22 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Uncategorized
The Philosophy Department at King’s College London is seeking an excellent philosopher with outstanding research expertise and teaching experience in one or more of the areas where it currently has teaching needs: Political Philosophy, Epistemology and Logic. This a fixed term one year contract.
Closing date for applications: 3rd Aug 2021
Further details here
Start date: 1st September 2021
19 Monday Jul 2021
Dr Eliot Michaelson has recently been published in Pubic Ethics with a piece titled ‘What Fake News Is and Why that Matters’. As Michaelson puts it, there is a difference between a false story and fake news. The former can arise from accidents or sloppy preparation. The latter however has a pernicious or moral tang that we would do well to articulate and be wary of. What do you think?
Read the full and very engaging article here. We think it’s so clear and bright that you can even read it in the sunshine.
17 Saturday Jul 2021
Posted in Announcements, Ideas, Public talks
Epidemiologist Julian Peto is advocating mass testing as the key part of a plan to stop the virus spreading. Studies where everyone has been tested have picked up asymptomatic cases. With the addition of isolation and contact tracing this method of testing has been able to massively reduce the spread of the virus. The hope is such a coordinated scheme implemented nationally could help bring the numbers down. There’s a question over which type of test is best to use for mass testing. At the moment many of us do lateral flow tests at home. Although they give instant results their accuracy has been shown to be strongly linked to how well the tests are conducted – hence the need to back up any positive findings with the more accurate PCR test.
PCR takes longer and needs sophisticated lab equipment. However a compromise could be to use RT Lamp tests, they are accurate, give results in around 20 minutes, do require a very basic lab, but without the expensive equipment of PCR. A number of RT lamp tests have now been developed for SARS-Cov2. Kevin Fong has been to see the developers of one of them, the OxLAMP test.
And with the lifting of restrictions how are you going to judge your own personal risk from Covid?
It’s a question that interests philosopher of science Eleanor Knox. She says government mandates on mask wearing and social distancing have allowed us to avoid tricky questions around our own potential risk from the virus and risks our own behaviour might pose to loved ones. Now there’s a lot more to think about in terms of balancing our desires to return to some semblance of normality while levels of Covid infection continue to rise.
Listen to this broadcast from BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science, here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000xtb6
16 Friday Jul 2021
Posted in Announcements, Uncategorized
Philosophy student Atyab Rashid is captain of KCL’s University Challenge team. Get the popcorn ready and cheer the team on here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000xwlg/university-challenge-202122-episode-1
08 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Announcements, Public talks
Join us tonight for the Annual Lecture of the YTL Centre.
Tickets are here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ytl-centre-annual-lecture-the-dignity-of-old-age-tickets-156900279961
This year the lecture will be given by Jeremy Waldron (NYU), with replies from Stephen Darwall(Yale), Frances Kamm (Rutgers), Rae Langton and Richard Holton (Cambridge).
The lecture will take place on Teams on 8 July 2021, 16:00 – 18:00 BST.
Please join us by registering on Eventbrite.
28 Monday Jun 2021
Posted in Announcements, Events, Public talks, Uncategorized
Would you like to do a short (200 word+/-) review for our upcoming ‘Sound Pictures’ conference (pre-watch available now, live keynote and Q&A on 10th July)? Choose from a selection of ‘watch’ ahead talks. For example Professor Derek Matravers’s video on mixed perceptual modalities, or a novel philosophical argument about songwriting (complete with musical performances) from NYU’s Jenny Judge, or a fresh and critical podcast from our very own Colette Olive (KCL), as well as several other academic contributors. Plus there are recorded msucial performances and interviews with Bafta-nominee Film Composer Anne Chmelewsky and never before seen performances from Multi-Award winning violinist and composer Anna Phoebe and Tate Artist Nicola Durvasula. It’s a philosophy conference – just done a little bit differently – and open to anyone who has ever wondered about the nature of the connection between sound and image.
Interested to find out more? Here’s the topic overview film. If it intrigues and inspires you register for all the pre-watch here, and get in touch with us at philosophyandvisualarts@gmail.com about writing a review.
The conference is aimed at a broad audience so we hope there is something here to engage with philosophically for artists, musicians, undergraduate students from a broad variety of disciplines, and of course, for researchers working on the topic. The introduction film and interviews are aimed primarily at those less familiar with what is distinctive about this question philosophically, or with a particular speakers’ work, or who are newly interested in the kind of questions we have posed.
This conference is generously sponsored by a small grant from the British Society of Aesthetics.
26 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Announcements, Public talks
You can register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-ytl-centre-annual-lecture-the-dignity-of-old-age-tickets-156900279961
This year the lecture will be given by Jeremy Waldron (NYU), with replies from Stephen Darwall(Yale), Frances Kamm (Rutgers), Rae Langton and Richard Holton (Cambridge).
The lecture will take place on Teams on 8 July 2021, 16:00 – 18:00 BST.
Please join us by registering on Eventbrite.
10 Thursday Jun 2021
Posted in Events, Public talks, Uncategorized
The British Society of Aesthetics is delighted to sponsor Sound Pictures, a zoom conference featuring original pre-watch/listen/read keynotes, musical performances, philosopher, film composer and artist interviews.
Register here
The Theme
Imagine a sculpture made to be heard, or a picture that can be played on a banjo. Although many artworks are multi-sensory in the sense that they invite appreciation by sight, sound, movement and even touch (e.g film and immersive theatre) it might seem odd to say a simple drawing is genuinely multisensory. We don’t expect a drawing to look like the taste of strawberries, just as we don’t expect warm vanilla to taste like triangles.
This expectation carries over to appreciation. It is natural to think that when your friend remarks on a painting they will say something about how it looks, rather than how it sounds. But, given that multi-sensory appreciation is held to be ‘the rule and not the exception in perception’ (Shimojo and Shams, 2001) do we ever appreciate a work with a single sensory mode? Does adequate appreciation of (apparently) single sensory artworks (for example, a painting) require input from the other senses?
Confirmed Speakers
Mitchell Green (UCONN)
Derek Matravers (OU)
Jenny Judge (NYU)
Natalie Bowling (Goldsmiths)
Jason Leddington (Bucknell)
Colette Olive (King’s College London)
Register here
About cross-sensory artforms and graphic notations
Several art-forms speak to the question of multisensory confusion, integration and enhancement. For instance, the concept of music is fundamental to Kandinsky’s work. He believed one should ‘see’ his paintings aurally. Likewise, Goethe declared that architecture was “frozen music”. An example pertinent to philosophical reflection is that of graphic notation, where a piece of music is ‘directly depicted’ rather than written down in conventional musical notation. Visual works of art to be appreciated musically were brought to public attention by Earle Brown and John Cage. The experimental movement reached a peak with Cornelius Cardew’s Treatise (1963-1967).
Important Dates
Registration for Conference now open here
Pre-watch materials online 10 June 2021 (register for access)
Live keynote + Q&A 10th July 2021
Artist Contributors
Film Composer Anne Chmelewsky (BAFTA nominee, LA newcomer Winner,)
Graphic Notation artist Nicola Durvasula (Tate Modern, Royal Drawing School),
Violinist and Composer Anna Phoebe (Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock Festival and Montreux Jazz Festival, Rock Legends Festival, Notte della Taranta Festival )
Pianist and Composer Jenny Judge (Pet Beast)
Pianist and Composer Jørgen Dyrstad (King’s College London)
Organising Committee
Vanessa Brassey
Giulia Corti
Contact
For any and all enquiries, please contact the organisers through philosophyandvisualarts@gmail.com
06 Sunday Jun 2021
7 -8 June 2021
About the workshop
Almost everyone thinks that the current EU system of rules governing asylum seekers and refugees is problematic. The system has failed to harness the bloc’s collective resources to address, in a just manner, the challenge posed by the sudden influx of migrants in 2015 and the continued arrivals since. And it is no doubt ill-prepared for the future of regular and irregular flows to Europe. But what would be a better system and why? In September 2020, the European Commission released its ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’. The pact includes a reform package to Dublin regulations; significantly, it purports to strike the right balance between responsibility and solidarity. But many commentators are skeptical that the new pact brings anything new to the table, and, in many areas, may be a step back.
The aim of this workshop is to bring together top legal and policy-oriented scholars with political philosophers working in related areas to discuss what a just system of rules for EU asylum seekers and refugees would look like. In particular, participants are encouraged to reflect on the question of what a fair distribution of responsibilities for the protection of asylum seekers and refugees requires in Europe. The aim of the workshop is to be bold in its proposals and principles, in the realization that ‘to achieve the possible we must sometimes reach out for the impossible’ (Weber). The workshop is funded by an ERC Grant, no. 771635, ‘Solidarity in the European Union’ (EUSOL) and is in collaboration with RefMig
For more information and registration (required): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/solidarity-in-eu-refugee-and-asylum-policy-tickets-153981971221
05 Saturday Jun 2021
Posted in Announcements, History of Philosophy, Ideas, Interviews, Public talks, Uncategorized
Yesterday, Dr. John Callanan joined Melvyn Bragg Broadcaster and host of In our Time, Fiona Hughes Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Essex, and Anil Gomes Associate Professor and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford to discuss the insight into our relationship with the world that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) shared in his book The Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. It was as revolutionary, in his view, as when the Polish astronomer Copernicus realised that Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the Sun around Earth. Kant’s was an insight into how we understand the world around us, arguing that we can never know the world as it is, but only through the structures of our minds which shape that understanding. This idea, that the world depends on us even though we do not create it, has been one of Kant’s greatest contributions to philosophy and influences debates to this day.
In case you missed it you can catch the episode here:
King's Philosophy 