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King's Philosophy

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

King's Philosophy

Category Archives: Uncategorized

Final Call! Lecturer in Philosophy

22 Thursday Jul 2021

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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

King’s Philosopher captains University Challenge team

16 Friday Jul 2021

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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

Hiring: Two Lectureships – Political Philosophy, and Ethics or Epistemology (both indefinite contracts)

06 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by alexrfranklin in Uncategorized

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https://jobs.kcl.ac.uk/gb/en/job/025965/Lectureship-in-Political-Philosophy

https://jobs.kcl.ac.uk/gb/en/job/025928/Lectureship-in-Ethics-or-Epistemology

Political Philosophy:

The Philosophy Department at King’s College London is seeking an outstanding philosopher with research expertise and teaching experience in political philosophy. Research specialization, competence and ability to teach and supervise students at all levels in political philosophy are required.

Research or teaching expertise or competence in areas that will help widen or consolidate our curriculum are desirable. These areas include, but are not limited to, non-Western philosophy, logic, and philosophical issues concerning race and gender.

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract. This is a full-time post – 100% full time equivalent. Closing date: 3rd August.

Ethics or Epistemology:

The Philosophy Department at King’s College London is seeking an outstanding philosopher with research expertise and teaching experience in ethics or epistemology, broadly construed. Research specialization, competence and ability to teach at all levels and supervise postgraduate students in one of those areas are required. 

Research, teaching expertise or competence in areas that will help widen or consolidate our curriculum are desirable. These areas include, but are not limited to, non-Western philosophy, logic, and philosophical issues concerning race and gender. 

This post will be offered on an indefinite contract. This is a full-time post – 100% full time equivalent. Closing date: 3rd August.

King’s Philosophy Department is one of the largest and most distinguished departments in the UK. We have particular research strengths in the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophy of language and logic, metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science, and moral and political philosophy. 

Further information 

Applicants should include the following with their application:  

(1)    CV, with a list of publications  

(2)    a personal statement (around 500-1,000 words) 

(3)    the names and contact details of two referees 

(4)    two recent pieces of research on a topic relevant to the post of no more than 8,000 words each (these may be indicated portions of a larger piece of work).  

The Department will request references for longlisted candidates.  Presentations and interviews of shortlisted candidates will take place online. Start date: as early as possible during the academic year 2021-22. 

We welcome applications from all and encourage applications especially from members of groups underrepresented in UK academic Philosophy and from people marginalised on any of the grounds enumerated under the UK Equality Act 2010. 

Do you want to write a review?

28 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by vanessabrasseykcl in Announcements, Events, Public talks, Uncategorized

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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

‘Sound Pictures’ pre-watch launches today

10 Thursday Jun 2021

Posted by vanessabrasseykcl in Events, Public talks, Uncategorized

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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

Catch John Callanan on the BBC

05 Saturday Jun 2021

Posted by vanessabrasseykcl in Announcements, History of Philosophy, Ideas, Interviews, Public talks, Uncategorized

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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:

Applying political philosophy with trainers

04 Friday Jun 2021

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Alexandra Kytka, a King’s student who took “Topics in Philosophy: Ethics of Migration,” with Dr. Sarah Fine, has been inspired to run over 13 miles in aid of Refugee Action. To find out why Alexandra was so motivated read the full story here (and you can donate from this page too!).

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/alexandra-kytka

Review: Cécile Fabre, “‘Snatching Something from Death’: Value, Justice, and Humankind’s Common Heritage” (KCL Annual Peace Lecture 2021)

20 Thursday May 2021

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Dan Elbro (Phd Candidate)

Cécile Fabre claims, firstly, that some ‘heritage goods’ – things valued partly because they are part of the past, and which we are disposed to preserve – are part of humankind’s common heritage (HCH); and, secondly, that we have duties of justice to preserve and ensure access to those goods. Fabre’s talk was incredibly rich, touching on issues ranging from the nature of value; the good life; why we all feel (or ought to feel) the loss of structures such as Notre-Dame cathedral or the Buddhas of Bamiyan; and controversies surrounding cultural appropriation and the ownership and repatriation of artifacts procured through, for example, looting, conquest or colonialism, such as the Elgin marbles. I cannot cover all of these points in this short review, so I’ll make a couple of points about her claim that we have duties of justice to preserve and ensure access to HCH.

This claim is based on the idea that if a heritage good is part of HCH, it has universal value: we all have reasons to value it. If there are such goods, then it is plausible, as Fabre claims, that access to them is part of a flourishing human life. And since it is also plausible that justice demands we each have equal opportunities to attain a flourishing life, Fabre’s claims that we have (a) a negative duty not to impede access to HCH, and (b) a positive duty to provide others with the means to access it, seem well founded.

These claims have potentially revisionary implications for ethical, political and legal theory. For example, if it is a duty of justice to ensure access to HCH, then governments may have duties to allow immigration, so that immigrants can access parts of HCH which can be found in a particular country. For that reason, it’s important that we know exactly which goods we have duties of justice to preserve and provide means of access to.

To this end, Fabre argues that we have duties of justice regarding the goods themselves, rather than replicas or digital copies of the goods. She argues that justice demands we promote understanding of HCH, most pressingly those parts concerning crimes against humanity like the slave trade, rather than mere knowledge of it; and that access to the originals is required for understanding. But don’t we also have some kind of duty to make, preserve and increase access to replicas? And if so, is that also a duty of justice?

It seems that we have, at least, some kind of duty regarding replicas of HCH. Although having access to a replica certainly seems not to have the same value as having access to the original, it seems that access to replicas can nevertheless improve, firstly, our access to and, secondly, our understanding of the real thing. But, since these duties seem to have the same grounds as our duties of justice regarding access to originals, it might seem that our duties regarding access to replicas are duties of justice.

Firstly, we can use replicas to improve access to HCH by increasing our knowledge of them. I am thinking particularly of the use of replicas in schools to teach children about artworks or practices that are part of our common heritage. For example, a photograph of Picasso’s Guernica, even seen on a badly lit PowerPoint presentation in a noisy art class, might grant a child knowledge about a piece of our common heritage; or a recording of a Gamelan performance in a music class might increase a student’s knowledge of what music can be.

It seems to me that increasing our knowledge of these goods in these ways can be a means of improving access to the original. If someone doesn’t know that these goods exist, then they cannot know where to go to seek out the originals, or even that they ought to. And if, as seems likely, access to knowledge about goods belonging to HCH is not equally distributed among, say, levels of income, then access to the originals is therefore not equally distributed either. So, ensuring that children have access to replicas of HCH in schools seems a way to equalise opportunities for accessing the originals. But if making and improving access to replicas of HCH can improve access to the original, it seems that our duties of justice include duties to make and improve access to replicas, not only originals.

Secondly, it seems that using replicas in the classroom can also be a means of increasing understanding. Returning to the two examples just given, a teacher might be able to use a replica of a particular heritage good to improve a student’s understanding of it. They might be able to point things to listen out for, such as unfamiliar instruments, in a Gamelan performance. Or they might be able to point out things to look out for in Guernica, or provide important the important historical context of the Spanish Civil War crucial to properly understanding and fully appreciating the work. If the student had not known what to look out for beforehand, they might feel bewilderment, rather than admiration or awe, in the presence of the original. So it seems that sometimes, access to replicas of HCH is necessary in order to gain understanding when in the presence of the originals.

But if our duties to provide replicas of HCH are duties of justice, this poses a problem for Fabre’s account. The problem is that it is easier to provide access to replicas than originals, but we also have a sense that they are ‘second-best’ to the originals. If justice demands that we provide access to replicas, and this is easier than providing access to the originals, then it seems we would be permitted to take the easier option and ensure wide access to replicas while doing nothing to improve access to the originals. If that is right, then it might be that governments don’t have the duties to allow immigration I mentioned earlier. But since it seems that replicas are ‘second-best’, it therefore seems that we would somehow be failing to fulfil our duties by ensuring access only to replicas.

One solution might be to point out that the condition for our having duties to provide replicas of HCH is that they improve access to and understanding of the originals. So, perhaps we cannot have duties to improve access to replicas unless we also have more fundamental duties of justice to improve access to, and not to destroy, the originals.

This response is complicated, however, by historical intangible goods like performances and cultural practices. One of Fabre’s examples of HCH is a 1904 recording of Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato and the only one to make a solo recording. Although we can never be in the presence of original historical performances such as this, we are lucky to have the recording—arguably, itself a replica—as it provides us a kind of access to the performance itself. If the performance itself was the original and the recording is a replica, then we cannot provide access to the original but we can provide access to the replica relatively easily. It seems that in this case, we have a particularly strong duty to ensure access to the replica because we cannot have a duty to ensure access to the original. I look forward to future work from Fabre on this fascinating topic, particularly as it applies to intangible heritage goods.

Cécile Fabre – Annual Peace Lecture

12 Wednesday May 2021

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Cécile Fabre

Thank you so much to all who attended the Annual Peace Lecture given yesterday (Tuesday 11 May 2021) by Cécile Fabre. It was a brilliant talk and it was so lovely to see many of our alumni/ae joining in. Do keep in touch!

Decolonising Philosophy panel discussion: what would a decolonised curriculum look like?

26 Monday Apr 2021

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curriculum, decolonisation

What would a decolonised curriculum look like? Join us 6-8pm on May 10th over Zoom. We have a very exciting panel of guest speakers who will discuss the decolonisation of philosophy, followed by a Q&A.

Speakers:

Achille Mbembe (Professor at University of Witwatersrand WiSER) ‘Necropolitics’, ‘Out of the Dark Night’

Gargi Bhattacharyya (Professor at University of East London) ‘Rethinking Racial Capitalism’

Lucy Allais (Professor at University of Witwatersrand & UC San Diego) ‘Kant’s Racism’

Nelson Maldanado-Torres (Professor at Rutgers University) ‘Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity’

This event has been organised by Naomi Snow in collaboration with Decolonise KCL and KCL Minorities and Philosophy Society.

Join the Zoom Meeting here.

Join the Facebook event here.

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