Mark Sainsbury (right) attending Dom Lopes’ (left) Mark Sainsbury Annual Lecture
In case you missed the fantastic reviews of the recent Dom Lopes’ Mark Sainsbury lecture, here is a round up of what was said, by whom, with links to the original post.
Distinguished University Scholar and Professor Dominic Lopes
The Department of Philosophy, King’s College London is delighted to welcome
Dominic Lopes
on Tuesday 16 March 18:00-20:00
for the Annual Sainsbury Lecture on the topic of
Aesthetic injustice
Dominic Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. He has worked on pictorial representation; the aesthetic and epistemic value of pictures, including scientific images; theories of art and its value; the ontology of art; computer art and new art forms; and aesthetic value, wherever it may be found.
Dominic Lopes is Distinguished University Scholar and Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. A member of the UBC aesthetics group, he has worked on pictorial representation; the aesthetic and epistemic value of pictures, including scientific images; theories of art and its value; the ontology of art; computer art and new art forms; and aesthetic value, wherever it may be found.
His most recent books are a collection of his essays on methodological themes, Aesthetics on the Edge: Where Philosophy Meets the Human Sciences, a book on Being for Beauty: Aesthetic Agency and Value, and Les Arts et les images: Dialogues avec Dominic McIver Lopes. Many of his books have been or are being translated into Chinese, Farsi, French, Japanese, and Korean. Lopes is now at work on a book on Aesthetic Injustice: A Cosmopolitan Theory. He is also co-authoring Aesthetic Life and Why It Matters with Bence Nanay and Nick Riggle and The Geography of Taste with Samantha Matherne, Mohan Matthen, and Bence Nanay. Both books will be published by OUP.
This week Sacha Golob (CPVA) and the National Gallery are hosting a panel discussion on Sin and Art.
Speakers include writer, drag performer and filmmaker Amrou Al-Kadhi; philosopher Deborah Casewell; art historian and Chaplain at King’s College, Cambridge, Ayla Lepine; and Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Visual Art Sacha Golob.
In May 2020, the Arts & Humanities Research Institute (AHRI) worked in collaboration with the charity Migrateful on the project Breaking Bread, providing King’s staff with the opportunity to participate in online cookery classes that were led by refugees, asylum seeker and migrants. Kneading Knowledge builds on the success and positive feedback from this project, and registration is now open for King’s student and staff to take part in eight online cookery classes running across October to November 2020
To find out more about Migrateful, a charity supporting asylum seekers, refugees and vulnerable migrants on their journey to employment, independence and integration into the community, click here.
One of the key academics involved in this project is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy Dr. Sarah Fine.
To register for one of the delicious remaining classes, maximum 10 per class, please use the links below.
The charity, Philosophy in Prison, has collaborated with The View Magazine to curate a series of blog posts on women, philosophy, and prison, with contributions from King’s philosophers MM McCabe, Jessica Leech, Sarah Fine, and Mike Coxhead. The series also includes a piece by a participant from one of the charity’s courses at HMP Downview.
Philosophy in Prison, founded by MM McCabe, Bill Brewer, and Tom Harrison, promotes and delivers philosophical education in prisons. The View Magazine is a publication by and for women in prison, with paid content by women prisoners, women on license, and those affected by the incarceration of women.
You can read the posts, dated 5th-10th July 2020, here.
Epidemiological models have been frequently mentioned in the media lately. What are they? And how do they work? Professor Alexander Bird with the Sowerby/King’s Philosophy & Medicine project has helpfully produced this introduction to epidemiological modelling for the layperson.
The particular model he will be looking at is the SIR model developed by Kermack and McKendrick in 1927.
Here’s a link to the project. Professor Bird has also produced a paper to accompany the video which is available here.
As everyone is locked up, Clayton Littlejohn has been helpfully recording and gather talks on some recent work in philosophy. This talk is an informal presentation of a paper written with Julien Dutant on epistemic rationality and defeat. It presents a new unified theory of defeat according to which the toxicity of rationality defeaters has to do with the way in which they serve as indicators that we cannot know certain things. The paper engages with recent work on epistemic paradoxes, epistemic rationality, and recent work on defeat.
If you are interested, there are more videos available here.
Prof. Maria Alvarez recently appeared on the podcast Aleks Listens, here. Over the course of the interview, she discusses being Head of Department, what it means to be an agent, and the importance of talking with people who have different views.
If you are interested in hearing a thoughtful discussion of some important issues, give it a listen.
The interview begins about 10 minutes from the beginning or 1 hour 8 mins from the end (depending on the direction you are coming from).
The most recent issue the journal Philosophy has arrived. This is the first issue of the the journal to be produced under the auspices of its new editors Prof. Maria Alvarez and Prof. Bill Brewer accompanied by their associate editors Sarah Fine, Sacha Golob, James Stazicker, and Raphael Woolf. Along with the introduction of a new blind peer-review process, the editors have also written a thoughtful editorial introduction deserving of attention.
The founders, who included the philosophers Samuel Alexander, Bertrand Russell and Sydney Hooper (the first editor), were animated by a conviction that the philosophical quest ‘begets a certain spirit of impartiality in judging all things’. That our culture is in sore need of such fair-mindedness hardly needs saying. In almost every quarter, kinds of thinking that seek truth and produce deeper and truer understanding are under threat from greed for power, fanaticism, ruthless pursuit of profit, and sheer carelessness. These beget mistrust, indifference, even hopelessness at the very time when we most need their opposites, faced as we are with some urgent problems and challenges. We need to understand better how to live well in ourselves, with each other, and with the other creatures with whom we share our endangered planet. While philosophy on its own cannot remedy all these ills, it can help. Its methods – its underlying purposes – make it a powerful tool against mendacity, narrow-mindedness and bunk.
As part of the Oxford Think Festival, Oxford University Press have curated an article reading list in order to celebrate the quest for knowledge. This year, the reading list features three King’s staff and alumni whose work spans issues from language loss and pregnancy to refugees. The articles are:
Refugees, Safety, and a Decent Human Life by Sarah Fine punished in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society [Senior Lecturer in Philosophy]
Language Loss and Illocutionary Silencing by Ethan Nowak published in Mind [Leverhulme Early Career Researcher]
Were You a Part of Your Mother? by Elselijn Kingma published in Mind [former KCL postdoc]
All articles are currently free to read at this link.
King's Philosophy 