24 Wednesday May 2023
Posted in Events
Department of Philosophy, King’s College London
A celebration of the life and work of Maria Rosa Antognazza (1964-2023)
Professor of Philosophy, KCL, 2003-23
All are welcome to join us for a celebration of the life and work of Maria Rosa Antognazza (1964 – 2023), Professor of Philosophy, KCL, 2003-23.
Wednesday 14 June 2023, 5:30pm in the Chapel, followed by a reception in the Great Hall.
King’s College London, The Strand, London WC2R 2LS.
Please register here to attend.
02 Tuesday May 2023
Posted in Announcements, Public engagements
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Join us for the ‘Time for Beauty’ virtual conference, generously sponsored by the British Society of Aesthetics (BSA). This film-based workshop invites students and researchers to explore the captivating relationship between time and the aesthetic qualities of static visual art.
The conference will be broadcast in three episodes
With each running for approximately 30 minutes. It will be accessible online from May to July 2023. To register, simply fill out the form at https://forms.gle/tBAo8R2rRcHjxRMx6, and you will receive access to the films online. We look forward to seeing you there!
09 Thursday Mar 2023
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On the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy, A.J. Wendland, and one of Ukraine’s most influential public intellectuals, Volodymyr Yermolenko talk about the power of philosophy in a time of war, the state of higher education in Kyiv, the work Ukrainian academics are doing to support their communities, and what international academics can do to help the Ukrainian academy.
Listen to the full episode here.
27 Monday Feb 2023
Posted in Events, Public engagements, Public talks, Uncategorized
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Dr Aaron James Wendland, Vision Fellow in Public Philosophy at King’s College, London and a Senior Research Fellow at Massey College, Toronto, is organizing a major online benefit event for the Ukrainian academy, entitled: ‘What Good Is Philosophy? – A Benefit Conference for Ukraine’. Here is the link:
https://civic.ukma.edu.ua/benefit/
Keynotes will be delivered by world-renowned author, Margaret Atwood, one of the most celebrated scholars of Ukrainian history, Timothy Snyder, and two of Ukraine’s preeminent public intellectuals, Mychailo Wynnyckyj and Volodymyr Yermolenko.
Lectures will also be given by some of the most influential philosophers writing today, including Peter Adamson, Elizabeth Anderson, Seyla Benhabib, Judith Butler, Agnes Callard, Quassim Cassam, Tim Crane, Simon Critchley, David Enoch, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sally Haslanger, Angie Hobbs, Barry Lam, Melissa Lane, Dominic Lopes, Kate Manne, Jeff McMahan, Jennifer Nagel, Philip Pettit, Kieran Setiya, Jason Stanley, Timothy Williamson, and Jonathan Wolff.
The conference will be produced by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, and it will be broadcast around the world on their YouTube channel on 17-19 March 2023. It can also be streamed here:
https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/kma-conference
‘What Good Is Philosophy? – A Benefit Conference for Ukraine’ aims to raise the funds required to establish a Centre for Civic Engagement at Kyiv Mohyla Academy. This Centre will provide support for academic and civic institutions in Ukraine to counteract the destabilizing impact that Russia’s invasion has had on Ukrainian higher education and civilian life. By assisting Ukrainian students and scholars today, this Centre will also help pave the way for a vibrant and engaged post-war Ukraine.
The benefit conference is designed to provide individual academics, members of the public, colleges and universities, professional associations, charitable foundations, and private companies with a way to support students, scholars, and civic institutions in Ukraine. One-time, tax-deductible donations can be made here: https://civic.ukma.edu.ua/donate/
01 Tuesday Feb 2022
Posted in Announcements, Events, Ideas, Public engagements
(And how I spent mine)
Mathilde Victoria Prietzel Nielsen (she/her)President of King’s College London Philosophy Society
Undergraduate at King’s College London Department of Philosophy
We were summoned at the Prêt across the National Gallery to meet each other, get fuel, a run-through of the plan, and role assignments. I was to be the checker, that is, to keep track of which shots we had done and which we hadn’t (this was not done sequentially!). Other roles included clapper (the wooden board, not hands), extra set of ears, extra set of eyes, prompter/stylist, equipment gather-carrier-set-upper. Once the roles had been assigned we went to the gallery to be let into the gloriously silent halls to get our badges (so as to not get hand-cuffed for wandering the halls at night) before going through the galleries to our first shot, and I must say: Monet, Picasso, and the rest of the gang makes a whole other experience when not diffused by the usual museum buzz.
Though not required, you intuitively lower your eyes, widen your gaze, and raise eyebrows to communicate to and agree with the others that this is not the usual museum experience – it is of course far better.
That is, it is better when you are together with your crew or for the first 150 meters walking alone.
Around 160 you start wondering whether you’re lost and, if so, whom to call on. Cézanne? Raphael? As a team, our main job turned out to be how to keep the lights on whilst keeping the sound off: light sensors required us to keep walking about when filming in order to keep the light on, but it happens that wooden floors may squeak, so we caught ourselves in quite the dilemma (a suitable environment for philosophers, sure). The dilemma we solved with a fusion of modern dance and loss of shoes. The night we rounded off with a communal, laugh, stretch, and yawn.
To appreciate our efforts, please sign up to the online event.!
Would you like to get involved on projects for the centre of Philosophy and Arts? Click here to find out about our events and get in touch
31 Monday Jan 2022
Posted in Announcements, Events, Ideas, Public engagements, Public talks, Uncategorized
The centre for Philosophy and Arts (KCL) are delighted to announce a new series of events exploring the relationship between art and our emotions. The series launches at The National Gallery with a film, panel discussion, and Q&A on regret. Reserve your free zoom seat here and join Vanessa Brassey from King’s College London, Andy West, author of ‘The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy’, and author and arts journalist Chloë Ashby. The event will be chaired by Sacha Golob, King’s College London.
So, what will we be discussing?
Regrets may be painful or bittersweet. They can be ethically loaded or merely a plaintive ‘perhaps’. Perhaps you could’ve been a contender; loved more kindly; been more philanthropic; or sold your bitcoin before December?
This means that regret is an aromatic concoction of nostalgia, reminiscing and grief with gentle top notes of longing. We will be thinking about the ways it can also be intensely and weirdly pleasurable. And how pictures help us to understand this, on their own special way.
The Art & Emotion series. Free (but pre-registration required). Make sure you get your seat.
In collaboration with and hosted by The National Gallery London.
26 Monday Jul 2021
Posted in Events, Public talks, Uncategorized
Stereotyping and Medical AI
Online Summer Colloquium Series
by the Sowerby Philosophy & Medicine Project
The aim of this fortnightly colloquium series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals.
Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:
We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King’s College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are welcome.
To find out more about this series, please visit the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website: https://www.philosophyandmedicine.org/summer-series. Our next colloquium in the series will be a Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion chaired by a member of the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare, and featuring our very own Professor David Papineau and Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (which you can register for here)!
Our working line-up for the summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:
June 17 Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping”
July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let’s Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” (recording linked)
July 15 Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), “ “Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI”
July 22 Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), “Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity” (recording linked)
July 29 Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare) (link to register)
August 12 Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment”
August 26 Speakers TBC
September 2 Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)
September 9 Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)
To be notified about upcoming colloquia in the series and other Project events, you can subscribe to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Previous colloquia will also be posted to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website and YouTube channel. (And for those unable to attend these colloquia, please feel free to register for our events in order to be notified once recordings of previous colloquia become available!)
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
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.
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