August 27, 2010
Conference on Cora Diamond’s Work
By S. Matthew Liao
From Professor Sandra Laugier (Sorbonne):
This conference is meant as an homage to Cora Diamond’s work in ethics, and focuses on its European reception. Her work has been translated in French and Italian in the recent years.
“Ethics, Imagination, and Forms of Life”
13-15 September 2010, Amiens, France
Pôle cathédrale, Placette Lafleur
Amphithéâtre Carré de Malberg
Admission free – open to graduate students and researchers
Contact : sandra.laugier (at) noos.fr
Monday, September 13th
Amphithéâtre Carré de Malberg
Opening
Sandra Laugier, Emmanuel Halais (UPJV, CURAPP)
1. ETHICS AND OBJECTIVITY
Chair : Vincent Descombes (EHESS)
August 7, 2010
CONF: Problem with Priority?
By S. Matthew Liao
Sometime ago, Mike Otsuka (UCL) mentioned here that Derek Parfit will be responding to an article by him and Alex Voorhoeve entitled ‘Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View’ here on Ethics Etc, with further responses from Mike and Alex, once Derek’s book, On What Matters, is published. In the meantime, the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) has put together a really nice one day conference to discuss Mike’s and Alex’s paper.
Date: 19th November 2010
Time: 10.30am – 5.30pm
Location: University of Manchester, UK
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.
March 29, 2010
CFP: 2nd Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics
By S. Matthew Liao
The Second Annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics will be held at the Westward Look Resort, Tucson, Arizona from January 6 through January 8, 2011.
Normative ethical theory addresses general questions about the right and the good and attempts to answer such questions as: What sorts of actions are right or wrong and why? What sort of person ought one to become and why? Normative ethical theories, including, for instance, versions of consequentialism, deontology, contractualism, natural law theory, and virtue ethics address such questions.
Keynote Speakers:
Robert Audi – David E. Gallo Professor of Business Ethics in the Mendoza College of Business and Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
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 25, 2010
Smilansky on Should We Be Sorry That We Exist?
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Saul Smilansky (University of Haifa) will be giving a talk on Monday, March 1, at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar entitled “Should We Be Sorry that We Exist?” A copy of Saul’s talk can be found here. Saul would welcome any comments/suggestions. Here’s an abstract of his talk:
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 14, 2009
Continuum Ethics book series
By Thom Brooks
Continuum Ethics
A series of books exploring key topics in contemporary ethics and moral philosophy.
Continuum Ethics presents a series of books that will bridge the gap between new research work and undergraduate textbooks. They will provide close examination of key concepts in contemporary moral philosophy. Aimed largely at upper-level undergraduates and research students, they will also appeal to researchers in the field. Authors will be expected to combine philosophical sophistication with an accessible style that can engage the educated reader.
October 5, 2009
Sentimentalism and Moral Grammar
By Antti Kauppinen
In this post, all too long and speculative, I will examine how a sentimentalist theory of moral thinking could exploit and improve recently popular theories of universal moral grammar, developed by John Mikhail, Susan Dwyer, Marc Hauser’s group, Gilbert Harman and Erica Roedder, and others. I’ll be drawing mostly on Mikhail’s 2009 ‘Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence’, in Psychology of Learning and Motivation 50, 27–100 for moral grammar. The sentimentalist theory I sketch is my own, though heavily inspired by Adam Smith. It is independently motivated, but I believe it does a better job of explaining our intuitions than other views that highlight the role of emotions.
August 28, 2009
Conference on the Work of Onora O’Neill
By S. Matthew Liao
The British Academy, in association with the Centre de recherche en éthique de l’Université de Montréal, will be hosting an international conference on the work of Onora O’Neill, entitled “Ethics and Politics Beyond Borders: The Work of Onora O’Neill.
24-26 SEPTEMBER 2009
10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1
Convenor: Professor David Archard (Lancaster University)
Thursday, 24 September 2009
12.00 Registration
1.30 Session 1: The ethics and politics of global justice
Welcome and opening remarks
August 2, 2009
Roberts and Wasserman on Harming Future Persons
By S. Matthew Liao
Harming Future Persons: Ethics, Genetics and the Nonidentity Problem, edited by Melinda Roberts and David Wasserman, just came out!
From the back cover:
This collection of essays investigates the obligations we have in respect of future persons, ranging from our own future offspring to distant future generations. What are our obligations to persons who have not yet, but eventually will, come into existence? Can we harm them? Can we wrong them? Can the fact that our choice means that a worse off person will exist in place of a better off but “nonidentical” person make that choice is wrong?
July 7, 2009
Program for Arizona Normative Ethics Workshop
By S. Matthew Liao

This First Annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics takes place at the Westward Look Resort in Tucson, Arizona, from January 7 to January 9, 2010. Here is the program for it, which looks great:
Thursday January 7
5:00–6:30 pm KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Holly M. Smith (Rutgers)
The Moral Clout of Reasonable Beliefs
Chair: David Schmidtz (University of Arizona)
May 14, 2009
Conference on Extensions of Justice, June 3-4, Hebrew U
By David Enoch
On June 3-4, the Law and Philosophy Forum at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will hold an international conference on extensions of justice. The conference is organized by Prof. David Heyd. Speakers and commentators include Axel Gosseries, Avner De-Shalit, Lukas Meyer, Daniel Statman, Melinda Roberts, David Enoch, Gustaf Arrhenius, Re’em Segev, David Miller, Chaim Gans, Shlomi Segall, Efrat Ram Tiktin, Joshua Cohen, Yitzhak Benbaji, Daniel Attas, and David Heyd.
You can find the conference program, and other details (and soon, we hope, also the papers) on the conference website, here.
May 2, 2009
Parfit and the Priority View
By Mike Otsuka
An article by Alex Voorhoeve and me entitled ‘Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View’ has just been published in Philosophy & Public Affairs. The article includes a link to this post ‘for remarks by Derek Parfit in reply to this article, plus the authors’ response’. Unfortunately, this exchange won’t be ready until after Parfit has finished his book On What Matters. So once you see that book for sale, watch this space for his response to our critique. See below the fold for an abstract of the article:
April 22, 2009
Conference: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams
By Ulrike Heuer
Center for Ethics and Metaethics, Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds
30 June to 2 July
Venue: University of Leeds, Devonshire Hall
Further information:http://williamsconference.googlepages.com/home
Registration:http://williamsconference.googlepages.com/registration
Programme
Tuesday, 30 June
9:30 – 11:15 Susan Wolf (UNC, Chapel Hill): ‘“One Thought Too Many”: Love, Morality and the Ordering of Commitment’
Respondent: Brad Hooker (Reading)
15 min coffee break
11:30 – 1:15 Philip Pettit (Princeton): ‘The Inescapability of Consequentalism’
Respondent: Roger Crisp (Oxford)
Lunchbreak until 2:15
2:15 – 4 Jay Wallace (UC Berkeley): ‘Regret, Justification and Value. Reflection on Themes from “Moral Luck”’
April 15, 2009
Workshop: Deference and Responsibility
By S. Matthew Liao
Centre for Ethics and Metaethics and Department of Philosophy
University of Leeds
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Venue: IDEA-CETL Building (8-12 Fenton St.), Seminar Room 1
Schedule:
2:00-3:45pm
Prof Matthew Hanser (UC Santa Barbara): “Deferring to Others”
3:45-4:15pm
Coffee break
4:15-6:00pm
Dr Helen Frowe (Sheffield): “Obeying Orders”
6:00pm-
Drinks and dinner at a local restaurant
April 15, 2009
CFP: Arizona Workshop on Normative Ethics
By S. Matthew Liao
The first Annual Arizona Workshop on Normative Ethics will take place in Tucson, Arizona at the Westward Look Resort on January 7-9, 2010. Keynote speakers will be Thomas E. Hill (UNC, Chapel Hill), Holly Smith (Rutgers) and Peter Railton (Michigan).
Professor Mark Timmons invites those interested in presenting a paper at the workshop to submit a 2-3 abstract (double-spaced) by June 1, 2009. Only one submission per person please. Abstracts will be evaluated by a program committee and decisions made in early July.
Further information about the Workshop, submission of abstracts, and location can be found on the Workshop website:
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