of others? To explain why the philosopher should and does in fact feel concern for others, I consider the philosophic life in terms of a model that the Greek philosophers might themselves have used, had it been available to them: the model provided by a certain kind of computer game. Which kind? I'll leave the answer to that question for the talk.

Nov. 9, 2012 -   Lara Denis (Agnes Scott)

"Love of honor as a Kantian virtue"

In his initial presentation of lying, avarice, and servility as vices contrary to the perfect duty to oneself as a moral being only, Kant says that the virtue opposed to these vices "could be called love of honor" (Doctrine of Virtue, 6:420). The meaning and significance of this claim is far from obvious, however. I present an account according to which love of honor, as a virtue, is a practical attitude of respect for humanity in one's person, affectively animated by the rational feeling of esteem for oneself as a moral being, and concerned with acting in (and only in) ways that comport with the dignity of humanity in one's own person. Yet love of honor is not only a virtue for Kant; it has broader connotations and darker associations as well. Understanding these less fully moralized depictions of love of honor not only helps explain Kant's tentative-sounding identification of love of honor as a virtue, but also helps to complete and clarify my account of it as a virtue.

Nov. 30, 2012 - Carrie Ichakawa Jenkins (U British Columbia)

also supported by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts           

*CANCELLED * Feb. 1, 2013 - Alva Noe (U California, Berkeley)

“Art and the Limits of Neuroscience”

*CANCELLED* Feb. 15, 2013 - Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh)

"Some Post-Davidsonian Elements of Hegel's Theory of Agency"

also supported by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts

April 5, 2013 - Michael Friedman (Stanford)

"Mathematical Science, Naturalism, and Normativity"

also supported by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts

Contemporary philosophical naturalism has a problem with mathematics. What exists, on this view, is confinded to the world of modern natural science: physical objects in space and time interacting via causal laws. But mathematical objects do not seem to fit into this world--they are "abstract" or "platonic." And analagous problems for contemporary naturalism arise for other domains that are not obviously physical: the domain of the mental, for example, or the domain of norms and values. In this talk, I will discuss the domains of mathematics and normativity. I will sketch a historical narrative showing how these two, seemingly quite different domains were illuminatingly brought together in the philosophy of Plato, and how this fruitful cohabitation persisted, and was radically transformed, in the early modern period culminating in Kant. I argue, on this basis, that we are left with a very different perspective on the relations between mathematics, the physical world, and nomrativity than that which i standardly presuppposed in contemporary philosophy.

April 26, 2013 - John Rist (University of Toronto/Catholic University of America)

"Can Augustine's City of God Help Us Deconstruct Multiculturalism?"

also supported by the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts

This paper argues that there are applications of Augustine's views about comparing cultures which ceteris paribus are still of much interest. It will not be an example of cultural archaeology but will relate to contemporary problems, though inevitably with a perspective that is more "European" than North American.