Category Archives: Events

Talks, conferences, workshops and seminars at the department.

The Real Night at the Museum

01 Tuesday Feb 2022

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(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

Mathilde stars with the crew in the adspot for ‘The Pleasures of Regret’

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.

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What do you regret?

31 Monday Jan 2022

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Still from: ‘The Pleasures of Regret’

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.

Click here to register for tickets

Not your stereotypical summer? Try this…

26 Monday Jul 2021

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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:

  • How should we understand “stereotyping” in medical contexts?
  • What is the relationship between stereotyping and bias, including algorithmic bias (and how should we understand “bias” in different contexts?)?
  • Why does stereotyping in medicine often seem less morally or epistemically problematic than stereotyping in other domains, such as in legal, criminal, financial, educational, etc., domains? Might beliefs about biological racial realism in the medical context explain this asymmetry?
  • When and why might it be wrong for medical professionals to stereotype their patients? And when and why might it be wrong for medical AI, i.e. artificial agents, to stereotype patients?
  • How do (medical) AI beliefs relate to the beliefs of human agents, particularly with respect to agents’ moral responsibility for their beliefs?
  • Can non-evidential or non-truth-related considerations be relevant with respect to what beliefs medical professionals or medical AI ought to hold? Is there moral or pragmatic encroachment on AI beliefs or on the beliefs of medical professionals?
  • What are potential consequences of either patients or doctors being stereotyped by doctors or by medical AI in medicine? Can, for example, patients be doxastically wronged by doctors or AI in virtue of being stereotyped by them?

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!)

Listen to Dr Eleanor Knox on the BBC’s Inside Science

17 Saturday Jul 2021

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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

Tonight: The YTL Centre Annual Lecture in Politics, Philosophy and Law, “The Dignity of Old Age” by Jeremy Waldron (NYU).

08 Thursday Jul 2021

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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.

Do you want to write a review?

28 Monday Jun 2021

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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.

CFA: Sound Pictures - Music & Philosophy

Don’t forget to register! “The Dignity of Old Age” by Jeremy Waldon (NYU)

26 Saturday Jun 2021

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Registrations are still open for the YTL Centre Annual Lecture in Politics, Philosophy and Law, “The Dignity of Old Age” by Jeremy Waldron (NYU).

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.

‘Sound Pictures’ pre-watch launches today

10 Thursday Jun 2021

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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.

लाल लीला (Lāl Līla) by Nicola Durvasula – Graphic Notation no.1

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

Tomorrow’s Workshop : Solidarity in EU refugee and asylum policy

06 Sunday Jun 2021

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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

Catch John Callanan on the BBC

05 Saturday Jun 2021

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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: