Philosophy of Art

These are pictures from one of the seminars for the course “Philosophy of Art”; the seminar, on “Representation and Photography”, took place in the “Three Counties Photography Exhibition” that is organised every year at Keele University.

As part of their assessment for the course, each student had to choose one work of art (any genre, any time period in the history of art, the only condition being that it be of significance for the history of art), and to write for six weeks short portfolio pieces. Portfolio pieces reflected on that work of art from the perspective of various topics – definition of art, ontology, representation, expression, morality and perception.

Today, the final day of the course (and for many students, the final day of undergraduate studies, this being a 3rd-year module), students will given brief presentations about their chosen works of art.

Looking forward to this!

PS: I tried to take some pictures during the second seminar, but camera would not work (I think it went on strike after hearing Scruton’s argument that photography cannot be art!).

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 2,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 4 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Next 2012/13 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

The Forum for Philosophical Research at The School of Politics, IR & Philosophy (SPIRE) and the Research Centre for SPIRE, University of Keele, invites you all to the next 2012/13 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture:

Professor John Hyman (University of Oxford)

Desire, Intention and the Will

20 November 2012, 6-7.30 pm, CBA0.060, Chancellor’s Building, Keele University

 

All Welcome! Wine!

 

Abstract:

Recent work on dispositions sheds new light on the nature of desire and intentional action, and offers a new solution to the long-running dispute about whether explanations of intentional action are causal explanations.  I shall argue that the dispute was intractable because of a lack of percipience about dispositions and a commitment to Humean orthodoxies about causation on both sides

 

About the Speaker:

John Hyman is a Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford, Professor of Aesthetics at Oxford University, and editor of The British Journal of Aesthetics. He was a Getty Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, LA in 2001-2 and a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2002-3. During that period he wrote a book about some of the fundamental concepts we use to think about the visual arts: colour, form, representation, and realism.  The book was published in 2006 by the University of Chicago Press, with the title The Objective Eye.  In 2010-12, he held a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, which was awarded to enable him to write a book about action and cognition, entitled After the Fall: Action, Knowledge, and Will.  This talk draws on one of the chapters of that book.

‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau’ Annual Lecture and Conference

Registration Open: ‘J.-J. Rousseau’* Annual Lecture and Conference

(Programme)

KEELE FORUM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH ‘J.-J. ROUSSEAU’ ANNUAL LECTURE*

Friday, 23 November 2012
6.00 pm – 7.15 pm Conference Room
Claus Moser Research Centre, Keele University

Alan Montefiore (Oxford): Frontiers of Philosophy

Opening: Ann Hughes, Director of the Keele Research Institutes for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Chair: Bulent Gokay, Head of the School of Politics, Philosophy, International Relations and the Environment

CONFERENCE: KANT AND SARTRE

Saturday, 24 November 2012
Conference Room, Claus Moser Research Centre, Keele University

Speakers and Commentators:

Peter Poellner (Warwick): Sartre, Freedom and Practical Reason
Commentator: Alberto Vanzo (Birmingham)

Daniel Herbert (Sheffield): Kant and Sartre on Temporality
Commentator: Anna Tomaszewska (Krakow/Aberdeen)

Justin Alam (Bristol): Kantian Radical Evil and Self-deception
Commentator: Jochen Bojanowski (Groningen)

Sorin Baiasu (Keele): (Self)-consciousness and the Transcendental Unity of Apperception
Commentator: Jonathan Webber (Cardiff)

NB: Please book early – places are limited. To register, please see the RegistrationForm. Click here for a credit card form.

Registration deadline: 15 November 2012.

For further enquiries, email Sorin Baiasu at: s.baiasu@keele.ac.uk

UNESCO WPD

As in previous years, we will again take the opportunity of these annual events to celebrate also the World Philosophy Day.

The Forum Annual Lecture and Conference are organised with the support of the Research Institute for the Social Sciences, the Research Centre for SPIRE, the ECPR Kantian Standing Group and the Keele School of Politics, Philosophy, International Relations and the Environment (SPIRE).

————————

KEELE FORUM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH is part of the Research Centre for the Study of Politics, International Relations and the Environment (RC4SPIRE) in the Keele Research Institute for Social Sciences. The Forum was officially launched in November 2008. Previous Annual Lectures were given by: Giuseppina D’Oro, Miranda Fricker, Stephen Engstrom and John Horton.

Every year, the Forum organises the following events:

• The Keele Forum Annual Lecture and Conference
• The Royal Institute of Philosophy Invited Lecture Series
• The Philosophy Summer Seminar Series
• Reading groups and special lectures
• NEW: Postgraduate research seminars starting in February 2013

——————-

* Why the Jean-Jacques Rousseau lecture?  To begin with, 2012 marks the tercentenary of Rousseau’s birth; but there is also a reason why Keele in particular should celebrate this anniversary, for we hereby celebrate the true but very little known fact that Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived for a time in Staffordshire.  From 22 March 1766 to 1 May 1767 Rousseau lived in the little Staffordshire village of Wootton.  Rousseau had been invited to England by David Hume with whom he soon afterwards quarrelled.  He then spent the next year in seclusion in Staffordshire writing the first drafts of his Confessions.  When he was not writing it is said that he roamed the Staffordshire countryside in his Armenian costume studying wild flowers.  He must have made a striking figure.  Many years after his departure the locals remembered ‘Owd Ross Hall’, not just for his eccentricities but also for his gifts to local charities.  They believed he was a king in exile! (Stephen Leach – Honorary Research Fellow, Keele Research Institute for the Social Sciences)

Next 2012/13 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

The Forum for Philosophical Research at The School of Politics, IR & Philosophy (SPIRE) and the Research Centre for SPIRE, University of Keele, invites you all to the next 2012/13 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture:

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11505747

Dr Daniel Whiting (University of Southampton)

6 November 2012, 6-7.30 pm, CBA0.060, Chancellor’s Building, Keele University

 

All Welcome! Wine!

 

Abstract:

Suppose that someone has a ticket in the National Lottery. Suppose also that she believes (fully, flat-out) that her ticket will lose. This belief seems irrational – if the subject really thinks that her ticket is going to lose, why did she buy it in the first place and why does she bother to keep it (though, of course, it would be very silly to throw the ticket away)? It can seem puzzling that such a belief is irrational, since it is highly probable that the ticket will in fact lose, and so that the belief is true. In this paper, I offer a novel account of why so-called lottery beliefs are not rational, one which appeals to the idea that belief is fundamentally governed by a norm of truth.

 

About the Speaker:

Daniel Whiting is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton. He works primarily in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. He has published a number of articles in these areas and is the editor of The Later Wittgenstein on Language.