In 2011, dialectica held its 2011 annual lecture at the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division conference.
The lecture was given by Kit Fine, who is arguably the most important living philosopher, on the topic of ‘Truth Making’. A podcast of Kit Fine’s lecture is available for free below:
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The 2012 lecture will be given by Professor Joseph Raz on the topic of Death in Our Life.
Tuesday 22nd May 2012
5pm – 6.30pm, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK
All are welcome to attend the lecture, which will be followed by a drinks reception for Society for Applied Philosophy members. Find out more here.
Previous Lectures
2011: The Global Reach of Human Rights, Professor Amartya Sen
2010: Militant Modern Atheism, Professor Philip Kitcher
2009: Measuring Development, Poverty and Gender Equity, Professor Thomas Pogge
2008: Naturalism, Normativity, and Applied Ethics, Baroness Onora O’Neill
The dialectica 2012 essay prize topic has been announced! Submit your article on the topic of Cognitive Penetration before November 1st for your chance to win £1,500!
Cognitive penetration refers to the influence of beliefs, expectations, moods, desires or background theories on the content of perceptual processes or conscious experiences. This phenomenon has been in the forefront of the philosophy of science, the philosophy of perception, and the foundations of cognitive science. Philosophers of science have warned that cognitive penetration might threaten the epistemic role of perception as an objective source of knowledge and have used it to explain radical paradigm shifts. Philosophers of perception have tried to characterize the various ways in which perceptual processes or conscious experiences can be altered by other mental states or activities. Cognitive scientists have exploited this phenomenon as a starting point to motivate claims on the architecture of the human mind, including modularity and plasticity.
We invite submissions on any aspect of this phenomenon. Possible questions include: How is the influence of various mental states on perceptual processes or experiences to be characterized in psychological terms? Are there principled differences between the cognitive penetration of conscious experiences and that of subpersonal perceptual processes? What is the impact (if any) of cognitive penetration on the individuation of mental states? What kinds of cognitive penetration are there? Does cognitive penetration lend support to relativism? How does cognitive penetration relate to the confirmation of scientific theories by experience? Does cognitive penetration undermine (or support) some models of perceptual justification? Does the use of instruments to observe phenomena presuppose any form of cognitive penetration? What sorts of evidence can support or disconfirm claims about cognitive penetration? Could it shed new light on Kuhnian incommensurability?
Please send your submissions in pdf format to Philipp Keller, philipp.keller@unige.ch, by the 1st of November 2012. The author of the winning entry will receive £1500. All papers submitted will be considered submissions to the journal and should not be published or under review elsewhere.
We are pleased to invite you to the 2012 Mark Sacks lecture:
Perceptual experience: both relational and contentful
John McDowell
It seems right to say that perceptual experience puts experiencing subjects in (direct or immediate) relation with items in their environments. It is increasingly widely held that there is an inconsistency between that claim and the idea that perceptual experience has content. John McDowell will argue that there is no such inconsistency.
The paper from this lecture will be published in an upcoming issue of the European Journal of Philosophy and the lecture will be recorded and made available as a free podcast.
Date and time: 5.30pm, Friday 15th June 2012
Venue: Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 34 Gell Street, S3 7QY, UK
All are welcome to attend the lecture which will be followed by a drinks reception hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.
The texts of previous lectures in this series (formerly known as the EJP Annual Lectures) have been published as follows:
2011: Identity, Individuation and Substance, David Wiggins
2010: Why Are You Betraying Your Class?, Avishai Margalit
2009: Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods: Two Moral Philosophies, Alasdair MacIntyre
2008: Ethics for Communication, Onora O’Neill
The editors of the Journal of Applied Philosophy are pleased to announce the winner of the 2011 annual article prize. Congratulations to Jakob Elster who was awarded the £1000 prize for his article How Outlandish Can Imaginary Cases Be?
The Journal of Applied Philosophy will continue to award an annual prize of £1000 to the best article published in the year’s volume. The judgement as to the best article will be made by the editors of the journal; the Society for Applied Philosophy annual lecture, published in the journal, will not be eligible for the prize of best article.
New Report Calls for Decriminalisation of Assisted Dying In Canada
A report commissioned by the Royal Society of Canada, and published earlier this week in the journal Bioethics, claims that assisted suicide should be legally permitted for competent individuals who make a free and informed decision, while on both a personal and a national level insufficient plans and policies are made for the end of life.
End-of-life decision-making is an issue wrapped in controversy and contradictions for Canadians. The report found that most people want to die at home, but few do; most believe planning for dying is important and should be started while people are healthy, but almost no one does it. And while most Canadians support the decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, both remain illegal under the Criminal Code of Canada.
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC), a national organisation of distinguished scholars, artists and scientists, believes the time has come for a national debate on end-of-life decision making as assisted dying is a critically important public policy issue, where opinion, practice and the law seem out of alignment.
Read this report for free now!
The Philosopher's Eye 