The Department is delighted to host a variety of lectures and master classes each year, drawing prominent and creative philosophical thinkers to the Georgetown community.
Please do not hesitate to contact the Main Office at philosophy@georgetown.edu with any questions regarding the Lecture Series.
Talks for the 2024-2025 Academic Year
Abstracts and titles will be released closer to the date of the talks.
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 February 28, 2025 3:15 – 5:00 PM New North 204
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 an 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.
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
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”
