Events

April 4, 2019, Kwong-loi Shun (Berkeley)
Thursday, 4pm – 6pm
Co-sponsor: UB Confucius Institute
 

April 5, Bioethics Workshop
Niagara University, 1:30 – 6:15pm

April 6, 2019, City of Good Neighbors Philosophy Conference
Saturday, 9am – 5pm, 141 Park Hall
Participants: Devonya Havis (Canisius); Nic Bommarito (UB); Leigh Duffy (Buff State); Brandon Absher (D’Youville); Steve Petersen (Niagara); and Mark Warren (Daemen). 

April 11, 2019, Richard Bett
Department Colloquium
Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall 
"Humor as Philosophical Subversion, Especially in the Skeptics” 
Abstract: Positive philosophical projects and humor do not generally go together. When humor is used, it is often to draw attention to where one might go wrong: someone or something is made fun of. This is first illustrated with cases in Aristotle. But if this is a major function of humor in philosophy, it offers special opportunities to those whose entire approach to philosophy is critical rather than constructive - those who are suspicious of the whole project of philosophy. This chapter examines a number of instances of this subversive form of humor in philosophy. For the reason just stated, it concentrates on the ancient Greek skeptics, both Academic and Pyrrhonian, with a particular focus on Sextus Empiricus, the only Greek skeptic of whom we have compete works. But Stoics and Epicureans (and, in passing, Plato) also receive some attention, and there are occasional comparisons with examples in more recent philosophy (Gettier, Nietzsche). Co-sponsored with UB Classics.

April 25, 2019, Thomas Holden (UC Santa Barbara)
Department Colloquium
Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall
“Hume on Modal Discourse”
Abstract: Hume regards the ‘absolute’ necessity attending demonstrable truths as simply an expression of our imaginative blocks, and thereby avoids any commitment to a mind-independent and extra-empirical domain of absolute modal properties and facts. I develop this expressivist interpretation of Hume’s metaphysics of absolute modality, situate it against a wider understanding of Hume’s philosophy of language, and defend it against some recent objections.

May 2, 2019, Donald C. Ainslie (Toronto)
Department Colloquium
Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall

May 11, 2019
International Workshop on Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine
Sponsored by the Romanell Center

July 25-27, 2019
Romanell Summer Conference
John Martin Fischer Keynoter

July 28, 2019
Romanell Working Brunch with John Fischer

July 31-Aug 2, 2019
10th International Conference on Biomedical Ontology 
Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Buffalo, NY 
Call for Papers - Due April 1

(Fall event listing is forthcoming.)

OCTOBER 18 & 19, 2019, Friday & Saturday
CONFERENCE & BOOK LAUNCH
Sponsored by the Capen Chair.
Learn more.

Fall 2019 (date tba)
David Shoemaker
Department Colloquium (date tba)
Thursday, 4pm – 6pm, 141 Park Hall

March 8, 201
Baldy Center Distinguished Speaker Series
Friday, 12:30 – 2:30pm, 509 O’Brien Hall
Christina Bicchieri, SJP Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics, University of Pennsylvania
"Social Similarity and the Erosion of Social Norms.”
Co-sponsored with the Baldy Center and the Center for Global Health Equity

March 14, 2019, Macalster Bell
Department Colloquium
Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall 
“Photographs as Tools of Moral Persuasion”
Abstract: While social movements often use photographs to shape opinion and persuade others of the justice of their cause, contemporary ethicists working in the analytic tradition have largely ignored the moral and epistemic questions that arise when we think about these practices.  Can photographs serve as tools of moral suasion? When someone is moved to undergo a change of heart concerning a moral matter on the basis of a photograph are they being manipulated or coerced? Is such a response sentimental or shallow? Can this sort of transformation be rational? I aim to briefly sketch out some answers to these and related questions in this paper.

March 29, 2019, Open House for Potential Grad Students
Friday 3:30pm – 5:30pm, 141 Park Hall
Lewis Powell, UB Philosophy
“Locke, The Abuses of Language, and the Construction of Public Language” 
Abstract: According to John Locke, beyond the natural limitations of language, there are seven common avoidable faults in our use of language, which undermine its purpose in easily communicating our ideas with one another and transmitting knowledge. Since Locke’s view of language is very individualized and psychologized, there are concerns that it will not have the resources to arrive at an account of any sort of shared public language, and instead only be suited to account for individual idiolects. In this paper, I present Locke’s account of the abuses of language, and show how these different abuses undermine the purposes of language. I show how an individualized understanding of the languages we are speaking, combined with the purposes we have in speaking, give Locke the resources to arrive at a workable conception of public language.

February 8, 2019, Lunchtime talk
Friday, 2 -1:30pm, 141 Park Hall
Chris Haufe,  (Case Western)
“The Priority of Promise.”
Abstract: If decisions between alternate ways of practicing science must be based on future promise, how can those decisions be epistemically justified? Kuhn’s answer to that question was — or at least seemed — deliberately unepistemic: “a decision of that kind can only be made on faith” (ibid: 158). It was not popular among those concerned with understanding and grounded the cognitive authority of science. I offer a conception of “future promise” in terms of fruitfulness potential, and show how claims of fruitfulness potential can be — and characteristically are — epistemically justified.

February 21, 2019, Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall    
Karen Frost-Arnold (Hobart & William Smith)
"Epistemic Justice and the Challenges of Online Moderation"

February 29, 2019
Department Colloquium
Thursday, 4 – 6pm, 141 Park Hall
Andrea Borghini, Università degli Studi di Milano
“Outline of a Metaphysics of Dishes and Recipes”
Abstract: All sorts of stuff are potential food to humans. The most common tools used to put order in such an edible jungle are recipes. Recipes are key tools in any culinary culture. They instruct diners on how to prepare dishes in a safe, nutritious, pleasing fashion; and they are used to communicate diets, menus, culinary preferences or restrictions, etc. Since the 1800s, recipes have come to have an increasing importance in the public sphere and today they are one of the most fetishized cultural items. This phenomenon, however, is not matched by a theoretical framework through which to adequately express questions and positions regarding them. Such a framework must be based on a metaphysics of recipes (the instructions for food preparation), of dishes (particular edible concoctions), and of the relationship between recipes and dishes. In this presentation, I outline a theory of recipes, dishes, and their relationship.