King’s College London Mark Sainsbury Lecture 2023

Friday 2 June, 6-8pm

“Consequentialism, Cluelessness, Clumsiness, and Counterfactuals”

By Alan Hájek, Professor of Philosophy at Australian National University, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

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Abstract: According to objective consequentialism, a morally right action is one that has the best consequences. (These are not just the immediate consequences of the actions, but the long-term consequences, perhaps until the end of history.) I will argue that on one understanding this makes no sense, and on another understanding, it has a startling metaphysical presupposition concerning counterfactuals. Objective consequentialism has faced various objections, including the problem of “cluelessness”: we have no idea what most of the consequences of our actions will be. I think that on these understandings, objective consequentialism has a far worse problem: its very foundations are highly dubious. Even granting these foundations, a worse problem than cluelessness remains, which I call “clumsiness”. Moreover, I think that these problems quickly generalise to a number of other moral theories. But the point is most easily made for objective consequentialism, so I will focus largely on it.

I will consider three ways that objective consequentialism might be improved:

    1. Appeal instead to short-term consequences of actions;

    2. Understand consequences with objective probabilities;

    3. Understand consequences with subjective/evidential probabilities.

But even here, there be dragons.

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Chaired by David Sosa (UT Austin).

Venue: KCL Strand, Safra Lecture Theatre

All are welcome. The event is free, but registration is mandatory. Registration ends on 31 May at 11:30 p.m.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/annual-mark-sainsbury-lecture-tickets-623672530327

KCL Event’s page: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/events/annual-mark-sainsbury-lecture-1

Graduate students at KCL Philosophy are organising an interdisciplinary conference on Infinity taking place next Friday and Saturday (12th – 13th May). The conference features keynote addresses from Adrian Moore (Oxford) and Øystein Linnebo (Oslo). Here is the description from the organisers, Amedeo Robiolio and Pablo Dopico:

To study infinity is to study things which have no limit, no ends, or no bounds. Consequently, it touches the areas of study of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians in a remarkable number of ways, and often causing interesting difficulties in doing so, some of which, such as Zeno’s paradoxes of Hilbert’s hotel, have achieved great popularity. Infinity is philosophically relevant in Mathematics, with issues such as the different sizes of infinity, the topic of infinitesimals, and the problems of infinity in probabilistic mathematics.

But infinity encompasses a much wider range of philosophical issues than those present in the philosophy of mathematics. In metaphysics and the philosophy of physics, the issues both of infinite extension and infinite divisibility of space and of time have troubled thinkers for millennia. In the Philosophy of Religion, the infinity of God is a vast and ancient area of investigation. Indeed, the history of the philosophy of infinity, engaging with the long and complex evolution of this topic is itself an important area of research.

The conference aims to bring together researches working on all of these different perspectives on Infinity and more, hoping that this encounter will mutually benefit the advancements of these areas.  

Please click here to go to the conference website for more information on accommodation, registration and locations, and see below for the schedule. A book of abstracts can be found here. You can get in contact with the organisers here.

Conference Schedule

Day 1: Friday 12th May
9:50 Welcome
10:00 – 10:40 Bas Kortenbach (SNS Pisa): Transfinite Level Inference and Global Validity
10:45 – 11:25 Amit Pinsker (Connecticut): Potential Infinity and Decision-Theoretic Paradox
11:30 – 12:10 Julie Lauvsland (Oslo): Mathematical pluralism and the nature of the continuum
12:10 – 14:00 Lunch Break (off-site, not included)
14:00 – 14:40 Guillaume Massas (UC Berkeley): Possibility semantics and Galileo’s paradox
14:45 – 15:25 Osvaldo Ottaviani (Technion): Infinity and Monadology: What Kind of Infinity Does
Leibniz Ascribe to Individual Substances?
15:30 – 16:10 Davide Sutto (Oslo): Potentialist Set Theory: New Paths and Open Questions
16:15 – 17:45 Keynote Address, Professor Adrian Moore (Oxford): Wittgenstein and Infinity
18:15 Dinner offered to the speakers
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Day 2: Saturday 13th May
10:00 – 11:30 Keynote Address, Professor Øystein Linnebo (Oslo): Potentialism in the Philosophy and Foundations of Mathematics
11:30 – 12:30 Break
12:30 – 13:10 Markel Kortabarria (Barcelona): Grounding the Infinite Descent
13:15 – 13:55 Laura Molinaro (USI Lugano): Failure of Multilocational Endurantism in a Gunky
Spacetime
14:00 – 14:40 Chen Yang (Purdue): Hegel on Mathematical Infinity
14:40 Goodbyes

We are pleased to announce that the King’s History of Philosophy Seminars (KHOPS) are about to restart. 

We have two invited talks scheduled for this term:

25 January – Sarah Patterson (BBK) on Anne Conway

22 March – Thomas Uebel (Manchester) TBD Both meetings will take place on Wednesday evenings from 17:30 to 19:00, in the King’s Building, room K.1.27. All are welcome!

If you would like to stay informed about our events, you can head over to the website and sign up to themailing list.

Wednesday 29 March, 6-8pm

Venue: KCL Strand Campus, Bush House 8th Floor (North)

30 Aldwych, London, WC2B 4BG

“Trolleys and Drones”

Speaker: Christopher Kutz

C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law at UC Berkeley

Abstract: Trolley Problem ethics is not merely empty but pernicious: it founds a radically individualist, acontextual, and libertarian politics that has provided intellectual support for modern forms of remote warfare, with their attendant civilian casualties. Trolley Problem ethics made way for a strand of revisionist thinking about the ethics of war that normalizes and moralizes the killing of civilians.

The lecture will be chaired by Professor Marion Thain, Executive Dean of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London.

A reception will follow at Bush House, 8th Floor (South), as well as the announcement of the winners of the Estella Newsome Memorial Prize essay competition (sponsored by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament).

All are welcome! Booking required.

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/annual-peace-lecture-tickets-522509569187

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 KCL Philosophy Department.

Check out the latest from the Agora, “What’s the use of hope?” by Keiran Setiya!

Keiran Setiya teaches philosophy at MIT, working mainly in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind. He is the author of  Life is Hard, Midlife: A Philosophical Guide, Practical Knowledge, Reasons without Rationalism, and Knowing Right From Wrong.

This article is part of the Agora series, a collaboration between the New Statesman and Aaron James Wendland. Wendland is Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at King’s College, London and a Senior Research Fellow at Massey College, Toronto. He tweets @aj_wendland.