Lecture Series

Catherine Elgin
Professor of the Philosophy of Education, Harvard University
“Opening the Black Box: Epistemic Access to Expert Testimony”
September 19, 2025
Many philosophers maintain that novices are incapable of understanding the justification for
expert testimony because we lack the conceptual, logical, and evidential background that
would enable us to appreciate why the experts accept what they do. I argue otherwise.
Experts testify in courts of law, making their reasons intelligible to juries composed of novices.
Physicians obtain informed consent by explaining medical procedures with their risks and
benefits in ways that are intelligible to medically uneducated patients. Drawing on Grice, I
argue that the same strategies are effective in more informal settings. We need not black box
the grounds for scientific testimony.

Susan Wolf
Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina
“Humble Apologies”
November 7, 2025
In light of the significant benefits of apologizing for preserving and repairing personal relationships, it is remarkable how reluctant so many people are to offer them. This lecture explores the reasons behind this. It argues that part of the reluctance stems from a visceral association between apologizing and a self-abasing kind of humility. This association is unfortunate and misguided, and we should do our best to get rid of it. Yet a different kind of humility, concerning our ability to know when we have done wrong, is salutary. When conjoined with a plausible and appealing conception of apology, this should make us more willing to apologize, and to reap the benefits in social harmony.

Angelika Kratzer
Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
“Possible Worlds in a Polyphony of Meanings”
November 14, 2025
The contents contributed by sentences are polyphonous. They are composed of different tiers interacting with each other. One of those tiers – maybe the most important one – is truth-conditional content. I will first look at a range of phenomena supporting a view linking truth-conditional contents to possible ways a world might be, and then explore ways of embedding this view within a multi-tiered framework that also recognizes finer distinctions based on intensional structures and truth makers.

Zachary Irving
Associate Professor, University of Virginia
“The Corruption of Salience: The True Digital Threat to Autonomy”
February 27, 2026
Digital technologies overwhelm our attention in ways that are ethically harmful. Philosophers and tech activists have converged on an account of these ethical harms, which we call the “Reflective View”. Developers and AI-based recommender systems make apps as salient as possible, which undermines our capacity to control attention through reflective deliberation and choice. We provide the most rigorous empirical basis for this picture to date, grounding it in how hyper-salient smartphones interfere with executive control. Yet these same empirical details betray that the Reflective View rests on a false assumption: that salience is not reasons-responsive. In contrast, salience results from implicit learning mechanisms that track what we have reason to find relevant, given our values, emotions, and experience. This raises problems for arguments that digital distractions manipulate us or undermine our autonomy, which assume that salience is sub-rational. Worse, it hands tech an escape hatch: developers can (and do) argue that their apps are salient because they track our values. We defend an alternative view: hyper-salient distractions are harmful not because salience is sub-rational, but rather because they corrupt the reasons-responsiveness of salience. Digital distractions pose more dire problems than the literature recognizes, undermining our autonomy in three ways, not one: they undermine (1) our capacity to regulate attention in response to deliberative reasons (as previous philosophers argue), (2) the synchronic capacity for salience to track our values, and (3) the diachronic capacity for implicit learning systems to update salience in a way that tracks our reasons to attend.

Monique Wonderly
Miller Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University
“Betrayal, Grief, and the Self”
April 10, 2026
Theorists sometimes identify betrayal as an attitude specifically associated with broken trust. While there has been relatively little sustained analysis of this attitude in the relevant literature, extant views often treat betrayal as (something like) a species of resentment, the paradigmatic form of attitudinal blame that we experience toward agents who wrong us. In this talk, I aim to show that our understanding of betrayal can profit from putting it into dialogue with a different emotional response with which it is intimately connected – namely, grief. As I will argue, interrogating the relationship between betrayal and grief can help to illuminate betrayal’s peculiar normative architecture and certain often obscured respects in which it can reflect and constitute damage to the self.

Travis Rieder
Associate Research Professor, Berman Institute of Bioethics, Johns Hopkins
“Catastrophe Ethics: Causal Inefficacy & the Possibility of Practical Moral Guidance”
October 11, 2024
For the last two decades, philosophers have debated whether the seeming fact that our individual actions cannot have a meaningful impact on pressing moral problems like climate change implies that we have no relevant duties. If, that is, no amount of refraining from flying will have a meaningful impact on the harms of climate change, could I really have a duty to reduce or eliminate luxury air travel? This is what is often called the problem of causal inefficacy. In this talk, I want to move past this discussion in order to focus on a related concern: namely, whether any account of individual moral responsibility in the face of massive, collective threats can generate actionable, practical guidance. The question is important, I argue, because if we rescue an account of moral responsibility in the face of catastrophe, the sheer number of constant catastrophes that we do or can contribute (infinitesimally) to implies an overwhelming moral responsibility to act in an overwhelming number of (often incompatible) ways. Thus, responding to causal inefficacy is not a solution to our moral life; it is a new problem. Here, I will address that new problem by proposing a novel framework for moral justification that can help us to understand and organize our responsibilities to respond to massive, collective threats.

Elisabeth Camp
Professor, Rutgers University
“Nicknames as Tools for Face and Frame”
October 18, 2024
Like other names, nicknames function to identify and track individuals across time, place and possibility. But they are also marked as contrasting with ‘proper’ names in who and when they can be used, in ways that regulate social ‘face’; and they evoke intuitively fitting heuristics for framing their referents. These social and interpretive functions affect communicative dynamics, in ways that challenge standard categories in an orthodox theory of meaning.

Luvell Anderson
Professor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
“Comedic Resistance”
November 1, 2024
In times of moral absurdity and political corruption, people often turn to humor as a means of coping or tool of resistance. Humor’s use as a cathartic remedy is well established. The popularity of shows like Last Week with John Oliver or The Daily Show, not to mention the political satire that Saturday Night Live routinely offers, are examples. In this talk, I will focus on humor’s use as both a form and tool of resistance. I will examine skeptical claims about humor’s potential as an effective means of resistance as well as the communicative obstacles racialized imagination presents. 

Alice Crary
Professor, The New School for Social Research
“The Political Wittgenstein”
February 28, 2025
Since the years immediately after Wittgenstein’s death in 1951, scholars and lay readers have advanced a welter of discordant claims about the political significance of his philosophy. Many have taken Wittgenstein’s thought to have a conservative or reactionary bent; a fair number have represented it as urging the adoption of a culturally relativistic stance; and yet others have read it as speaking for postures ranging from classical liberalism or neo-liberalism to Marxism and other strains of progressive or emancipatory politics. This talk will be taken from a project that surveys this messy interpretive terrain, with particular attention to disputes about the reception of the (“later”) philosophical work Wittgenstein did after the mid 1930s. The rationale is the political interest of a core strain of Wittgenstein’s thought. Those with a good knowledge of his writings will be aware of his abhorrence of scientism as well as of linear conceptions of progress grounded in techno-triumphalism. Critique of these cultural tendencies is the animating spirit of Wittgenstein’s philosophical contributions, and a good case can be made for taking his philosophy to be of paramount interest for liberating politics. The talk will either shed explanatory light on the more familiar image of Wittgenstein as a reactionary thinker, following up on commentaries by the likes of Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, David Pole, Ernest Gellner, and Herbert Marcuse, or it will discuss the work of the constellation of thinkers—such as Iris Murdoch, Stanley Cavell, Hannah Pitkin, James Tully, and Bernard Williams—who have recognized the possibility of a “Left Wittgenstein.”

Jordan Pascoe
Professor, Manhattan College
“The Epistemology of Disasters and Social Change”
February 2, 2024

Lucy Allais
Professor, Johns Hopkins University
“A Kantian account of human free agency: What might it mean for reason to determine choice?”
February 16, 2024
In this talk my aim is to make progress with one part of the Kantian picture of free human agency I am developing. I will first sketch the larger project, which involves giving an account that makes sense of transcendental freedom, practical (inner) freedom and external freedom in relation to each other in Kant’s account. I will then focus on understanding practical freedom. In particular, my interest is in making sense of the claim that choice is free when determined by reason. My strategy to make sense of this is to first think about what it might mean in the context of prudential reason, in particular through thinking through why I disagree with Jens Timmerman’s recent intellectualist account of this.

Lidal Dror
Assistant Professor, Princeton University
“Ignorance and Indifference of the Deaths of Select Others” 
March 22, 2024
While much concern has rightfully been expressed for Ukrainian civilians suffering as a result of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, many have noted that the level of concern expressed for Ukrainians exceeds that expressed for civilians, particularly non-white civilians, who die in other conflicts. This talk attempts to offer an explanation of the disparate concern Westerners have for civilians who die in different wars abroad. I consider two attempts to explain the disparate concern in terms of racism; first a more interpersonal understanding of racism as racist animus, and then a more structural explanation in terms of ‘white ignorance’. I ultimately argue that trying to understand the disparate concern evinced for different civilian causalities primarily in terms of racism is mistaken and that an adequate explanation of Western attitudes must be grounded on account of imperialist interests.

Dan Moller
Professor, University of Maryland
“A Theory of Tragedy”
April 19, 2024
Theories of tragedy are out of style, with most recent work focusing on narrower questions, like why we seek out the negative emotions associated with tragedy. In this paper, I return to the core question of what tragedy fundamentally is. As I frame it, the question is, What makes something a tragedy rather than just another sad story? A theory of tragedy should answer this question and explain why it isn’t trivial. It should also explain why the tragic isn’t a purely aesthetic category—war, poverty, and divorce can be tragic (or not), as I argue. I offer a theory of tragedy based on the paradoxical overlay of necessity and contingency leading to disaster. In a tragedy your fate is inevitable yet avoidable. This account fits both fictional characters like Agamemnon, and situations, like the prisoner’s dilemma or World War I.

Philipp Haueis
Assistant Professor, Bielefeld University
“Political Goals of Scientific Concepts: The Case of “Climate Crisis””
November 7, 2022
Recent work in practice-based philosophy of science suggests that conceptual change is
justified when using a new concept achieves an epistemic goal to a higher degree. Conversely, scholars working on conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics stress that new concepts of, e.g. gender or race should contribute to the pursuit of social-political aims, such as the fight against injustice. Yet it is also clear that many natural scientific concepts are associated with political goals. The goal of using “global warming” or “climate crisis” to detect and describe anthropogenic causes of climate change, for instance, is associated with political goals of mitigation (stop burning fossil fuels) and adaptation (e.g. prevent harm caused by extreme weather events). In this talk, I ask when it is legitimate to use scientific concepts to pursue political goals in general, and which concept is best to pursue the goals of climate mitigation and adaptation in particular.

James Klagge
Professor, Virginia Tech
“Wittgenstein on Philosophy as Poetry”
February 10, 2023
In my recent book, Wittgenstein’s Artillery: Philosophy as Poetry, I tell a story about how
Ludwig Wittgenstein came to care about the impact of his ideas on his students and readers, and how he tried a “poetic” style of doing philosophy that could lead to the kind of changes he
sought. This style included aphorisms, vignettes, dialogues, similes, and parables. Although he
did not ultimately think he was successful using this style, I examine various examples of this
poetic style of writing that might serve Wittgenstein’s purposes. This is what I call
Wittgenstein’s “artillery.” In this talk, I will highlight a few of Wittgenstein’s “poems” and
consider other bits of literature that serve similar purposes. Perhaps this is an avenue that
contemporary, even analytic, philosophers should take more seriously.

Yitzhak Melamed
Professor, Johns Hopkins University
“Spinoza’s Transcendent God”
February 17, 2023

Dee Payton
Assistant Professor, University of Virginia
“Normative Metaphysics”
May 4, 2023
3:15 – 5:30 PM
Some projects in feminist metaphysics adopt a realist approach to metaphysics; others adopt a contrasting deflationist approach to metaphysics. The first step in the argument of this paper will be to highlight that both sorts of projects are ultimately driven by underlying normative commitments. So, despite their differences, realist and deflationist projects in feminist metaphysics share this in common. But how, exactly, does feminist metaphysics take its lead from these normative commitments? That question is my central concern in this paper. I will explore three ways that it might be answered: (i) that normative commitments generate epistemic constraints on feminist metaphysics; (ii) that gender terms like ‘woman’ turn out to be normative, in much the same way as terms like ‘good’ and ‘just’; and (iii) that normative commitments generate ontological constraints on feminist metaphysics, such that whatis the case is given, in large part, by what ought to be the case.

CAT PRUEITT
Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
“How to Satisfy the Body’s Command“
February 11, 2022
Imperativism about pain understands pains as commands issued by one’s body with respect to some aspect of its own physical boundaries. I argue that current versions of pain imperativism do not fully capture the range of possible satisfaction conditions for pain’s imperative content, and so misconstrue the command itself. I work within Colin Klein’s influential homeostatic imperativism, which claims that pains are commands to protect a part of one’s body, but I argue that the content of the body’s command cannot be merely protective. Instead, the existence of cases where pain’s imperative content is satisfied by transforming the relevant bodily boundary indicates that pain is a command to create a part of one’s body, where maintaining one’s previous boundaries is not privileged over transforming one’s boundaries into something new. In this light, pain’s command is better understood as allostatic rather than homeostatic. This understanding of pain as creative opens up an alternative imperativist understanding of the distinction between pain and painfulness/hurt/suffering. The distinction between pain and suffering does not need to rely on a distinction between the physical body and the higher-order agent, as in Klein’s account. Rather, it could concern how one’s response to the command to create a part of one’s body is or is not realizable given one’s embodied world.

ANDREA PITTS
Associate Professor, UNC Charlotte
“Beth Brant, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Political Dimensions of Indigenous-Chicana Transnational Solidarities”
April 8, 2022
In this presentation, Andrea J. Pitts foregrounds the close, personal relationship between Bay of Quinte Mohawk poet and essayist Beth Brant and Chicana poet and essayist Gloria Anzaldúa. Through an analysis of a series of letters exchanged between Brant and Anzaldúa from 1982 to 1990, Pitts underscores the forms of intimacy, support, and conflict described in the letters between the two writers. Additionally, Pitts examines methods for how Latina/x feminists and other non-Native feminists of color may support Indigenous land and bodily sovereignty through an examination of the political stakes of developing transnational solidarities.

MYISHA CHERRY
Assistant Professor, UC Riverside
“On James Baldwin and Black Rage”
May 6, 2022
What I aim to elucidate in this talk is Baldwin’s moral psychology of anger in general, and black rage in particular, as seen in his nonfiction. I’ll show that Baldwin’s thinking is significant for moral psychology and is relevant to important questions at the intersection of the philosophy of emotion, race, and social philosophy. It also has a pragmatic application to the present-day anti-racist struggle. Baldwin’s theoretical account of Black rage, I’ll argue, (1) dignifies Blacks by centering them as people with agential capacities and (2) provides them with a pragmatic politics of rage that is useful in the fight against white supremacy and racial injustice.

AVNER BAZ
Associate Professor
Tufts University

NAOMI SCHEMAN
Professor of Philosophy and Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies
University of Minnesota

JENNIFER FREY
Associate Professor
University of South Carolina

ANTON FORD
Associate Professor
University of Chicago

MICHAEL ROSEN
Senator Joseph S. Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government 
Harvard University

AXEL HONNETH
Columbia/Princeton Institute for Advanced Study 2018-19

LISA GUENTHER
Queens University, Canada

RACHEL MCKINNON
College of Charleston 

MANUEL VARGAS
UCSD

RICKI BLISS
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Lehigh University

MICHELE MOODY-ADAMS
Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory 
Columbia University

LISA TESSMAN
Professor of Philosophy
SUNY Binghamton 

SALLY SEDGWICK
Professor of Philosophy
University of Illinois at Chicago
Mar. 16, 2018
3:00-5:30 pm

JENNIFER WHITING
Professor of Philosophy
University of Pittsburgh

ELIZABETH BARNES
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Virginia

ALEX VOORHOEVE
Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method 
London School of Economics
KIE and NIH Visiting Researcher
“Why Death Is Not Bad If You’re Supremely Self-Satisfied: A Defense of One of Epicurus’ Arguments.”

CLINTON TOLLEY
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of California San Diego

BEATRICE LONGEUNESSE
Silver Professor, Professor of Philosophy
New York University

KRISTIE DOTSON
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Michigan State University

DANIELLE MACBETH
T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy
Haverford College
“Logical Form, Mathematical Practice, and Frege’s Begriffsschrift” 

BRANDON HOGAN
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Howard University
“Hegelian Constitutivism”

ALISON PETERMAN
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
University of Rochester
“Two Questions about Embodiment”

DAVID CHARLES
Professor of Philosophy
Yale University

VANESSA WILLS
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
George Washington University
“False Consciousness”

CHESHIRE CALHOUN
Professor of Philosophy
Arizona State University
“Geographies of Meaningful Living”

DEAN MOYAR
Associate Professor of Philosophy
The Johns Hopkins University
“The Inferential Object: Hegel’s Deduction and Reduction of Consciousness”

ERIC CAMPBELL
Visiting Assistant Professor
McDonough School of Business and Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University
“How To Be a Naturalistic Relativist About Normativity”

RACHANA KAMTEKAR
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Arizona
“Plato on Doing What You Want”

AMIE THOMASSON
Professor of Philosophy
University of Miami
“Norms and Necessity”

TOMMIE SHELBY
Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy
Harvard University
“Punishment, Condemnation, and Social Injustice”

ROBERT PIPPIN
Evelyn Stefansson Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Department of Philosophy, and the College
The University of Chicago
“The Significance of Self-Consciousness in Idealist Theories of Logic”

DAN KELLY
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Purdue University
“Responsibility from the Outside In: Shaping the Moral Ecology around Implicit Bias”

SALLY HASLANGER
Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Social Meaning and Moral Philosophy”

MARY DOMSKI
Associate Professor of Philosophy
The University of New Mexico
“Newton’s Experimental Philosophy: Deducing Truth from the Phenomena”

TOM MULHERIN
Visiting Assistant Professor
Georgetown University
“‘Where Nature Will Speak to Them in Sacred Sounds’: Music and Transcendence in E.T.A. Hoffman”

DANIEL WEISKOPF
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Associated Faculty, Neuroscience Institute
Georgia State University
“The Human Stain: Concepts, Anthropic Kinds, and Realism”

In addition to his lecture, Dan taught a Master Class: “The Reality of Cognitive Models.”

AGNES CALLARD
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in Philosophy
University of Chicago
“The Importance of Being Ashamed”

KAREN STOHR
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Research Scholar, Kennedy Institute of Ethics
Georgetown University
“Self-Deprecation”
Faculty Work-in-Progress Colloquium

CHARLOTTE WITT
Professor of Philosophy and Humanities
University of New Hampshire
“The Argument for Gender Essentialism”