Membership Events

On Wednesday, 7th October, Heewon Seo gave gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ’The Paradoxes of Amor Fati and the Erroneous Conditions of Life’.

Nietzsche introduces amor fati, a notion commonly taken to mean ‘the love of fate.’ Yet this seemingly simple formulation conceals at least two serious paradoxes. First, fate includes suffering, loss, negativity, even events we would rather not remember. Can such a fate genuinely be loved—the problem of what might be called unlovable fate? Second, if loving fate requires seeing it as beautiful or making it beautiful, does this not risk loving a beautification rather than fate itself—a kind of ‘distorted fantasy’?

This paper takes these paradoxes as its point of departure and raises a more fundamental issue: the gap between will and love. Engaging critically with Béatrice Han-Pile, Tom Stern, and Guy Elgat, Heewon argues that amor fati cannot be reduced either to a voluntary resolution or to a form of divine love (agape). Instead, it must be reconsidered in relation to Nietzsche’s concept of error.

Focusing primarily on The Gay Science, Heewon begins from the premise that human cognition operates under essentially erroneous conditions. The more pressing question is how, within these unavoidable distortions, life might nevertheless become affirmable. This paper reinterprets amor fati not as self-deceptive beautification, but as an aesthetic–ontological stance that renders life beautiful and affirmable under the erroneous conditions of existence. In this sense, if amor fati is not to collapse into self-deception, it must presuppose the courage to face reality, the capacity for discernment, and what Nietzsche calls an intellectual conscience.

About the Speaker:
Heewon Seo is a Ph.D. researcher in Philosophy and Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London. Her research examines the question, “What makes humans human in the digital age?” and seeks to answer it through explorations of paradoxes, focusing primarily on the works of Levinas, Derrida and Nietzsche. Her recent work engages women philosophers and writers such as Donna Haraway, Anne Carson, and Simone Weil, bringing their ideas into dialogue through her ongoing work on paradox.

On Wednesday, 9th September, Alon Isac gave gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ’Pain’s Normative Constraints’.

Despite pain’s phenomenal, neuronal and functional idiosyncrasy, there have been recent attempts to identify a property or set of properties shared by all pains, in virtue of which they are considered pains. In this talk, Alon argues that such attempts should be rejected. Instead, he suggests that pain is a family resemblance concept constrained by pragmatic and moral considerations. On this view, pains share a range of phenomenal, neuronal and functional properties in a crisscrossing and overlapping manner, rather than a primal pain property or element. However, since many of these properties are also present in non-painful experiences, their presence alone cannot determine whether an experience is painful. Alon argues instead that pain categorization is guided by practical goals and ethical values. Accordingly, categorizing pain involves not only the identification of common properties, but also evaluating their importance. Pain research should therefore acknowledge that normative judgements are constitutive of pain.

About the Speaker:

Alon Isac is a PhD student of philosophy at the University of York. His research focuses on the nature of suffering and its relation to emotion and pain. Specifically, he explores how recent developments in the study of pain can illuminate the nature of pain-related suffering.

He completed his B.A. and M.A. in philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On Wednesday, 3 June, Annie Mukherjee gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Pluralistic Folk Psychology and the Theory-Simulation Debate: Mapping the Conceptual Landscape’.

The abstract is below: 
The Theory of Mind debate in philosophy of mind examines how we understand and predict others’  mental states. Traditionally, this debate has been framed by the distinction between theory theory  (TT), which holds that we rely on an implicit theory of folk psychology, and simulation theory (ST),  which claims that we understand others by imaginatively simulating their perspectives (Goldman,  2006). Although extensively developed in philosophy and enriched by empirical research in  psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, the debate has remained largely conceptual or  experimentally pursued by non-philosophers. Then came the pluralistic folk psychology accounts  (Spaulding, 2018), emphasising that folk psychology is complex, context-sensitive, culturally  variable, and often narrative-driven. On this view, such diversity undermines the traditional TT-ST  framework as too narrow. However, these pluralist critiques are themselves largely theoretical and  do not decisively demonstrate that surface-level variability reflects deep conceptual disunity.  

My thesis argues that experimental philosophy (Knobe & Nichols, 2008) provides a methodological  bridge by treating the conceptual architecture of folk psychology as an empirical question. Using  systematic surveys of ordinary intuitions, it examines whether people rely on the traditional  framework at all and, if so, whether they primarily employ theory-like reasoning, simulation, or a  flexible combination of both across contexts. Rather than discarding the traditional model, this  approach tests its empirical resilience and investigates whether TT and ST operate as  complementary strategies within an adaptive conceptual structure.

About the Speaker:
Annie Mukherjee is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Jadavpur  University. Her work is situated at the intersection of Philosophy of Mind and Experimental  Philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the application of experimental methodology to evaluate  certain theories of mind. She has two forthcoming publications in this domain. She completed her  B.A., M.A. (as a Gold Medallist, securing first position in her class), and M.Phil. in Philosophy  from Jadavpur University.  
Beyond her academic pursuits, she is passionate about music and regularly performs on various  platforms.

On Tuesday, 26 May, Professor Edward Harcourt gave a talk to membership titled ‘’Remembering and Forgetting' Season Review’.

The abstract is as follows:
In this talk, Edward Harcourt will look back at the 2024-25 lecture series - elaborating which ideas stood out to him the most, discussing the thought behind the selection of speakers and topics, and offering his own thoughts on Remembering and Forgetting. 

About the Speaker:
Edward Harcourt is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Keble College. His research lies in moral psychology, and on the boundaries between ethics and the philosophy of mind. From 2018-22 he was Director of Research, Strategy and Innovation at the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council.

On Wednesday, 6 May, Agnes Kosek gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Who gets to name the pain? Misrecognition, misrepresentation and the self: going beyond epistemological domination in educational spaces’.

In How to Do Things with Words, John Langshaw Austin (1962) observed that ‘for too long it was assumed by philosophers that the business of a “statement” can only be to “describe” some state of affairs, or to “state some fact”, which it must do either truly or falsely’ (p. 1). Yet to write or utter a statement is not merely to describe something; it is to perform an action, and many ‘statements’, he argued, have a performative force.

In many teacher-training programmes, such statements are drawn from sociological, psychological, and psychiatric research and are used to name children’s struggles: either through the language of inequality, which describes them as underachieving, or through the language of pathology, which frames them in terms of symptoms and conditions. Whilst these statements are important in enabling trainee teachers to recognise and support children identified as underachieving or diagnosed with developmental conditions, and in providing a shared professional language, Agnes will argue-drawing on Austin’s and Iris Murdoch’s philosophy-that statistical and diagnostic statements in teacher education can lead to significant misrecognition of students when taken too rigidly by teachers. In such cases, they risk shaping how children are seen and responded to in educational spaces, encouraging teachers to engage in acts of ‘naming’, affecting students’ sense of self and distorting the lived particularity of the child before the educator.

About the Speaker:

Agnes Kosek is Academic Employability Lead, Lecturer, and Module Leader on the Mental Health programme at the University of Central Lancashire, London. She is also a seminar leader at the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) on the BA Education, Society and Culture programme, where she teaches Philosophical Reflections on Education with Film. She has previously taught Educational Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychopathology at the University of Greenwich, and contributed to the Primary Education and Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS) Initial Teacher Training programme, where she mentored early years practitioners in line with Ofsted and professional teaching standards.

Agnes has taught across both undergraduate and postgraduate levels and brings over ten years of experience as a teacher in primary schools and early years settings. She holds an MA in Philosophy of Education from UCL and is currently undertaking a PhD at the UCL Institute of Education.

Her scholarly interests centre on pedagogy and philosophical psychopathology, with a particular focus on the misrecognition and historical misrepresentation of ethnic minorities and neurodiverse children in political discourse. She examines how such processes shape children’s self-development and influence both psychological practice and pedagogical decision-making in educational settings.

Agnes is an Affiliate Member of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy at IOE, UCL, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). She serves as Editor of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) Newsletter and is a member of the Society’s Communications Committee. Her research foregrounds moral development, with a particular emphasis on the importance of just and ethical encounters between students and educators.

On Thursday, 30 April, Isobel Standen gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Illusions of Understanding: Artificial Intelligence and the Common Sense Gap’.

With the rapid rise of tools such as ChatGPT, systems equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming progressively more integrated into our daily lives. Increasingly, we may find ourselves relying on these systems to perform tasks that were once carried out by humans. However, there are many reasons why we should not be quite so open to perceiving these systems as trustworthy. News reports detail cases of AI systems citing fake academic references, inventing scandals about real individuals, and, in one case, contributing to the false arrest of a teenager due to misidentifying a crisp packet as a weapon.   But why are some of the errors they make so simple and …nonsensical? In this talk, I will argue that one of the key reasons why AI systems are prone to these absurd errors is because of their lack of common sense. I will explore what we mean by ‘common sense’ and its (somewhat surprising) complexity, how a lack of common sense can result in AI errors, and the implications that this can have for AI safety and the level of trust we ought to place in these systems.

About the Speaker:
Isobel Standen is a PhD student at the University of York and a researcher from the Centre for Assuring Autonomy. Her work is at the intersection of philosophy and computer science, where she is involved in several projects that bring together multidisciplinary researchers for collaboration. Isobel is the co-organiser and co-chair of the annual ‘Requirement Engineering for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence’ (or ‘RETRAI’) workshop which aims to bring together both technical and non-technical researchers to discuss the challenges associated with developing truly trustworthy AI systems and identify strategies for overcoming associated risks. Isobel’s research explores the contrast between human capacities and those attributed to AI systems. In particular, she highlights how it is a lack of basic common sense that is one of the leading causes of errors made by AI systems.

On Tuesday, 14 April, Professor Jonathan Wolff gave a talk to membership titled 'Punishment, Mercy and Forgiveness'.

The abstract is as follows:
'Within the centenary selection of 100 papers a surprisingly high number are on topics related to the moral response to wrongdoing: punishment, mercy and forgiveness, including some of the most cited papers in the journal. These include the landmark papers by Joanna North  ‘Wrongdoing and Forgiveness’ (1987) and Alwynne  Smart ‘Mercy’ (1968) as well as several on punishment, including one of the earliest papers in the collection, W.D. Ross ’The Ethics of Punishment’ (1929). In this talk I will introduce and compare some of the main themes and arguments from these discussions.' - Professor Wolff

About the Speaker:
Professor Wolff is Emeritus Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University, and Supernumerary Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford.

Andrew Oyedola, Naturalising Epistemology: Wittgenstein and the African Model, from 25th March

This work argues that African methods of knowing are just as valid as Western scientific approaches. 
The thesis critiques a common Western view called 'naturalism'—especially the part that tries to understand the world relying solely on 'hard science'—for being too narrow and ignoring human communal and lived experience. By adopting Wittgenstein’s (1969) ideas on shared assumptions called hinges to advance African views from thinkers like Wiredu (1980) on African (Ghanaian) hinges and Makinde (1997) on Ifá–the Yorùbá repository of knowledge, the study proposes a more inclusive model.
This 'inclusive naturalism' treats knowledge not just as a lab result, but as something shaped by community, culture, and shared logic (Ubuntu). Ultimately, this framework 'decolonises' the field of knowledge, moving away from a 'science-only' mindset toward a holistic global perspective where different cultures' insights are respected and integrated.

About the Speaker:
Andrew is an accomplished researcher and a community leader dedicated to decolonising knowledge systems and fostering inclusive leadership. Having recently completed and defended his PhD in Philosophy at ARU, where his work, ‘Naturalising Epistemology: Wittgenstein and the African Model,’ adopted Ifá and Òwe from Yorùbá epistemology as an archetype of African epistemology to champion the inclusion of underrepresented African perspectives in global scholarship—a direct contribution to intellectual decolonisation and diversity.
Andrew's career bridges theoretical epistemology with practical student advocacy and cross-cultural collaboration. He is a leading voice for the Nigerian diaspora in the United Kingdom. He currently leads the NSSPF-UK, a coalition of over 70 Nigerian student societies Presidents, driving policy advocacy and empowerment for the Nigerian student diaspora in the UK.

On Tuesday, 17 March, Dr Alex Fisher gave the first in our new series of Lunchtime Talks. 

The social media site X faced international outcry in January when its AI tool Grok was used to generate “undressed” images of women without their consent. Predictably, many online responses minimised this, claiming the images were “fictional”, “realistic art at most” and “no more real than a Tom & Jerry cartoon”. Alex will discuss how research in philosophy and psychology illuminates the harm these images cause. Even when we know images aren’t “real”, seeing representations of ourselves violated is psychologically distressing, as is the misogynistic motivation behind them. Alex will outline how undressed images are part of a wider trend of representational wrongs, where realistic digital representations across various media target women and girls, and discuss how we can combat this.

About the Speaker:

Dr Alex Fisher is currently the Society for Applied Philosophy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Leeds. He was previously a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. He completed my PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2024. He is interested in how things that aren't real (virtual objects, fictional characters, fake identities) affect us psychologically as if they were. His current research examines ethical questions regarding digital technologies like videogames, virtual reality, social media, and online dating platforms.

On Tuesday, 3 March Professor Maria Alvarez gave a talk to membership. In it, she discussed the topics of blameworthiness and time, relating them to some of the ‘100 Papers That Shaped Our Thinking’ - a collection of the most influential contributions published in our journals, selected by TRIP’s current President, Professor Jo Wolff to celebrate our Centenary.

About the Speaker:
Professor Alvarez is a Co-Editor of Philosophy, the academic journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, and the author of Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action. She works mainly on philosophy of action, responsibility, and reasons and normativity.”