June 19, 2010
7th Annual Metaethics Workshop in Wisconsin
By S. Matthew Liao
The program for the 7th Annual Metaethics Workshop has been finalized and can be found here. It looks fantastic! The workshop will be held on Sept 24-26, 2010 in Madison, WI. Registration is free and all are welcome. If you would like to attend, please email Professor Russ Shafer-Landau (shaferlandau -at- wisc.edu).
June 18, 2010
Shah on Mental Agency and Metaethics
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Nishi Shah (Amherst) recent gave a paper, which he co-wrote with Matt Evans (NYU), at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled “Mental Agency and Metaethics.” A copy of Nishi’s talk can be found here. Professor Shah would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk:
June 7, 2010
Professor Alan Thomas (Tilburg University) will be giving a talk on Monday, June 7, at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled “Practical Reasoning, the First Person and Impartialism about Reasons.” A copy of Professor Thomas’s talk can be found here. Professor Thomas would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk:
May 20, 2010
CONF: Judy Thomson’s Normativity at MIT
By S. Matthew Liao
The Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT will host a one day conference on Judy Thomson‘s recent book Normativity. All are welcome.
Date: Friday 11 June 2010
Location: Stata Center (map), MIT. Room 32-d461 (take the elevator in the Dreyfoos Tower to the Fourth Floor; map)
Schedule:
10.30 – 12.00
Peter Railton (Michigan)
1.00 – 2.30
Gideon Rosen (Princeton)
3.00 – 4.30
Michael Smith (Princeton)
4.45 – 5.45
Round-table discussion with the speakers and Judy Thomson
http://web.mit.edu/holton/www/confs/Judyconf/judyconf.html
Organizer: Richard Holton – holton (at) mit.edu
May 11, 2010
2010 BSET Registration Open
By S. Matthew Liao
Registration is now open for the 2010 conference of the British Society for Ethical Theory, to be held at the University of Nottingham, 7th-9th July. (This is the period directly before the 2010 Joint Session.)
Details of the programme and registration forms are available here:
http://www.bset.org.uk/nextconference.html
Keynote speakers:
Jamie Dreier (Brown)
Tim Mulgan (St. Andrews)
Submitted Papers:
“Value Incomparability and Indeterminacy” – Cristian Constantinescu (Cambridge)
“A New Theory of Well-Being” – Jennifer Hawkins (Duke)
“Sentimentalism and Deontological Intuitions” – Antti Kauppinen (Amsterdam/Trinity College Dublin)
“Faith in Humanity” – Ryan Preston-Roedder (Chapel Hill)
May 6, 2010
Stockholm Workshop on Ethics and Epistemology
By S. Matthew Liao
Stockholm June Workshop in Philosophy 2010:
Ethics and Epistemology
Thursday 3 June, 10 am – 5 pm,
Room D207, Frescati
Stockholm University
10.00 Welcome
10.05 Brian McElwee (Oxford): ‘The Structure of Demandingness Objections’. Commentator: Katharina Berndt (Stockholm).
11.05 Coffee
11.20 Åsa Wikforss (Stockholm): ‘What Justifies Beliefs about One’s Own Beliefs?’ Commentator: Sara Packalén (Stockholm).
12.20 Lunch
13.40 Karl Karlander (Stockholm): ‘The Varieties of Pain’. Commentator: Jonas Olson (Stockholm).
14.40 Break
14.45 Jonas Åkerman (Stockholm): ’Referential Intentions’. Commentator: Emma Wallin (Stockholm).
15.45 Coffee
16.00 Chris Heathwood (UC Boulder): ‘Could Morality Have a Source’? Commentator: Jens Johansson (Stockholm).
April 25, 2010
The Truth in Cultural Relativism
By Antti Kauppinen
Do moral judgments form a psychological natural kind? Lately, Stephen Stich and his colleagues have been arguing on the basis of empirical evidence that the features psychologists have identified as key to moral judgment do not, as a matter of fact, cluster together in a lawlike fashion. In particular, they argue that harm attributions do not always evoke the signature moral response pattern of authority-independence and generality, and conclude that since the purported nomological cluster breaks down, moral judgments do not form a natural kind. Their argument, of course, leaves open the possibility that there is some other cluster to be found. I am not a big believer in nomological clusters, but I will propose an alternative content feature that does seem to pair with the signature moral pattern in a lawlike fashion. Namely, it seems that whenever people take a piece of behaviour to express, in context, any of a set of attitudes that ranges from disrespect to debasement, the signature moral pattern is evoked. (As usual, I’ll just focus on wrongness judgments.) In short, people are intuitive deontologists, and for all that Stich says, there may be a psychological natural kind of moral judgment. My alternative model involves commitment to a commonsense cultural relativism, but one of an entirely innocuous kind that poses no threat to moral objectivism. To distinguish it from standard or deference relativism, I’ll call it significance relativism.
April 17, 2010
Workshop on Experimental Philosophy and Metaethics
By S. Matthew Liao
Date: May 1, 2010
Time: 10am to 5pm
Location: NYU Silver Center, Room 207
Hosted by the Metro Experimental Research Group (MERG)
(All details available at: http://www.yale.edu/cogsci/metaxphi.htm)
A series of recent experimental studies have examined people’s intuitions about metaethical issues. Participants in this workshop will discuss the implications of these studies both for questions about people’s ordinary folk views and for broader philosophical questions about moral realism, moral relativism and expressivism.
Invited Speakers: Stephen Darwall, Geoff Goodwin, Gilbert Harman, Jesse Prinz, Hagop Sarkissian and David Wong
I’ll be presenting with some colleagues and I look forward to seeing you there!
March 29, 2010
Workshop on theoretical and practical reasons
By Ulrike Heuer
At the Centre for Ethics and Metaethics (CEM), University of Leeds
24th June
2-3:30 Daniel Elstein: ‘Can We Do Without Epistemic Value?’
3:30-3:45 Coffee break
3:45-6:30 Symposium on Reasons and Evidence: Daniel Star, Stephen Kearns and Kieran Setiya
3:45-4:30 Daniel Star & Stephen Kearns: ‘Weighing Reasons’
4:30-5:15 Kieran Setiya: ‘What Is A Reason to Act?’
5:15-6:30 Discussion
from 7pm Drinks and Dinner
25th June
9:30-11 Anna-Sara Malmgren: ‘Sub-Personal Reasons’
11-11:15 Coffee break
11:15-12:45 Selim Berker: ‘Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions’
12:45-2 Lunch
March 23, 2010
Welcome Matthew Silverstein!
By S. Matthew Liao
We are very pleased that Professor Matthew Silverstein has joined us as a Contributor. Matty is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is interested in the foundations of ethics—the question of what, if anything, we can we say on behalf of our most basic ethical commitments? His secondary philosophical interests include the philosophy of action, political philosophy, early modern philosophy, and the history of ethics. He is the author of In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine, published in Social Theory and Practice. Welcome aboard, Matty!
March 6, 2010
Welcome Laura Franklin-Hall!
By S. Matthew Liao
We are very pleased that Professor Laura Franklin-Hall has joined us as a Contributor. Laura is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at New York University, and specializes in the philosophy of biology. She has published numerous articles in Philosophy of Science and also has an active interest in the implications of evolutionary theories for metaethics. Welcome aboard, Laura!
March 4, 2010
Spindel Conference 2010 Emerging Scholar Prize
By Julia Driver
Hi all, I just wanted to call your attention to the following:
Call For Papers
Spindel Prize for Emerging Scholar in Philosophy
2010 Spindel Conference Topic: Empathy and Ethics
Conference Director: Remy Debes
The University of Memphis Department of Philosophy is proud to announce that the topic for the 29th annual Spindel Conference will be “Empathy and Ethics.”
February 10, 2010
Bias and Reasoning: Haidt’s Theory of Moral Judgment
By S. Matthew Liao
I just finished a draft of a paper called “Bias and Reasoning: Haidt’s Theory of Moral Judgment.” Eventually, the final version of the paper will go into an edited collection called New Waves in Ethics, edited by Thom Brooks. In the meantime, I’d be really interested to learn what some of you think of this paper. An abstract of the paper is as follows:
February 8, 2010
Crisp on the Buck-Passing Account of Value
By S. Matthew Liao
Roger Crisp had an article in Mind in 2008 entitled “Goodness and Reasons: Accentuating the Negative.” Mind just published a piece discussing Crisp’s 2008 article by Philip Stratton-Lake, as well Crisp’s response to Stratton-Lake, both of which look very interesting. I also have a piece called “The Buck-Passing Account of Value: Lessons from Crisp,” which also discusses Crisp’s 2008 article and which is available via Philosophical Studies’ Online First, or here for a penultimate version. I had a quick look at Stratton-Lake’s piece and Crisp’s response, and as far as I can tell, the points I make in my paper are different from Stratton-Lake’s. I’ll be reading Stratton-Lake’s and Crisp’s papers more closely soon, but in the meantime, I’d be very interested to learn what other people think of them.
February 6, 2010
Raz on The Guise of the Good
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Joseph Raz (Columbia and Oxford University) will be giving a talk on Monday, Feb. 8, at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled ‘On the Guise of the Good.’ A copy of Professor Raz’s talk can be found here. Professor Raz would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk:
February 2, 2010
CFP: Wisconsin Seventh Annual Metaethics Workshop
By S. Matthew Liao
University of Wisconsin, Madison
September 24-26, 2010
Stephen Darwall (Yale) will be this year’s keynote speaker. Abstracts (of 2-3 double-spaced pages) of papers in any area of metaethics are due by May 1. There is a limit of one submission per person. Speakers in the 2008 or 2009 workshop are not eligible to submit abstracts for this year’s event. A program committee will evaluate submissions and make decisions by early June.
Information on submitting an abstract, plus much other relevant information about the workshop, can be obtained at the workshop website: https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/shaferlandau/web/metaethics/workshop_2010/
February 1, 2010
Leeds Value Concepts Workshop, March 5-6
By Antti Kauppinen
Value Concepts Workshop
University of Leeds
March 5-6, 2010
Matti Eklund (Cornell)
“Misevaluation, Moral Semantics, and Moral Realism”
Janice Dowell (Nebraska)
“A Flexible, Contextualist Account of ‘Ought’”
Antti Kauppinen (Amsterdam)
“A Defence of Moral Invariantism”
Simon Kirchin (Kent)
“Determinables, Determinates, and Thick Concepts”
Daniel Elstein (Leeds)
“Why There Can Be No Good Reason to Accept the Shapelessness Hypothesis”
Debbie Roberts (Reading)
“Evaluation and Variability: Why Thick Concepts Are Not Determinates of the Thin”
More information is available at http://leedsvalueconcepts.wordpress.com/. Registration is free.
January 15, 2010
Journal of Moral Philosophy 7(1) (2010)
By Thom Brooks
JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)
Volume 7, Number 1 (2010)
ARTICLES
William Sin, ‘Trivial Sacrifices, Great Demands’, pp. 3-15
Lina Papadaki, ‘What is Objectification?’ pp. 16-36
M. B. E. Smith, ‘Does Humanity Share a Common Moral Faculty?’ pp. 37-53
Jonathan Seglow, ‘Associative Duties and Global Justice’, pp. 54-73
Miriam Ronzoni, ‘Constructivism and Practical Reason: On Intersubjectivity, Abstraction, and Judgment’, pp. 74-104
Kenneth R. Westphal, ‘From “Convention” to “Ethical Life”: Hume’s Theory of Justice in Post-Kantian Perspective’, pp. 105-32
REVIEW ARTICLE
January 15, 2010
Journal of Moral Philosophy 6(4) (2009)
By Thom Brooks
JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY:
An International Journal of Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy
(ISSN 1740-4681)
Volume 6, Number 4 (2009)
ARTICLES
Ty Landrum, ‘Persons as Objects of Love’, pp. 417-39
Elizabeth Tropman, ‘Renewing Moral Intuitionism’, pp. 440-63
David Alm, ‘Deontological Restrictions and the Good/Bad Asymmetry’, pp. 464-81
Carl Knight, ‘Egalitarian Justice and Valuational Judgment’, pp. 482-98
Geoffrey Scarre, ‘The “Banality of Good”?’ pp. 499-519
REVIEW ARTICLE
Sean Coyle, ‘The Ideality of Law’, pp. 521-34
BOOK REVIEWS
Stefan Bird-Pollan on The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Moral and Political Philosophy by Ideo Geiger, pp. 535-37
November 16, 2009
Wedgwood on Instrumental Rationality
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Ralph Wedgwood (Oxford University) will be giving a talk today at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled ‘Instrumental Rationality.’ A copy of Ralph’s talk can be found here and a handout for his talk is here. Ralph would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk:





























































