Next 2017 Keele Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

Royal Institute of Philosophy

THE KEELE-OXFORD-ST ANDREWS KANTIAN (KOSAK) RESEARCH CENTRE &

THE FORUM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH @

THE SCHOOL OF POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT (SPIRE)

KEELE UNIVERSITY

Invites you all to the following Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

The Subject of “We Intend”

 

By: Hans Bernhard Schmid (Vienna)

On: Tuesday, 21 February

From: 6-7.30 pm

In: CBA0.060, Chancellor’s Building, Keele University

 

All Welcome! Wine

Abstract:
This talk examines and compares the ways in which intentions of the singular kind (“I intend”) and the plural kind (“we intend”) are subjective. Are intentions of the plural kind ours in the same way intentions of the singular kind are mine? Starting with the singular case, it is argued that “I intend” is subjective in virtue of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is special in that it is self-identifying, self-validating, self-committing, and self-authorizing. Moving to the plural form, it is argued that in spite of apparent differences, attitudes of the form “we intend” are subjective in the same way. The self-knowledge at work here is plural rather than singular. This supports a plural subject account of collective intentionality. It is argued that the worries sometimes raised in the literature against the metaphysical “spookiness” of plural subjects are due to a fundamental misconception of the way in which attitudes of either kind – singular and plural – are subjective.

About the speaker:

Hans Bernhard Schmid is Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Viena. He is a world-leading expert in collective intentionality, having published Subjekt, System, Diskurs (Kluwer 2000), Wir-Intentionalität (Karl Alber 2005), Plural Action (Springer 2009), (with David Schweikard) Kollective Intentionalität (Suhrkamp 2009), Moralische Integrität (Suhrkamp 2011), and having edited or co-edited Rationality and Commitment (OUP 2007), Concepts of Sharedness (Ontos 2008), Self-evaluation (Springer 2011) and Collective Epistemology (De Gruyter 2013).

 

Scientism and Consciousness – A Conference At Keele University (27th-28th June 2017)

Keynotes

Philip Goff   • Sophie Allen •  John Cottingham  •  James Tartaglia   •  Keith Frankish  •  Christopher Norris

 

The term ‘scientism’ has traditionally been used by philosophers to denote an uncritical, excessively deferential attitude towards the (usually natural) sciences, along with an indifference or even hostility towards philosophy and, frequently, the humanities and social sciences. As such, it is most often used by philosophers with misgivings towards what they perceive as the encroachment of the methods and assumptions common to natural science into traditionally philosophical territory.

 

However, over the past decade, some philosophers have begun to identify their own positions as scientistic, in spite of its negative connotations – See, e.g. Rosenberg (2011) and Ladyman & Ross (2010).  In so branding themselves, they seek to reclaim intellectual enquiry from what they regard as unconstrained speculations about the nature of reality. They point to science’s striking success at answering the questions it poses, and its (relative) resistance to the influence of fads and psychological bias which, they argue, afflict other areas of thought.

 

The aim to provide a satisfactory explanation of consciousness has become a key battleground in debates over the limits of scientific enquiry. Experience, a subject matter that could not be closer to home, seems to provide a solid basis for doing a priori metaphysics and ethics, the kind of work philosophers have typically specialized in. If science promises to put those old philosophers out of a job, it will no doubt also change how we understand ourselves.

 

As such, we want to ask: What are the stakes for philosophy and culture with regards to naturalising the mind? How has our self-understanding already been affected by this project? What would a resurgence of traditional philosophy look like, with respect to the problem of consciousness? We grant that ‘scientism’ is just impolite naturalism, but feel this term’s resurgence as a badge of honour highlights the importance of the debate about consciousness, for philosophy and society at large, and the polarisation it often leads to.

 

The conference will start at 9:00am on June 27. The conference dinner will be held the same day, and will be free for all speakers.  Accommodation for the night of the 27th will also be covered for speakers. All papers presented will be published in a “Scientism and Consciousness” volume after the conference has been concluded.

 

The conference will be immediately followed by a summer school (June 29-July 2nd) on Idealism and the Autonomy of the Human Sciences. For details of the programme and how to apply for a bursary please visit the idealism and the Philosophy of Mind website: https://idealismsite.wordpress.com/summer-school/

 

 

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted to either: g.p.carpenter@keele.ac.uk or a.balmer@keele.ac.uk, no later than April 30.  All abstracts should be prepared for double blind review. Please include, in a separate document, a cover containing your name, affiliation, email address, and the title of your paper.  From these, ten applications will be selected, provided with accommodation and the conference dinner, and their papers will be published in a “Scientism and Consciousness” volume after the conference has been concluded.  The venue is wheelchair accessible, and any further requirements for students will be taken into account following the acceptance of proposals.

 

Accommodation

We offer to reimburse one night’s stay in the area for all non-keynote speakers, at up to £38 per head.

Keele University hosts its own bed and breakfast on campus, at the Keele Management Centre, which is 10 minutes walk away from the conference. Spaces are limited, so guests are advised to book early.

Further afield, there are a range of options available in the Newcastle and Stoke area. Buses run regularly, taking approximately 25 minutes to reach Keele campus from Newcastle bus station, and around 45 minutes from Stoke-On-Trent Station.

Taxi Contact Numbers:

ABC Supreme – 01782 632222

Roseville – 01782 613456

First 2017 Royal Institute of Philosophy Invited Lecture

Royal Institute of Philosophy

THE KEELE-OXFORD-ST ANDREWS KANTIAN (KOSAK) RESEARCH CENTRE &

THE FORUM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH @

THE SCHOOL OF POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND ENVIRONMENT (SPIRE), KEELE UNIVERSITY

Invites you all to the first 2017 Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

Idealism and the Autonomy of the Human Sciences

By: Paul Giladi (Sheffield), Alexis Papazoglou (Royal Holloway) and Giuseppina D’Oro (Keele)

On: Tuesday, 7 February

From: 6-7.30 pm

In: CBA0.060, Chancellor’s Building, Keele University

 

All Welcome! Wine

Abstract:

Much philosophy of mind has been governed by the question “How can mind fit in the natural world?” The question betrays two important assumptions. First, that if the mental conflicts with the natural there is at least an obligation to try and rescue the mental by showing that it can somehow be placed in the realm of nature. The second assumption is that any attempt to rescue the mental must do so in such a way as not to rock the naturalistic picture of reality whose endorsement gives rise to the problem that the question “How can mind fit in the natural world?” gives expression to: the location problem.

In this paper we will argue that the so-called “location problem” arises because of the endorsement of a set of metaphilosophical assumptions concerning the role of philosophical analysis and its relation to science. We will argue that the conception of philosophy as a second order enquiry offering a reflection on the methodological practices of the special sciences, which is typically found in the Kantian and post-Kantian idealist tradition, gives rise to a form of non-reductivism which succeeds in doing  justice to the autonomy of the mental without incurring the compromises and encountering the obstacles that face many twentieth century attempts to argue for the autonomy of the mental from a naturalistic platform.

Paul Giladi, Alexis Papazoglou and Giuseppina D’Oro are currently invertigators on a Templeton funded project, Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind. If you would like to know more about the background of this paper you can follow the project “Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind” here: https://idealismsite.wordpress.com/

 

About the Speaker:
Paul Giladi is currently an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield. He has several articles in journals and edited collections on German idealism, pragmatism, and contemporary analytic philosophy. He is also the co-investigator of the Templeton-funded project “Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind” (2016–17), the co-editor of the 2017 special issue of Inquiry on Idealism and the Metaphilosophy of Mind, the co-editor of the 2017 special issue of Hegel Bulletin on Hegel and the Frankfurt School, the co-editor of the 2018 special issue of Hegel Bulletin on Hegel and 20th-Century French Philosophy, the co-editor of the 2018 special issue of European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy on Idealism and Pragmatism, and the editor of Responses to Naturalism: Critical Perspectives from Idealism and Pragmatism (Routledge, 2019).

Alexis Papazoglou is lecturer in philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. Before that he was an affiliated lecturer in the faculty of philosophy, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on the way the post-Kantian tradition understands the relationship between nature and mind, and the scope of scientific explanations, as a way of illuminating contemporary debates surrounding naturalism. He is a co-investigator on the two-year project ‘Idealism and the Philosophy of Mind’, part of the University of Cambridge based project ‘New Directions in the Study of Mind’. He is also the secretary for the Hegel Society of Great Britain. His publications include articles on the relationship between Hegel’s philosophy and naturalism*, and he is also the editor of The Pursuit of Philosophy: Some Cambridge Perspectives.

Giuseppina D’Oro is Reader in Philosophy at Keele University. Her research interests lie at the intersection between idealism, philosophy of mind and metaphilosophy. She is the author of Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience, the editor of the new edition of Collingwood’s An Essay on Philosophical Method (with James Connelly), of Reasons and Causes: Causalism and Anti-Causalism in the Philosophy of Action (with Constantine Sandis) and of The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology (with Soren Overgaard). She has published many papers on Collingwood’s contribution to philosophical methodology and action theory.