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King's Philosophy

~ Official blog of the philosophy department at King's College London.

King's Philosophy

Category Archives: Uncategorized

New philosophy videos from Clayton Littlejohn

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Ideas, News, Public engagements, Public talks, Uncategorized, Workshops

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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.

Philosophy and Medicine Colloquium: Robin Durie, University of Exeter

28 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Events, Ideas, News, Public talks, Uncategorized

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The Philosophy and Medicine Colloquium will be meeting on the 17th of March to hear a talk by Dr Robin Durie, University of Exeter. Dr Durie is a member of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death

17 March 2020 – 17:00-18:30 in the Large Committee Room, Hodgkin Building, Guy’s Campus

If you do not have a KCL ID, please register (free) at this Link.

The Lancet Commission on The Value of Death argues that contemporary society has developed an unhealthy relationship with death due in part to the over-medicalisation of death and dying. Amongst the signs of this unhealthy relationship are the ever increasing amounts of healthcare budgets that are spent on prolonging the lives of those who are dying, with seemingly little or no regard for the quality of the life being prolonged; the investment in the search for immortality amongst the very richest in society, at the same time as the poorest are denied access to even the most basic provision of palliative care; and the gradual shift of the experience of dying from communities and families to hospitals. The core problem of this Lancet Commission is one to which philosophy can make a unique contribution, not least because philosophy has, from its very inception in the work of Plato, understood itself as a “practice for death”. And yet, philosophers such as Spinoza have also argued that “philosophy thinks of death least of all things”. In the first part of this discussion, I will explore this tension in philosophy’s approach towards death; then, I will draw on some more contemporary thinkers, such as Georges Canguilhem, in order to develop a philosophical position from which it may be possible to begin valuing death anew.

‘The Celluliod Closet’ Film Screening (MAP)

25 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by kclmap in Uncategorized

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 To celebrate LGBT+ History Month, KCL MAP will be hosting a free film screening of ‘The Celluloid Closet’. This is a documentary surveying the various Hollywood screen depictions of the LGBTQ community and the attitudes behind them throughout the history of North American film.

Time: 18:00-20:00, Thursday 27th Feburary

Location: (S)4.03, Bush House

All are welcome. If you are not a KCL student or staff member then you will need to register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lgbt-history-month-film-screening-the-celluloid-closet-tickets-96248974273

King’s College London Peace Lecture: Prof Cécile Fabre (Rescheduled)

07 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Uncategorized

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The King’s College London Peace Lecture with Prof Cécile Fabre previously scheduled for the 10th of March has been rescheduled for another date.

New to the Department: Alexander Franklin

06 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Ideas, News, Research, Uncategorized

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Photo by Justin Hamilton

Where where you before coming to King’s?

I did my PhD and MPhilStud at King’s, so I’ve been here since 2013. However, most recently I came here from Bristol where I was a postdoc on a project with the grand title ‘The Metaphysical Unity of Science’. The great thing about that project is that it allowed me to work on my own research while also giving me the chance to collaborate with the other postdocs (Vanessa Seifert and Toby Friend) on exciting topics. The products of these collaborations should be completed soon!

How did you become interested in philosophy?

I’m lucky enough to have been introduced to philosophy from a very young age by my dad (who also has a PhD in philosophy). Throughout my childhood and later life we’d go on walks on Hampstead Heath discussing philosophy (though not necessarily calling it that) as well as various religious Jewish texts. So, it’s not clear to me that I’ve ever not been into philosophy. The choice to study philosophy professionally was likely motivated in part by the desire to keep up with the conversations when Oliver Black (a schoolfriend of my Dad’s) would join us on these walks! But I really became excited when, as an undergraduate, I started learning about the philosophy of physics!

Your work involves the role of emergence in science, do you think there is a single concept of emergence applicable across different levels of scientific explanation or are we talking about different things? 

That’s a good question, and a difficult one to answer. In my more hubristic moments, I think that everyone is talking about the same thing, and that the account of it that I defend with Eleanor Knox, is the one to which everyone should appeal! I do think that many of the uses of the term ‘emergence’ across science have a lot in common with each other, and that, if one wants to use the philosophical jargon, scientists are mainly talking about weak ontological emergence (in its synchronic or diachronic forms). I think that strong emergence is almost exclusively found within philosophy (and that’s one reason to be sceptical of it!). Having said all that, it’s worth noting that I’ve read much more physics than any other science, and so my views should not be taken to result from a systematic study of the literature. 

It has been argued in the past that special sciences are autonomous from more fundamental sciences. Do you think that we can ever give an explanation of this autonomy or will it remain a mystery?

The boring answer to this question is that it depends on how ‘autonomy’ is defined. A fair few philosophers assume (explicitly or implicitly) that autonomy is the kind of thing that just can’t be explained – that if a science is autonomous then the relations between it and the lower-level sciences aren’t the sorts of relation which allow for explanation of that autonomy. My view is that, while there’s a sense in which the special sciences are clearly autonomous, that’s a sense which is compatible with explaining how that autonomy comes about. 

The basic idea is that autonomy corresponds to a kind of stability: my desk is autonomous because it will look the same even while its constituent particles are continually jiggling about. So part of explaining autonomy is explaining why the jiggling about of the particles just doesn’t make a difference to the macroscopic properties of the table. Once we’ve made this conceptual shift, then we can repurpose a great many scientific explanations to explanations of autonomy: the table’s autonomy is explained by the theories which tell us about how the particles are arranged in a lattice, and how wood is cohesive etc. I’ve written a paper about this that’s currently under review, so hopefully it’ll all be public soon!

Is there a philosophical idea that you endorse and that most people don’t but should?

I think that there may well be no fundamental level – that we may continue describing the world ever more precisely for ever and ever!

KCL MAP RG – 12/02/20

05 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by kclmap in Uncategorized

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KCL MAP reading group will be looking at ‘The rational impermissibility of accepting (some) racial generalizations’ by Renee Bolinger . We will be meeting 13:00-14:00, on Wednesday 12th Feb, at Activity Room B, 8th Floor, South East Wing, Bush House. 

Reading: Bolinger: Rational ImpermissibilityDownload

Abstract: I argue that inferences from highly probabilifying racial generalizations (e.g. believing that Jones is a janitor, on the grounds that most Salvadoreans at the school are janitors) are not solely objectionable because acting on such inferences would be problematic, or they violate a moral norm, but because they violate a distinctively epistemic norm. They involve accepting a proposition when, given the costs of a mistake, one is not adequately justified in doing so. First I sketch an account of the nature of adequate justification—practical adequacy with respect to eliminating the ¬p possibilities from one’s epistemic statespace. Second, I argue that inferences based on demographic generalizations tend to disproportionately expose group members to the risks associated with mistakenly assuming stereotypical propositions, and so magnify the wrong involved in relying on such inferences without adequate justification.

Peter Adamson: From Known to Knower

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Events, History of Philosophy, Ideas, News, Uncategorized

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Peter Adamson (KCL, LMU Munich) will be speaking to the department about on Friday 28th February, 3-5pm in Room 508 of the Philosophy Building.

The title of his talk is “From Known to Knower: Affinity Arguments for the Mind’s Incorporeality in the Islamic World”

Prof. Adamson’s latest book Classical Indian Philosophy will be released by Oxford University Press in March.

Philosophy in Medical Education Conference

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Events, Ideas, News, Uncategorized

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The organisers of the conference Philosophy in Medical Education are pleased to invite abstract submissions. The conference is due to take place at King’s College London on the 6th – 8th of April 2020. 

The conference will look at the role and the details of teaching philosophy as part of the curriculum of medical schools. We invite abstracts of papers on all aspects of this topic, from, for example, papers on the value of philosophy in medical education to papers on specific teaching topics to reports of experiences of teachers and students, and so on. We welcome interdisciplinary submissions. 

Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to PhilAndMed@kcl.ac.uk  by 14 February 2020.  We will select papers for inclusion in the conference as soon as possible after that date. 

We will have some funding for bursaries to support the participation of graduate students and early career researchers. General inquiries can be directed to harriet.fagerberg@kcl.ac.uk. 

MAP Reading Group – 29/01/20

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by kclmap in Uncategorized

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This week, MAP reading group will be looking at ‘Responsibility Without Blame: Empathy and the Effective Treatment of Personality Disorder’ by Hanna Pickard. In the paper, Pickard examines the relation between personality disorder and concepts such as responsibility and blame. 

Reading: Responsibility Without BlameDownload


Location: Activity Room E, 8th Floor, South East Wing, Bush House

Time: 13:00-14:00, Wednesday 29th January

Women Intellectuals in Antiquity

23 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by fmallory in Announcements, Events, News, Uncategorized

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Image result for Sappho statue kings

Dr Katharine O’Reilly will be co-organising a conference on Women Intellectuals in Antiquity at the University of Oxford next month (14th-15th Feb). The symposium aims to bring together scholars from across the humanities disciplines to discuss women intellectuals in Antiquity and will feature keynote lectures from Dr. Danielle Layne and Dr. Sophia Connell, and a panel discussions led by Armand D’Angour.

Katharine notes: “The event is really a first, and many of the women philosophers we’re discussing are mostly unknown outside a very small circle, so we’re very excited to be running this”.

To see the event announcement on PhilEvents, click here.

The programme for the event is here and to register, click here.

Registration, including lunch and coffees, is free for students.

King’s is one of the few philosophy departments to offer a course dedicated to Women Thinkers in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Hopefully this symposium will call greater attention to this research in this field.

For any questions, please email WomenIntellectualsInAntiquity@gmail.com

This event is jointly organised by Jenny Rallens, Peter Adamson, Katharine O’Reilly, and Ursula Coope with the support of Keble College Oxford, the British Society for the History of Philosophy (BSHP), The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), Oxford University, the Department of Classics at King’s College London, and LMU Munich.  

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