Philosophy colloquia occur on Fridays at 2:30pm in CLE A313 or are held via Zoom. Sometimes in-person colloquia events will also have a Zoom component.
Note: please email uvicphil@uvic.ca to be added to the Philosophy Colloquium mailing list so you may receive notifications about upcoming talks and Zoom meeting information.
Title: Thinking Outside the Lunch Box
Abstract: Lunch was delicious but took hours. How can this be true? It seems to many that only food was delicious while only events can take hours, and that nothing can be both. This is one instance of the problem of copredication, where there are true sentences that seem to ascribe categorically incompatible properties. On our approach to the problem there are not such strong categorical constraints on property instantiation, i.e. properties are more versatile than is commonly supposed. In this talk I’ll sketch the problem of copredication, our approach, and then delve into the details of the lunch example. Our approach yields a metaphysics of lunch on which lunch is a meal that is not straightforwardly identified with either the event of eating lunch or the food eaten.
28 January — Jorge Sanchez Perez — "Is the Huarochirí Manuscript a Source of Indigenous Philosophy?
Reconceptualizing the Idea of Philosophical Sources" — Simon Fraser University
11 March — Talia Mae Bettcher — "The Person One Has: A Trans Philosophical Account" — California State University, Los Angeles
18 March — Madeleine Ransom — "Aesthetic Perception and the Puzzle of Training" — UBC Okanagan
8 April — Nick Riggle — “Aesthetic Value and the Practice of Aesthetic Valuing” — University of San Diego
21-22 April — Ásta— San Francisco State University
Lansdowne Lecture: "Social Construction"
Philosophy Colloquium: Critical Social Ontology: Metaphysics, social science, and liberatory politics
29 April — Eva Man — "Evolution of Art and Moral Concerns in New China: From Mao Zedong’s Yenan Talks to Xi Jinping’s Speech on Artistic Practice" — Hong Kong Baptist University
24 September — Ray Jennings — "A Dereliction of Data" — Simon Fraser University
1 October — Madeleine Ransom — "Do high-level properties make a difference to perceptual phenomenology?" — University of British Columbia, Okanagan
15 October — Josh Wilburn — "Feminizing the City: Plato on Women, Masculinity, and Politics" — Wayne State University
22 October — Devon Cass — "Two Concepts of Equality" — Australian National University
Spring 2021
5 February — Nora Boyd — "Empirical Evidence and Its Accumulation Across Millenia" — Siena College
26 February — Natalia Washington — "Taxonomy is Taxidermy" — University of Utah
5 March — Joseph McCaffrey — "Does the Brain Respect Basic Emotion Theory?" — University of Nebraska, Omaha
12 March — Japa Pallikkathayil — "What May I Use?" — University of Pittsburg
19 March — Kit Fine — "The Concept of Gender" — New York University
26 March — Ryan Preston-Roedder — "Love and Social Justice" — Occidental College
Fall 2020
25 September — Lauren Olin — "Mistaking Identities" — University of Missouri-St. Louis
2 October — Brian Talbot — "The Importance of Mundane Beliefs" — University of Colorado Boulder
16 October — Julia Staffel — "Eyeballing the Evidence" — University of Colorado Boulder
20 November — Justin Clarke-Doane — "Russell's Regressive Method in Mathematics and Philosophy" —Columbia University
Spring 2020
January 17th: Scott Edgar, Saint Mary's University, "The Function of History in Hermann Cohen's Critique of Knowledge"
January 24th: Margaret Scharle, Reed College, "The Teleology of Divine Imitation in Aristotle"
January 31st: Mitra Sharafi, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Victoria Colloquium: "South Asians and West Africans at the Inns of Court: Empire and Expulsion circa 1900"
February 7th: David Friedell, University of British Columbia, "Why Can't I change Bruckner's Eighth Symphony?"
February 27th: Raymond Tallis, Landsdowne Lecture: "Are We (Just) Animals?"
February 28th: Raymond Tallis, Philosophy Colloquium: "Myth-Information"
March 6th: Richard Bellamy, University College London, Victoria Colloquium: "When is Democracy Constitutional? On the Relations between Political, Populist and Popular Constitutionalism"
March 27th: Debra Thompson, University of Oregon, Victoria Colloquium [CANCELLED]
Fall 2019
September 6th: Kerry McKenzie, University of California, San Diego, Philosophy Colloquium: No work for a theory of grounding? — A naturalist's take.
September 20th: Liam Shields, University of Manchester, Philosophy Colloquium: Children as Public Goods: at what cost?
September 27th: Devin Shaw, Douglas College, Philosophy Colloquium: Existentialism is an Antifascism: The Ethics of Ambiguity and Combating White Supremacy.
October 4th: Jill Fellows, Douglas College, Philosophy Colloquium; Alex Livingston, Cornell University, Victoria Colloquium
October 18th: Chelsea Rosenthal, Simon Fraser University, Philosophy Colloquium: Rights in an Uncertain World
October 25th: Troy Cross, Reed College & Brian Haas, University of Southern California, Philosophy Colloquium: Two Concepts of Ground
November 1st: Gordon Christie, University of British Columbia, Victoria Colloquium
November 15th: Michel-Antoine Xhignesse, Capilano University, Philosophy Colloquium: What makes a kind an art-kind?
November 22nd: Colleen Murphy, University of Illinois, Victoria Colloquium
Spring 2019
January 11th, Zoey Lavallee, CUNY, Philosophy Colloquium: "Toward a Theory of Craving"
January 18th, Dean Spade, Seattle University, Victoria Colloquium: "Solidarity Not Charity: Mutual Aid for Mobilization and Survival"
January 25th, Dr. Carl Craver, Washington University in St. Louis, Philosophy Colloquium: "The Ontic Conception and Idealization"
February 8th, Dr. Kyle Whyte, Michigan State University, Victoria Colloquium: "It's Too Late for Indigenous Justice: Problems with Urgency in Climate Change Advocacy"
March 8th, Melvin Rogers, Brown University, Victoria Colloquium: "Being a Slave of the Community: Race, Domination, and Republicanism"
March 26th, Dr. Eva Kit Wah Man, Hong Kong Baptist University, Philosophy Colloquium: Revelations and Limitations of Feminist Philosophy and Comparative Studies
March 29th, Dr. Shen-yi Liao, University of Puget Sound, Philosophy Colloquium
Fall 2018
September 14th, Dr. David Scott, University of Victoria, Philosophy Colloquium: "Chécartes: Descartes as Twentieth-Century Metaphysical Freedom Fighter."
September 28th, Dr. Ron Bontekoe, University of Hawaii, Philosophy Colloquium: "Metaethical Implications of Taking Darwin Seriously"
October 1st, Dr. Lori Gruen, Wesleyan University, Victora Colloquium
October 4th, Dr. Gideon Rosen, Princeton University, Lansdowne Speaker: "Managing Moral Outrage, or How Philosophy Can Change Your (Emotional) Life"
October 12th, Dr. Gina Rini, York University, Philosophy Colloquium: "Moral Disagreement is Special"
October 26th, Dr. Deva Woodly, New School, Victoria Colloquium
November 9th. Dr. Mark Antaki, McGill University, Victoria Colloquium
November 16th, Dr. Fatema Amijee, Simon Fraser University, Philosophy Colloquium: "Relativized Fundamentality"
November 23rd, Dr. Thomas Land, University of Victoria, Philosophy Colloquium: "Epistemic Agency and the Self-Knowledge of Reason: On the Contemporary Relevance of Kant’s Method of Faculty Analysis"
November 30th, Dr. Carina Fourie, University of Washington, Philosophy Colloquium: "Discrimination, Emotion, and Health Inequities"
Spring 2018
January 19th, Dr. Julen Etxabe, University Helsinki, Victoria Colloquium: "Dialogism in the Courts: What’s in it for Law, Human Rights, and Democracy?"
February 2nd, Dr. Joel Bakan, University of British Columbia, Victoria Colloquium
February 9th, Dr. Tim Kenyon, University of Waterloo, Philosophy Colloquium: "Phenomena and theory in the epistemology of testimony"
February 23rd, Dr. Alison Wylie, University of British Columbia, Philosophy Colloquium: "Radiocarbon Dating and Robustness Reasoning in Archaeology"
March 2nd, Dr. Conor Mayo-Wilson, University of Washington, Philosophy Colloquium: "Eliciting Group Beliefs"
March 9th, Dr. Marie-Eve Morin, University of Alberta, Philosophy Colloquium: "Flesh and Écart in Maurice Merleau-Ponty et Jean-Luc Nancy"
March 16th, Dr. Gina Rini, York University, CANCELLED Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Philosophy of Moral and Social Cognition, Philosophy Colloquium: "Moral Disagreement is Special"
March 23rd, Dr. Chris Lebron, Johns Hopkins, CANCELLED Victoria Colloquium: "The Duty To Imagine - Afrofuturism vs White Identity Narrative"
Fall 2017
September 15th: Dr. David Scott, UVic, Philosophy Colloquium: "Descartes on Thought: Evolution of a Misinterpretation"
September 22nd: Dr. Leslie Green, Queen's University, Victoria Colloquium: "The Normativity of Law: What is the Problem?"
September 29th: Dr. Tom Donaldson, Simon Fraser University, Philosophy Colloquium: "On the Nature of Mathematical Truth (or: truthmaker theory meets easy ontology)"
October 13th: Dr. Orit Kamir, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Victoria Colloquium: "Escape from Dignity: The Honour Politics of Jihad, Social Media Shaming, and Trump."
October 27th: Dr. Michael Griffin, University of British Columbia, Philosophy Colloquium: "Plato’s Republic as Psychology and Dissuasion from Politics"
November 3rd: Dr. Barbara Arneil, University of British Columbia, Victoria Colloquium: "Domestic Colonies and Colonialism vs Imperialism in Western Political Thought and Practice"
Abstract: Marx is a moving target, but so are his readers. And so are his scholarly editors and translators. Regrettably, though, some of his recent biographers and commentators haven’t moved on very much, partly from keeping him the same and playing safe, and partly from the genre-constraints of intellectual biography and textbook-mainstreaming. Moreover some of his ideas go unmarked and uncredited because they have merged with liberal-minded commonsense and taken-for-granted methodologies. In sum he is a complex cultural phenomenon, taking in visual, dramaturgical and cinematic representation.
This talk will cover various ways that Marx has changed, because we – or rather some of us in the scholarly community – have changed. The text for this talk will be in outline form covering topics such as the Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) or Complete Works project and its editorial politics; the shifting canon of ‘great works’ over the last 120 years; ‘Marx and ...’: ecology, the anthropocene, settler societies, Indigeneity and racial capitalism; feminism and the politics of sex, gender and sexuality; democracy, social democracy and socialisms.
But how to read Marx is changing, given his will to interpret the world and to change it. This is because our understanding of his reception through Engels and subsequent Marxisms has critically evolved; because our contextual understanding of what he thought his words were doing is improving; and because our literary and analytical skills have developed very considerably in a multi- and inter-disciplinary way.
It's a fair question what Marx’s words are doing for us, and why we don’t want him to leave us alone.
Bio: Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published very extensively on Marx, Engels and Marxisms, and is co-general-editor (with Marcello Musto, York University, Toronto) of a book series of that name for Palgrave Macmillan. His latest books are Marx in the ‘Classic Thinkers’ series for Polity Press, 2018; Engels Before Marx for Palgrave Macmillan. 2020; and The Life and Thought of Friedrich Engels, 30th Anniversary Edition, for Palgrave Macmillan (2020).
World-building, Democracy, and the Limits of Sovereign Mastery
Abstract: What does democracy require of us when it comes to governing land? More fundamentally, what does it mean to be free with regard to land? This talk explores these questions and proposes a geographically-attuned theory of democracy as world-building. To do so, I draw on a set of puzzles and shortcomings in European political theories of land, property, and work. My primary interlocutors are Hannah Arendt, GWF Hegel, Martin Heidegger, and Bonnie Honig. Ultimately, I find that these thinkers fail, albeit in illuminating ways, to provide convincing normative foundations for democratic world-building. To ground a robust theory of democracy over land, we will have to turn elsewhere, for example to indigenous theorists and anarchists. Moreover, I find that when it comes to land, it is time to abandon the framework of popular sovereignty that has long guided democratic theory. A truly democratic and participatory theory of land governance must sever any connection with sovereign mastery.
Bio: Anna Jurkevics is a political theorist and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia (PhD Yale 2017). Her research explores theories of land and territory from the vantage point of critical theory and the German tradition. She is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Contested Territory: A Theory of Land and Democracy Beyond Sovereign Bounds. Her work has appeared in Political Theory, the European Journal of Political Theory, and Modern Intellectual History, among other venues.
Ryan and two other PhD candidates from the Humanities have been awarded the Dean's Dissertation Year Scholarship, an award meant to facilitate completion the completion of their dissertations.
Emerita Professor of Philosophy Dr. Jan Zwicky is awarded the Order of Canada "for her contributions to Canadian poetry and philosophy, and for her work as an educator and editor."
Goto-Jones discusses reactions to Wynn Bruce's self-immolation and explains the significance of this practice in Buddhism.
Read more: Article by Dr. Chris Goto-Jones for The Conversation
"The Israel Scheffler Prize in Philosophy of Education, in memory of Israel Scheffler, is awarded every third year for either a book or a connected set of three or more papers on a topic in philosophy of education, broadly construed."Read more at: 2022 APA Prizes: Spring Edition
Read more: APA Recognizes Dr. Colin Macleod's receipt of Scheffler Prize Award
Dr. Peter Dietsch's recent article for The Conversation uses the precedent of the banning of tobacco advertisements in his argument that advertisements for high-emission goods and services should also be banned.
Read more: "Cigarette ads were banned decades ago. Let’s do the same for fossil fuels"
Dr. Audrey Yap and Dr. Katie Stockdale (UVic) with their colleague Dr. Barrett Emerick (St. Mary's) co-wrote an article for The Conversation on the Freedom Convoy.
Read more: "'Freedom convoy’ protesters’ anger is misdirected"
Prof. Raymond Tallis, philosopher, poet, critic, and former physician, will be delivering a short series of public talks on May 30th and 31st.
Read more: Philosophy Colloquium: "Aesthetic Perception and the Puzzle of Training"
Read more: Philosophy Colloquium: "The Person One Has: A Trans Philosophical Account"
On September 29th, Dr. Peter Dietsch will be giving a talk entitled "Inequality and the Centrifugal Nature of the Labor Market." This event is jointly hosted by the Facing Inequality series and the Rethinking Capitalism and Democracy series.
Read more: Talk: Inequality and the Centrifugal Nature of the Labor Market
“Bauhaus, Design, and the Livable Anthropocene” celebrates the innovative approach to design and architecture developed at the Bauhaus School, founded in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. The aim is to reflect on the historical impact of this approach, and explore its potential for addressing the design challenges of the Anthropocene. The bau1haus photographs by Jean Molitor, brought to UVic by the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany Vancouver, present an exceptionally beautiful record of modernist buildings from around the world. The Exhibit is accompanied by an inter-disciplinary colloquium.
In "COVID-19: Defiance and discontent follows B.C. vaccine card announcement" (Lisa Cordasco, The Vancouver Sun), Kluge expresses support for the province's new rules, saying that the vaccination card "preserves autonomy while protecting the rights of others."
Read more: Kluge's reply to business owners' arguments against vaccine card
"Modern Day Democracy: Current Perspectives" is an Elder Academy event that will be held virtually via Zoom during Saturdays in May. Dr. Colin Macleod will be the first to present on Saturday May 1st.
Read more: Upcoming event: "Modern Day Democracy: Current Perspectives"
3:16 interview with Dr. James Young in which issues of cultural appropriation, copyright and formalism are discussed.
Dr. David Scott's article, "From the Appearance to the Reality of Excessive Suffering: Theodicy and Bruce Russell's 'Matrix' Example" has been published by the journal Sophia.
The WCPA's 57th annual conference & the 2nd Salish Sea Aesthetics workshop was held in Victoria in November 2021.
Dr. Eike-Henner Kluge, a professor in the Department of Philosophy, was interviewed for The Tyee's story on the province's ethical framework for healthcare workers providing treatment to patients with COVID-19.
Read more: Dr. Eike-Henner Kluge Comments on Province's Ethical Framework for Healthcare Workers
Mike Raven's new edited volume, The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding, is forthcoming. Raven has written the introductory chapter of the volume.
In her new course, Dr. Yap hopes to create the conditions by which people with different perspectives on, and experiences of, the world can come together and create knowledge.
Read more: Philosophy professor Dr. Audrey Yap teaches new course held at UVic and Wilkinson Jail
