2000-2001 Lecture Series

Mark Johnston - Princeton University
johno@princeton.edu
November 3, 2000
The Obscure Object of Hallucination

Robert Adams - Yale University
robert.adams@yale.edu
November 10, 2000
The Nature of Virtue

Jeff McMahan
JMcMahan@uiuc.edu
December 1, 2000
Abortion and Prenatal Harm

Catherine Z. Elgin - Harvard University
catherine_elgin@harvard.edu
March 16, 2001
Take It From Me: The Epistemological Status of Testimony

"We acquire many of our beliefs from others, often on the basis of their say-so alone. When a stranger introduces himself, we seldom demand to see his bona fides. We take it that he knows his own name and is honest in reporting it..."

Joseph Rouse - Wesleyan University
jrouse@wesleyan.edu
March 23, 2001
Subject to Interpretation: Bodies and Desires in Recent Analytic Interpretation Theory

"Today I trace the emergence of some themes characteristic of 'Continental' philosophy- desire, subjectivity, and power- from with the heartland of late analytic philosophy, the tradition of Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Davidson, and Brandom..."

Christoph Jaeger - Universitaet Leipzig
March 30, 2001
cjaeger@uni-leipzig.de
Warrant, Defeaters, and the Epistemic Basis of Religious Belief

"One of the most influential movements in the current philosophy of religion is Reformed Epistemology, a project powerfully developed and supported in recent years by philosophers such as William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff and, above all, Alvin Plantinga. Its central tenet is that theistic belief, as conceived in traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, can be, as Plantinga famously dubbed it, 'properly basic'..."

Martha C. Nussbaum - The University of Chicago
martha_nussbaum@law.chicago.edu
April 5-6, 2001
Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero's Problematic Legacy

"The Statesmen's Bible. A child born this year in the United States has a life expectancy of 76.4 years. A child born in Sierra Leone can expect to live 34.7 years..."

George L. Farre - Georgetown University
farreg@georgetown.edu
April 27, 2001
Is Human Consciousness a Form of Matter?

"The question raised by the title is not new, a number of prominent physicists have struggled with it, and for a number of reasons have given different answers, a sure sign that there is some impediment to a straight answer. The point of this paper is to look for the nature of this apparent methodological block and to suggest an affirmative answer to the question..."