Film The Minority Report – Tuesday 1/31 at 7pm

Please join us for the third film in the 2011-2012 Philosophy and Political Theory Film Series:

The Minority Report

Tuesday 1/31 at 7pm in Rausch Auditorium

Film screening followed by discussion with Alisa Kessel (Politics and Government), Justin Tiehen (Philosophy), and Ariela Tubert (Philosophy)

In the year 2054, crimes in Washington, D.C. are solved by “PreCrime”, a specialized police unit that apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called “precogs”.  The cast includes Tom Cruise as PreCrime captain John Anderton, Colin Farrell as Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, Samantha Morton as the senior precog Agatha, and Max von Sydow as Anderton’s superior Lamar Burgess.  Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick.

 2011-2012 Philosophy and Political Theory Film Series

This year’s film series traces the theme of freedom and self-determination through different contexts; through imagined futures, ‘actual’ futures, and past memories; through the supernatural and the profoundly human.  Each of these films, in its own way, asks what it means to be free and calls us to reflect upon our capacities for self-determination.  Two of the films are based on stories by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who also wrote the short story upon which Bladerunner, one of last year’s films, is based.

Showing later in the semester:

Tues 2/28:  The Battle of Algiers

Tues 4/3:  A Scanner Darkly

Tues 4/24:   Breaking the Code

The first two films in the series were A Clockwork Orange and V for Vendetta (shown in fall 2011)

Writing Awards!

Submit your best papers for the Writing Excellence Awards

Deadline: February 2nd, 2012 by 5pm

Here is the information from the Center for Writing, Learning and Teaching:

To encourage and reward good writing in all disciplines, the Writing Excellence prizes will be awarded again this year.

A total of nine prizes ($250.00 each) will be awarded:

• Two prizes in each category: Humanities, Social Sciences, and Natural Sciences and Mathematics
• One prize each for Freshman Seminars, Connections, and Graduate Programs

For more information: http://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/academic-resources/cwlt/writing/writing-excellence-awards

Philosophy Talk on Friday

“Time-slices, Banana-Stages, and the Problem of Change”
 
A lecture by Visiting Assistant Professor Johanna Wolff
Friday, January 20th at 3:00pm
Wyatt 308
 
Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy
Refreshments Served
 
 
 
 
 

Call for papers: DePaw Undergraduate Ethics Symposium

This is a call for papers, work of fiction, or other art work.  Students whose work is selected will have part of their travel costs covered.

Undergraduate Ethics Symposium
DePauw University
April 12- 14, 2012
THEME: Ethics and Relationships: Family, Friends and Community

Although students may submit essays and creative projects on any ethical issue, each year a theme is selected. This year’s theme is Ethics and Relationships: Family, Friends and Community. Students may write argumentative, analytical or interpretive essays focused on ethical questions or subjects; or they may wish to explore ethical themes that are addressed in plays, poetry, film, or fiction. In addition, students may wish to explore ethical themes through creative writing, as well as the visual arts, such as film, documentaries and photography. The Institute welcomes works centered on ethics from all disciplines, including the humanities and social sciences, but also the natural sciences and arts.

SELECTION PROCESS
Consisting of DePauw University faculty members, the selection committee for the Undergraduate Ethics Symposium will identify up to thirty works, whose authors will then be invited to the Institute for the three-day symposium, April 12 – 14, 2012. During the Symposium, these students will meet in seminars led by one of the distinguished visiting scholars or professionals, who will not only present their work at the Symposium but also read the students’ works and facilitate discussion about them. The students’ travel (airfare or mileage at $.42 per mile up to $400), lodging, and meals while at DePauw will be covered by the Institute.

The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2012.  For more information, check the Symposium’s website.

Call for Papers: Puget Sound Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

We are having an undergraduate philosophy conference in spring 2012!  For Puget Sound students, we’ll have opportunities for commenting on papers and chairing sessions as well as attending some great talks.  For now, here is the call for papers:

Puget Sound

Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

 March 30-31, 2012

University of Puget Sound

Tacoma, WA

Keynote address by Niko Kolodny (UC Berkeley)

Call for Papers

 Undergraduates are encouraged to submit papers on any topic of philosophy.   Selection criteria will include both overall quality as well as diversity of theme and thesis.  Submissions should be approximately 3000 words and should include a brief abstract (no more than 250 words.)  Longer papers will be considered but presenters will have 30 minutes to present their work.
Submission deadline: January 15, 2012.

 Send submissions as an email attachment, prepared for blind review, to PugetSoundPhilosophy@gmail.com.  In the body of the email include the author’s name, college affiliation, contact information, and title of the paper.  Include no identifying information in the file with the paper.

Decisions will be made by mid-February.

For more information, check the conference website:

http://www.pugetsound.edu/academics/departments-and-programs/undergraduate/philosophy/philosophyconference/

or email PugetSoundPhilosophy@gmail.com with any questions.

CallforPapers

Philosophy and the Occupy Movement

Please join us for an open discussion of the philosophical ideas arising from the Occupy Movement

Thursday, December 1st at 5pm in Wyatt 109

Discussion led by: Prof. Alisa Kessel (P0litics and Government), Prof. Ariela Tubert (Philosophy), and Prof. Matthew Parrott (Philosophy)

Derek Parfit on the New Yorker

I have been meaning to post about this article since it came out a couple of months ago and I finally get around to it.  It is a long New Yorker article about the philosopher Derek Parfit.  Students at Puget Sound encounter Parfit in courses like Introduction to Philosophy, Metaphysics, and I taught a senior seminar on personal identity last spring where we spent about half the semester reading his work.  Here is an abstract of the article:

ABSTRACT: ANNALS OF IDEAS about the moral philosopher Derek Parfit. Most of us care about our future because it is ours—but this most fundamental human instinct is based on a mistake, Derek Parfit believes. Personal identity is not what matters. Parfit is thought by many to be the most original moral philosopher in the English-speaking world. He has written two books, both of which have been called the most important works to be written in the field in more than a century—since in 1874, when Henry Sidgwick’s “The Method of Ethics,” was published. Parfit’s first book, “Reasons and Persons,” was published in 1984, when he was forty-one, and caused a sensation. The book was dense with science-fiction thought experiments, all urging a shift toward a more impersonal, non-physical, and selfless view of human life. Parfit’s view resembles in some ways the Buddhist view of the self. After Parfit finished “Reasons and Persons,” he became increasingly disturbed by how many people believed that there was no such thing as objective moral truth. This led him to write his second book, “On What Matters,” which was published this summer. Parfit lacks the normal anti-social emotions—envy, malice, dominance. He is less aware than most of the boundaries of his self, and he is helplessly, sometimes unwillingly, empathetic. Parfit was born in China, in 1942. The following year, his family moved to England. In the early summer of 1961, he went to work at The New Yorker, as a researcher for The Talk of the Town. In the autumn of 1961, he went up to Oxford to read history. After Oxford, he went back to America for two years on a Harkness Fellowship. He decided to study philosophy, and he won a Prize Fellowship to All Souls, at Oxford, which entitled him to room and board at the college for seven years, with no teaching duties. He also had appointments at Harvard, Rutgers, and N.Y.U. Sometime around 1982 or ’83, the philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards moved from London to Oxford, and, after she attended a seminar that Parfit was teaching, they began a relationship. Around the mid-nineties, Parfit started reading Kant. He became more and more troubled by the ways in which Kant diverged from Sidgwick, and by the way that modern Kantians disagreed with modern consequentialists and both disagreed with contractualists. He came up with what he called the Triple Theory: An act is wrong just when such acts are disallowed by some principle that is optimific, uniquely universally willable, and not reasonably rejectable. Mentions Bernard Williams. Parfit moved out of All Souls last year. Since then, he and Richards have been living together in a house in Oxford. Last August, after nearly thirty years together, they married. Meanwhile, Parfit experienced an episode of transient global amnesia. He recovered his memory, but smaller aftershocks have continued.

You can read the whole article, from a campus computer or with subscription, here.

Call for Papers: INTERMOUNTAIN WEST GRADUATE PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE

March 1-3, 2012

Keynote Speaker:
C. Kenneth Waters
University of Minnesota

The University of Utah’s Philosophy Department is pleased to announce
the Ninth Annual Intermountain West Graduate Philosophy Conference to
be held March 1-3, 2012.  We are accepting paper submissions in any
area of philosophy.  Papers should be suitable for a twenty minute
presentation followed by ten minutes of Q&A.

Note:  A limited number of spaces are available for exceptional
undergraduate papers.

Paper submissions:

Deadline:  January 6.

Please prepare your paper of no more than 3,500 words for blind review
and submit electronically, along with a cover letter including

•    Author’s Name
•    Paper Title
•    Word count (3,500 word limit)
•    Abstract (150 words)
•    Institutional affiliation
•    Academic Status
•    Paper topic
•    E-mail Address

Submit to:  UUIWGPC@gmail.com

Applicants will be notified of decisions by the end of January. Each
student will present a paper and provide commentary for another
presentation.

Call For Papers: Georgia State University’s 10th Annual Student Philosophy Symposium.

Date: Saturday, March 17, 2012

Keynote Speaker:  Professor Valerie Tiberius  -  University of
Minnesota: “To Be or Not To Be (A Parent):  How interdisciplinary
research on well-being can help us with the big questions.”

Location: Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA

Topics: Original, high quality submissions in any area of philosophy
are welcomed from undergraduate or graduate students.

Notes: Papers must be no longer than 3750 words and should be
presented in approximately 25 minutes. All papers should be prepared
for blind review: papers should be free of identifying information,
and accompanied by a brief abstract (not to exceed 250 words).
Notifications of acceptance will be emailed by February 21, 2012. Only
one submission per person will be considered.

Deadline for Submissions: January 20, 2012

Submissions: To submit a paper, please email Noel Martin at
nmartin11@student.gsu.edu. All submissions will be acknowledged within
72 hours of receipt.

For further inquiries, contact Claire Murata Kooy at kkooy@gsu.edu.

For full details, see the conference website: www.gsu.edu/ethics
(select link to Philosophy Symposium).

Sponsored by Phi Sigma Tau – Zeta Chapter, the Center for Ethics –
Student Forum, and the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics.

Guest Lecture on Philosophy of Memory, 11/7 at 3pm

“What Morrissey’s Lament Teaches Us About
The Philosophy of Memory”

A guest lecture by Tony Bezsylko

Monday, November 7th at 3:00pm in Wyatt 208

Tony Bezsylko is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley