Dan Zeman on New Applications of the Assessment-Sensitivity Framework

29 Saturday Nov 2025

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We are pleased to host a guest talk by Dan Zeman (MLAG, University of Porto).

The talk is on campus only. Non-KCL attendees are welcome but should register in advance. Details below.

Date and Time

Tuesday Dec 2nd, 2025 at 13:30-15:00 UK Time (UTC)

Location

Room PB 508, Philosophy Building, Strand, London WC2B 4BG. Access via King’s Strand campus entrance and then King’s Building.

Accessibility. If you have special access needs, please send an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk for us to ensure that you can reach the room.

Non-KCL attendees are welcome but must register by sending an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk by Monday Dec 1st, 13:00 UTC and should check in as visitors upon arrival with the security desk at the Strand Building entrance (Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS).

Title and Abstract

Dan Zeman

New Applications of the Assessment-Sensitivity Framework

The idea that various expressions in natural language are assessment-sensitive (that is, their denotation depends not only on the context of utterance, but also on the context of assessment) is not new. Authors such as MacFarlane (2003, 2005, 2009, 2014), Egan, Hawthorne & Weatherson (2005), Lasersohn (2005, 2016), etc. have applied this idea to a large array of perspectival expressions such as predicates of taste, aesthetic adjectives, moral terms, epistemic modals, gradable adjectives, knowledge attributions, conditionals, future contingents, etc. In this presentation, I attempt to make a prima facie case that the framework can be extended to other natural language expressions, including some socially relevant ones. For example, the view is suitable as an ameliorative account of gender terms (“man”, “woman”, “non-binary”); it seems to offer a simple treatment of dogwhistles (“inner city”, “welfare”); and it can be applied to expressives (“jerk”, “asshole”) and perhaps slurs. To be sure, in order to apply to such expressions, various modifications of the core idea of the framework will have to be introduced. Although many details remain to be ironed out, I take the prospect of applying the assessment-sensitivity framework to such expressions to show both its fruitfulness and its capacity to illuminate important social phenomena.

Organization

The talk is hosted by the Formal Methods Research group, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London.

Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz on Higher-Order Tense Realism

24 Friday Oct 2025

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We are pleased to host a guest talk by Fabrice Correia (Professor of Analytic Philosophy, University of Geneva), presenting joint work with Sven Rosenkranz, LOGOS/University of Barcelona on Higher-Order Tense Realism.

The talk is on campus only. Non-KCL attendees are welcome but should register in advance. Details below.

Date and Time

Tuesday Oct 28th, 2025 at 17:30-19:00 UK Time (UTC)

Location

Room PB 508, Philosophy Building, Strand, London WC2B 4BG. Access via King’s Strand campus entrance and then King’s Building.

Accessibility. If you have special access needs, please send an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk for us to ensure that you can reach the room.

Non-KCL attendees are welcome but must register by sending an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk by Mondy 27th, 20:00 UTC and should check in as visitors upon arrival with the security desk at the Strand Building entrance (Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS).

Title and Abstract

Fabrice Correia & Sven Rosenkranz

Higher Order Tense Realism

Realism about tense comes in various forms. Kit Fine (“Tense and Reality”, 2005 and “The Reality of Tense”, 2006) offers a helpful taxonomy. In our paper “Eternal Facts in an Ageing Universe” (2012), we improve upon this taxonomy, identifying a further type of view that Fine leaves out: Dynamic Absolutism. Both these taxonomies construe the different versions of tense realism in terms of first-order quantification over facts or states of affairs. Our goal is to show that the logical space of these first-order tense-realist positions can be replicated using higher-order quantification instead. Along the way, we rebut an argument given by Lukas Skiba in his “Higher-Order Being and Time” (2025) to the effect that there is no coherent higher-order version of Dynamic Absolutism.

Organization

The talk is hosted by the Formal Methods Research group, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London.

Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen on AI Epistemology

31 Thursday Jul 2025

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We’re pleased to host a guest talk by Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (Underwood Professor of Philosophy, Yonsei University) on AI Epistemology.
The talk will take place on campus and streamed online. Non-KCL attendees are welcome but should register in advance. Details below.

Date and Time

Tuesday Aug 5th, 2025 11:00-12:30 UK Time (UTC)

Location

Room (S)2.01, Bush House South Building, Strand, London WC2B 4BG.

Non-KCL attendees are welcome but must register by sending an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk by Monday 4th, 12:00 UTC and should check in as visitors upon arrival with the security desk at Bush House North Entrance Strand campus, 30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG.

Online access

We’ll stream the meeting via MS Teams and have a Q&A if feasible. To receive a meeting link, send an email to julien.dutant@kcl.ac.uk by Tuesday 5th, 9:00 UTC. You’ll need a MS Teams client (2024 or later) installed on your device.

Title and Abstract

AI epistemology

How might the use of AI impact the epistemic status of beliefs acquired and held by humans? In investigating this question, considerations on AI errors are used as a platform for discussion of the question of what conditions must be satisfied in order for human AI-based belief to qualify as knowledge. Theoretical tools from mainstream epistemology are brought to bear on this question.

Organization

The talk is hosted by the Formal Methods Research group, Department of Philosophy, King’s College London. Organised by Julien Dutant and chaired by Monica Z. X. Ding.

Lowkey Logoian informal: one-day workshop on Aristotelian matters

27 Thursday Mar 2025

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King’s College London, April 8th, 2025

Programme:


10:00-11:30am: Giuseppe Cumella (Oxford), “Aristotle on Sharing in the Works:
Politics VIII.6”


11:30-11:45am: Coffee Break


11:45am-1:15pm: Daniel Ferguson (KCL), “Some Remarks on the Prooimion of the
Eudemian Ethics”


1:15-2:30pm: Lunch


2:30-3:45pm: Elena Cagnoli Fiecconi (UCL), “Aristotle on Self-Improvement and
Immortal Thoughts”


3:45-4:00pm: Coffee Break


4:00-5:30pm: Joachim Aufderheide (KCL), “Law and the Divine in Aristotle”


The workshop will be held on KCL’s Strand Campus in the Macadam Building (MB) 2.1.

For catering purposes, those who wish to attend should write to Joachim Aufderheide (joachim.aufderheide@kcl.ac.uk) by March 31st if you haven’t already done so. Lunch, tea and coffee, and light snacks will be provided.

Those unaffiliated with KCL will need to check in at the Strand Security desk to gain access to the building. Thus, if you’re not a KCL affiliate, when writing to Joachim please also indicate this fact so that we can forward your name to security.

This conference is sponsored by the British Academy. We thank them for their generous
support!

Man-Devil, By John Callanan, Book Launch

07 Friday Mar 2025

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Man-Devil Book Launch

John’s Book Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe is out now. A lively and provocative account of Bernard Mandeville and the work that scandalized and appalled his contemporaries—and made him one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century.

Come along to the book launch!

Date: Thursday 27th March

Time: 18:30 -20:30

Location: Moot Court, 1.18

The Dickson Poon School of Law

King’s College London

Review in The Spectator

Review in the Literary Review

Review In History Today

KCL-UNC Joint Graduate Conference at King’s on Thursday 15th  and Friday 16th May

07 Friday Mar 2025

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We have a recurring graduate & faculty workshop conference with UNC-Chapel Hill that has been running for many years now.

We are hosting the conference this year on Thursday 15th May-Friday 16th May . Please make an effort to attend some or all of the conference, as you do for our start-of-year PGR conference. It supports your fellow students, but also encourages the continuation of the event, which allows King’s students to travel to the U.S. for invaluable experience every other year.

The theme of the conference is set by the visitors, and this year it is a mix between (a) Ancient Philosophy and (b) applied topics in ethical and political philosophy. We will have talks on the role of Glaucon in the Republic and platonic knowledge, but also on stalking, the ethics of the silent treatment, and analyses of media bias.

Annual Peace Lecture by Colleen Murphy

29 Thursday Feb 2024

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“Peace vs Justice Revisited“, by Colleen Murphy, the Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy & PoliticalScience, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Place: King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R2LS, Safra Lecture Theatre
Date and Time: 27 March 2024, 18:00–20:00, followed by reception.

Abstract: The commission of widespread atrocities is a prominent feature of contemporary conflicts and repressive regimes. Consider Ethiopia, Gaza, Ukraine, and the al-Assad regime in Syria. If any wrongdoing merits retributive justice, atrocities that constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity do. Yet efforts to end war or ongoing repression characteristically confront the peace versus justice dilemma: the pursuit of trials and punishment for perpetrators of atrocities puts peace or possibilities for regime change at risk. Various solutions to this dilemma have been pursued in both theory and practice. In theory, frameworks for balancing between the two values have been developed and alternative notions of justice that do not demand punishment embraced. In practice, alternative methods of accountability have been adopted: lustration and truth commissions among them. This talk shifts the focus to peace and articulates a conception of what I call complex peace. Conflict and repression flatten the moral universe into stark binaries: perpetrators and victims, oppressors and oppressed, enemies and friends. Peace depends on the possibility of moving beyond such binaries.

The lecture will be chaired by Massimo Renzo, Professor of Politics, Philosophy & Law at King’s College London.

All are welcome, but registration is required.

Registration page: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/kingscollegelondon6/1147881

More details: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/annual-peace-lecture-2024-peace-vs-justice-revisited?pageIndex=15

PhilEvents page: https://philevents.org/event/show/120294

The Peace Lectures are due to Alan Lacey, a life-long pacifist who taught philosophy at King’s College London for some fifteen years, and who left a generous bequest to fund a lecture series promoting peace. The series is organised by the King’s Philosophy Department. Read more about the lecture series here.

Philosophy of Physics Events, 7th and 14th December

29 Wednesday Nov 2023

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See below for two upcoming Philosophy of Physics events hosted at King’s as part of the Bristol-London-Oxford Cambridge (BLOC) network. Please do sign up and come along! 

Lucy James – Cosmic Censorship in Quarantine

Thursday 7th December 2023, 4:30-6:30pm, King’s College London Strand Campus, Strand Building S-1.04

Sign-up link: https://philevents.org/event/show/116597

Abstract: An entailment of strong cosmic censorship is that models of spacetime are to be globally hyperbolic. This talk challenges the motivation for imposing such a constraint in a ‘top-down’ manner. From a functionalist point of view, it is argued, our understanding of the global structure of spacetime at cosmological scales ought to arise from careful generalisations of dynamical laws that apply locally. A link is shown between partial differential equations of the hyperbolic type (the form of many dynamical laws) and hyperbolic manifolds, providing some reason to regard spacetime as being hyperbolic at cosmological scales. However, if the analysis includes approaches to quantum gravity whose laws may not be of the hyperbolic form, such as Euclidean approaches, this link breaks down. Strong cosmic censorship, therefore, is relevant only to a restricted set of regimes.

If you’d like to attend dinner, please email alexander.r.franklin@kcl.ac.uk

Graduate Philosophy of Physics Workshop

Thursday 14th December 2023, King’s College London Strand Campus, Bush House (SE) 1.06

Sign-up link: 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjKGCotVZ8Xuh_iCk_YyyvMGZD4RU4BCG5uN59dBGNSdpInw/viewform?pli=1

Program (all talks will take place in person):
10.30-11.00 – Arrivals and Welcome
11.00-11.50 – Noemi Bolzonetti (University of Italian Switzerland) – Pattern Wave Function Priority Monism
11.50-12.40 – Jonathan Fay (University of Bristol) – On the Relativity of Magnitudes: Delboeuf’s forgotten contribution to the 19th Century problem of space
12.40-14.00 – Lunch
14.00-14.50 – Paolo Faglia (University of Oxford) – Relational Quantum Mechanics: what is an interaction?
14.50-15.40 – Marta Pedroni (University of Geneva) – The singular case of spacetime singularities in quantum gravity
15.40-16.00 – Break
16.00-16.50 – Nicola Bamonti (Scuola Normale Superiore) – What is reference frame in General Relativity?
16.50-17.40 – Anton Sverdlikov (Bergische Universität Wuppertal) – Event Structural Realism
After – Drinks and Dinner

If you choose to attend online we will send a link a few days before. Looking forward to seeing people there! Any questions please contact bblocgradworkshop@gmail.com.

Report: ‘Humanistic Ethics in the UK’

25 Tuesday Jul 2023

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Jonathan Gingerich reports — A conference titled ‘Humanistic Ethics in the UK’ was held at King’s on 16 and 17 June 2023. The conference was co-organised by Dr Gingerich together with Dr Adam Etinson (St Andrews) and Dr Daniela Dover (Oxford). The conference brought together moral, legal, and political philosophers from North America, the UK, Europe, and Asia, for discussions of research that builds connections between philosophy and other humanistic disciplines. Speakers included Adam Etinsion (University of St Andrews), ‘On Falling Short’; Robert Simpson (University College London), ‘Free Speech Psychodrama’; Vid Simoniti (University of Liverpool), ‘Artworks as Arguments Without Conclusions’; Vida Yao (University of California, Los Angeles), ‘The Avoidance of Intimacy: A Reorientation in the Moral Philosophy of Love’; Samuel Reis-Dennis (Rice University), ‘Guilt: The Debt and the Stain’; Francey Russell (Barnard College, Columbia University), ‘“A Wedge-Shaped Core of Darkness”’; Kyla Ebels-Duggan (Northwestern University), ‘More than Moore: Murdoch and Korsgaard on Value’; and Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò (Georgetown University), ‘Security, Freedom, and Arguments from Scale’. The conference provided extensive opportunities for conversation among researchers who had not previously encountered one another’s’ work, and multiple research collaborations are expected to grow out of the conference, including the potential for further collaboration between King’s College London and the Universities of Oxford and St Andrews. Many participants reported that they found the conference extraordinarily intellectually stimulating and philosophically productive.

Harold Moody Doctoral Scholarship at KCL

13 Thursday Jul 2023

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The King’s College London Centre for Doctoral Studies are offering one studentship to support underrepresented communities for PhD study in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities.

If you identify as being of Black or Mixed-Black ethnicity, you are warmly invited to apply for one of these studentships.

The scheme offers full financial support and a skills development programme.

  • Duration: 4 years FT or 7 years PT
  • Number awards: 1 studentship
  • The Award is available for the 2023/24 academic year (February 2024 or June 2024 entry)

Application deadline: 23 October 2023

The Studentship covers:

  • Tuition fees at home level
  • An annual stipend (living allowance): at the UKRI rate (£20,622 for 2023/24) (pro-rata for PT registration)
  • Research costs: up to £1,000 per annum (pro-rata for PT registration)

Applicants MUST:

  • Apply for a PhD in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London to start either on 1st February 2024 or 1st June 2024;
  • Be UK-permanent residents who are liable for fees at the home rate;
  • Identify as one of the following ethnic groups (as identified by the applicant in the admissions application):
  • Black British, Black or Black British African, Black or Black British Caribbean, Black or Black British other or Mixed Black.

For more details, including how to apply, see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study-legacy/funding/harold-moody-pgr-studentship-202324-call-2

For more information on the Philosophy PhD programme, see https://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/areas/philosophy-research-mphil-phd

You can also contact the PhD Admissions Tutor, Alex Franklin, for advice on the Philosophy PhD programme, and applying for the scholarship.