2001-2002 Lecture Series

Linda Zagzebski - University of Oklahoma
lzagzebski@ou.edu
September 7, 2001
Topics in Virtue Epistemology

"According to the medieval doctrine of the Tanscendentals there is a fundamental unity between the good and the true. We still think of truth as good, but we use the concept of truth differently than our predecessors did. To us truth is not a property of a belief..."

Jeff McMahan - University of Illinois
October 19, 2001
Abortion and Prenatal Injury

"I have suggested how the Time-Relative Interest Account of the morality of killing supports the permissibility of late abortion. There are, however, various objections to this understanding of the morality of late abortion..."

Peter Railton - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
prailton@umich.edu
December 7, 2001
Rational Feeling?

"Now that we philosophers have gotten comfortable with the idea that feelings are not simply to be contrasted with rationality, and that feelings have a firm engagement with cognition, we can begin to work on an anatomy of some of the specific ways feelings equip us to be rational, and rationality helps us regulate feelings..."

Dan W. Brock - Brown University
dan_brock@brown.edu
March 15, 2002
"A Response to the Disability Movement's Critique of Genetic Testing and Selection"

"We now devote considerable resources to research furthering the understanding of the genetic basis of various serious disabling congenital conditions. When genes are identified for such conditions, tests can usually be developed which can enable prospective parents to determine their risk of passing on the conditions to their children, or can determine the presence of the condition in a fetus..."

Michael Bratman - Stanford University
Bratman@turing.stanford.edu
March 22, 2002
Autonomy and Hierarchy

"In autonomous action the agent herself directs and governs the action. But what is it for the agent herself to direct and to govern? One theme in a series of papers by Harry Frankfurt is that we can make progress in answering this question by appeal to higher-order conative attitudes. Frankfurt's original version of this idea was that an agent acts of her own free will..."

Rebecca Kukla - Carleton University
rk75@georgetown.edu
April 5, 2002
The Ontology and Temporality of Conscience

Paul Weithman - University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Paul.J.Weithman.1@ND.edu
April 9, 2002
Agent-Sensitive Needs and the Demands of Distributive Justice

John Haldane - Saint Andrews University
jjh1@st-andrews.ac.uk
April 12, 2002
Can I Know What I Am Thinking? If So, How?

"Making (some) sense of (some) scepticial presuppositions. There is a widespread view, which in its recent form first came to prominence in the 1950s, that scepticism is an artifact of specific philosophical conceptions of knowledge that are not obligatory and of which, if we are still possessed of them, we may now easily divest ourselves..."

Wayne A. Davis - Georgetown University
davisw@georgetown.edu
April 12, 2002
Is Self-Knowledge Possible?

"John Haldane asks, 'Can I know that I am thinking? If so, how?' He considers two reasons for thinking that self-knowledge is not possible, and argues that they are not compelling. The first suggests that the requisite standard of certainty cannot be achieved..."

Michael Williams - Johns Hopkins University
mwilliam@jhunix.hfc.jhu.edu
April 12, 2002

Crispin Wright - Saint Andrews University
cw43@nyu.edu
April 12, 2002
Wittgensteinian Certainties

"G.E. Moore's 'A Defense of Common Sense' was first published in 1929 and his 'Proof of an External World' ten years later. Apparently Wittgenstein had a long-standing interest in these papers and in the last eighteen months of his life, stimulated by discussions with Norman Malcolm while his house-guest in Ithaca in 1949 he composed the notes we now have as 'On Certainty.' My question here is whether Wittgenstein's last philosophical thoughts point to a principled and stable reponse to the issue at which Moore's papers had been directed - the issue of scepticism..."

Niko Knoepffler - Jena University
April 19, 2002
Stem-Cell Research: An Ethical Evaluation

Christopher W. Morris
April 26, 2002
Are States Necessarily Coercive?

"Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all', Thomas Hobbes famously proclaimed. He exaggerated. As I shall point out later, his position is more subtle than that suggested by this famous citation..."

John Haldane - Saint Andrews University
jjh1@st-andrews.ac.uk
May 13, 2002
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Catholicism and the Meaning of Human Sexuality

"I aim, in brief, to do three things. First, to say something about contrasting readings of Nineteen Eighty-Four in respect of the themes of religion and sexuality. Second, to relate these readings to Roman Catholic understandings of those themes. Third, to relate those understandings to contemporary concerns about sexual liberty and regulation..."