Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

Nancy Cartwright is a methodologist and philosopher of the natural and human sciences, with special focus on causation, evidence and modelling. Her recent work has been on scientific evidence, objectivity and how to put theory to work. She is a Professor of Philosophy at Durham University and the University of California San Diego, having worked previously at Stanford University and the London School of Economics. Professor Cartwright is a former MacArthur fellow, a fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Social Sciences, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society (the oldest honorary academic society in the US), the Academia Europeae and Leopoldina (the German Society for Natural Science). She has won the Hempel Prize for lifetime achievement in philosophy of science and with Elliott Sober, the Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. She is Tsing Hua Honorary Distinguished Chair Professor in Taiwan and has been awarded honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews and Southern Methodist University. Her latest books are Nature, the Artful Modeler and Improving Child Safety: deliberation, judgement and empirical research with Eileen Munro, Jeremy Hardie and Eleonora Montuschi.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Cartwright's talk - 'Why Trust Science?' - at the Aristotelian Society on 27 April 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Dana Kay Nelkin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and an Affiliate Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. Her areas of research include moral psychology, ethics, bioethics, and philosophy of law. She is the author of Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 2011), and a number of articles on a variety of topics, including self-deception, friendship, the lottery paradox, psychopathy, forgiveness, moral luck, and praise and blame. She is also a co-editor of the The Ethics and Law of Omissions, The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility, and Forgiveness: New Essays. Her work in moral psychology includes participation in an interdisciplinary research collaboration of philosophers and psychologists, The Moral Judgements Project, which brings together normative and descriptive enquiries about the use of moral principles such as the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing and the Doctrine of Double Effect. Other roles include membership of the advisory board of the UC San Diego Institute for Practical Ethics, service as the North American representative to the Society of Applied Philosophy, and on the Academic Advisory Board of the UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Nelkin's talk - 'Equal Opportunity' - at the Aristotelian Society on 30 March 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Andrew Bacon is an associate professor at the University of Southern California. His main interests are in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. He has recently completed a book on vagueness entitled Vagueness and Thought, and is presently writing a textbook on higher-order logic aimed at metaphysicians.

This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Bacon's talk - 'Vagueness at Every Order' - at the Aristotelian Society on 16 March 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Alexander Douglas is a lecturer in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological, and Film Studies at the University of St Andrews. Previously he taught at Heythrop College, University of London. He studies early modern rationalism, particularly various forms of Cartesianism and especially that of Spinoza. He is interested in the idea that human reason can access a reality not visible to the senses and aims to trace some of its history, involving the history of formal logic and theology as well as of philosophy. He is the author of Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism: Philosophy and Theology (Oxford University Press, 2015). He is also interested in critiques of political economy and is the author of The Philosophy of Debt (Routledge, 2015). He is currently writing a book that draws on Spinoza’s philosophy to present the thesis that ‘special hope’ – hope that exceeds scientifically-warranted belief – is both a personal and political virtue.

This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Douglas' talk - 'Spinoza’s Unquiet Acquiescentia' - at the Aristotelian Society on 17 February 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Philip Goff is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. His work is focused on how to integrate consciousness into our scientific worldview, and he defends panpsychism on the grounds that it avoids the difficulties faced by the more traditional options of physicalism and dualism. He has published an academic book on this topic – Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (Oxford University Press) – as well as a book aimed at a general audience – Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (Rider in UK, Pantheon in US). Goff has also published in newspapers and magazines, such the Guardian, Aeon, the Times Literary Supplement and Philosophy Now. He blogs at Conscience and Consciousness and can be found on Twitter.

This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Goff's talk - 'Panpsychism and Free Will' - at the Aristotelian Society on 3 February 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Emily Thomas is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. Prior to this she obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and held a NWO grant at the University of Groningen. She has published widely on the history of metaphysics, especially space and time. In 2018 she published two books: a monograph Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics (Oxford University Press) and a collection Early Modern Women on Metaphysics (Cambridge University Press). Her next book, on the philosophy of travel, is forthcoming in 2020. She has recently started a new, AHRC-funded project exploring time in early twentieth century British metaphysics.

This podcast is an audio recording of Dr. Thomas' talk - 'Time and Subtle Pictures in the History of Philosophy' - at the Aristotelian Society on 20 January 2020. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Meena Dhanda is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics at the University of Wolverhampton. She is an advocate of socially engaged philosophy. Her research focus is on understanding injustices, prejudices and misrepresentations suffered by powerless groups, which she pursues through transdisciplinary studies, specifically connecting caste, class, gender and race. Her work includes: The Negotiation of Personal Identity and Reservations for Women, besides papers in international journals, book chapters and reference works.

She holds a doctorate from Oxford University, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and a Rhodes Junior Research Fellow. As PI, she has led three transdisciplinary research projects: 1) for the University of Wolverhampton (Black and Minority Ethnic Students’ Experience), 2) for the Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (Caste Aside: Dalit Punjabi Identity and Experience) and 3) for the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) (Caste in Britain) leading a consortium of experts from SOAS, Manchester Metropolitan, Goldsmiths, Middlesex and Wolverhampton. Her two EHRC reports (Dhanda et al 2014a and Dhanda et al 2014b) were used by the UK Government Equalities Office in its public consultation on how caste discrimination must be legally addressed in Britain.

Professor Meena Dhanda is an executive member of SWIP UK and the BPA. She is placed on Amnesty International’s Suffragette Spirit Map of Britain (2018) in recognition of her long-standing commitment to anti-discrimination research and practice.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Dhanda's talk - 'Philosophical Foundations of Anti-Casteism' - at the Aristotelian Society on 9 December 2019. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Colleen Murphy is a Professor in the College of Law with courtesy appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is also Director of the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program. Previously she was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University, a Laurence S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Princeton University Center for Human Values, and a Visiting Professor at the 4.TU Centre for Ethics in the Netherlands. She works on topics in ethics, political philosophy, and philosophy of law, with a particular focus on transitional justice and the ethical dimensions of risk. She is the author of The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which received the North American Society for Social Philosophy Book Award; A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge University Press, 2010); as well as more than 50 articles and book chapters. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Journal of Moral Philosophy, and Science and Engineering Ethics. Professor Murphy is a past member of the American Philosophical Association’s (APA) Committee on the Status of Women and current member of the APA Committee on Philosophy and Law.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Murphy's talk - 'On Principled Compromises ' - at the Aristotelian Society on 4 November 2019. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

Glen Pettigrove is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, occupying the Chair in Moral Philosophy previously held by Glasgow’s favourite son, Adam Smith. Before joining the Glasgow department Glen was Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland. He specializes in moral psychology, normative ethics, and early modern philosophy. He has a particular interest in the role of the emotions in our personal and collective lives and has written on anger, cheerfulness, forgiveness, guilt, love, and shame. He is the author of Forgiveness and Love (Oxford University Press, 2012) as well as numerous articles on virtue, religious ethics, and group attitudes.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Pettigrove's talk - 'Ambition, Love, and Happiness' - at the Aristotelian Society on 21 October 2019. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.

As the first talk for the 2019-20 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, this year’s Presidential Address marks the official inauguration of Professor Helen Steward (University of Leeds) as the 112th President of the Aristotelian Society. The Society’s President is elected on the basis of lifelong, exemplary work in philosophy.

Helen Steward is Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Action at the University of Leeds. She received her D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 1992. Before moving to Leeds in 2007, she was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford for 14 years. Her research interests lie mainly in the philosophy of action and free will, the philosophy of mind, and the metaphysical and ontological issues which bear on these areas (e.g. causation, supervenience, levels of explanation, the event/state distinction, the concepts of process and power). She has also worked on the category of animality and on understandings of the human being which take seriously our membership of the animal kingdom, and related biological and evolutionary perspectives on ourselves. She is the author of The Ontology of Mind (Oxford: OUP, 1997) and A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: OUP, 2012), as well as many papers on free will, agency, mental causation and ontology of mind.

The 112th Presidential Address was chaired by Jonathan Wolff (Oxford) – 111th President of the Aristotelian Society.

This podcast is an audio recording of Professor Steward's address - 'Free Will and External Reality: Two Scepticisms Compared' - at the Aristotelian Society on 7 October 2019. The recording was produced by the Backdoor Broadcasting Company.