91Ö±²¥

The Philosophy Research Seminar (formerly known as The Department Seminar) is central to the academic life of the School of History, Philosophy, and Digital Humanities. The seminar runs most weeks in term time.

The Philosophy Research Seminar takes place on Friday afternoons through the Autumn and Spring terms (2:30-4:30 pm) in Broad Lane, Lecture Theatre 4

Speakers present their paper (sometime shared in advance) for 45 minutes, followed by a short break and discussion.

For more information, please, contact:

Jerry Viera - g.viera@sheffield.ac.uk or Ed Matthews - e.p.matthews@sheffield.ac.uk. 

All are welcome!

Upcoming events

Autumn 2024

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
11th October	- University of Oxford	SPECIAL LECTURE - EXPANDING THE CANON 'Rethinking Responsibility'
18th October	- Lancaster University	'Frances Power Cobbe and Animal Ethics'
25th October	- University of 91Ö±²¥	'The Mismeasure of Pain'
1st November	- University of 91Ö±²¥	SPECIAL LECTURE - THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISABILITY AND DIFFERENCE - 'Cripistemologies of Chronicity: A "coalition of the 'left-behinds'"
8th November	- University of Bristol	'Living forces and Stationary action: Leibniz at the limits of analytic mechanics'
22nd November	- Cardiff University	'Aesthetic Slurs'
6th December	- University of Edinburgh	'Pornography, Objectification, and Fungibility'
13th December	- University of Bristol	'Social Metaphysical Explanation'

 

Spring 2025

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
21st February	- The Open University	TBC
28th February	- Stockholm University	TBC
7th March	- University of Cambridge	TBC
14th March	- University of London	SPECIAL LECTURE - Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies' Distinguished Lecture in Cognitive Science
21st March	Chris Bennett - University of 91Ö±²¥	TBC
28th March	- University of Cambridge	SPECIAL LECTURE - WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
4th April	- Durham University	TBC
2nd May	- University of California, San Diego	TBC
16th May	- Northeastern University	SPECIAL LECTURE - MINORITIES AND PHILOSOPHY

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Past events

Autumn 2023

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
13th October	David Papineau - Kings College London	The Moral Irrelvance of Consciousness
20th October - CANCELLED	Rachel Fraser - Oxford University - CANCELLED	Open-mindedness as Curiosity - CANCELLED
27th October	Ian Kidd - The University of Nottingham	Misanthropy
3rd November - CANCELLED	Helen Frowe - Stockholm University - CANCELLED	(Some Nascent Thoughts on) The Moral Permissibility of Collective Defence Agreements - CANCELLED
10th November	Lea Cantor - University of Cambridge	Ancient philosophy within a global purview: from historiography to first-order philosophical interpretation
17th November	Camil Golub - Rutgers University	The Good, the Bad, and the Meaningful
24th November	Emma Borg - University of Reading	Are Heuristics Unthinking Processes? The No Reasons challenge to Common-sense Psychology
1st December	Richard Pettigrew - University of Bristol	What is the distinctive wrong of testimonial injustice?
8th December	Gonzalo Velasco Arias - Universidad Carlos III	On Online Virtuous Deference

Spring 2024

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
16th February	Michael Ridge - University of Edinburgh	Immoral Hopes
23rd February	Alexander Prescott-Couch - Oxford University	Against Problematization Accounts of Genealogical Critique
1st March	Frederique Janssen-Lauret - University of Manchester (Women in the History of Philosophy Annual Lecture)	Susan Stebbing’s Philosophy of Physics
8th March	Rachel Fraser - University of Oxford	Practical Assurance
22nd March	Daniel Rothschild - University College London	Learning Curves: Machine and human learning
19th-20th April (Two day conference)	Teemu Toppinen - Tampere University & Vilma I Venesmaa - University of Helsinki	Conference title: Explaining Normativity
26th April	Patrice Haynes - University of Nottingham (Minorities and Philosophy Annual Lecture)	TBC
3rd May	Zsuzsanna Chappell	The Philosophy of Disability and Difference
10th May	Jonathan Parry - London School of Economics	Why Paternalism is Wrong (When It is Wrong)?

2022

Autumn 2022

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
13th October	Expanding the Canon Annual Lecture - , University of 91Ö±²¥, UK	Fanon and the Body Schema
21st October	, University of St Andrews, UK	The Tyrant and the Failure of Philia
4th November	, University of 91Ö±²¥, UK	Getting what you "want"
4th November	​*(Online Only)  - , King's College London, UK Note change time: 6.00-8.00 pm - Zoom Link to join .	Thought and Feeling: George Eliot and the Expansion of Philosophy
18th November	, University of Leeds, UK	Truth and rationality in mindreading
Postponed (Date TBC)	Women in the History of Philosophy Annual Lecture - Rescheduled to 3rd March
2nd December	, Cardiff University, UK	Commitment on-line: On taking responsibility for one’s words on social media
9th December	, University of Texas, Austin, USA	What We Make When We Make an Effort

2023

Spring 2023

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
27th January	​, Brown University, USA - ICOSS Conference Room - this talk will take place at 3:30 pm	Deliberation and Fetish
10th February	Cancelled
17th February	, King's College London, UK	Knotty Promises
24th February	, Tel-Hai Academic College, Israel	Sentiments and personal identity
3rd March	Women in the History of Philosophy Annual Lecture - , Birkbeck, University of London	The Theoretical and Practical Philosophy of Dr Sophie Bryant (1850-1922)
10th March	, Virginia Tech University, USA	Humorlessness as a Moral Vice
17th March	Cancelled
24th March	, Vanderbilt University, USA	When Emotions Go Wrong: Epistemic and Ethical Distortions
31st March	, The University of Sydney, Australia	Have You Forgiven Me?
28th April	, University of Warwick, UK	Extremism, Radicalism, and the Politics of Labelling
5th May	, University College London, UK
12th May	The Minorities and Philosophy Annual Lecture - , Universitat de Barcelona Register at	​Gender Identity, First-Person Authority,  and Philosophy of Mind
19th May	, University of Texas, Austin, USA	Art and Responsibility
June (Date TBC)	, Georgetown University, USA

2022

Spring 2022

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
25th February	* (Queen’s University, Canada)	Martin Luther King on Fearlessness and Faith
4th March	* (Northwestern University)	Against Irrationalism in the Theory of Propaganda
11th March	(University of Edinburgh)	Interpersonal Reasoning
18th March	(University of Edinburgh)	Decolonizing the Intersection: Conceptual and Empirical Evidence against the Presuppositions of Intersectional Theory
25th March	(University of Essex)	Kierkegaard on Thoughts
29th April	(University of Oxford)
6th May	(Open University)	MAP Lecture
13th May	(École Normale Supérieure)	Anticipating Pain

2021

Autumn 2021

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
8th October	* (Washington University St Louis)	Informational Chauvinism
15th October	James Chamberlain (University of 91Ö±²¥)	A Humean account of  moral intuitions
22nd October	* (University of Connecticut)	Resistance isn't Futile:  Fending off Toxic Speech
29th October	* (Harvard University)	The Phenomenal Public
5th November	(University of Groningen)	Testimonial  injustice in law: Victims and witnesses of climate injustice
19th November	(University of Glasgow)	The Reality of Colour  Illusion
26th November	(University of Glasgow)	What is Trustworthiness?
3rd December	(University of Edinburgh)	Decolonizing the  Intersection: Conceptual and Empirical Evidence against the Presuppositions of  Intersectional Theory
10th December	(University of Birmingham)	Procreative Justice:  Genetic Selection and Skin Tone

Spring 2021
 

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
19th February	Vanessa Wills (George Washington)	The 'White Privilege' Concept in Marxism and in Critical Race Theory
26th February	Stephen Darwall (Yale)	Transformative Knowledge of Love and Respect: The Cases of James Baldwin and Frederick Douglass
5th March	Margot Strohminger (Australian Catholic)	What’s the difference between supposing and imagining?
12th March	Adriana Clavel-Vasquez (Oxford)	Controlling (mental) images and the aesthetic appreciation of racialized bodies
19th March	Candice Delmas (Northeastern)	Uncivil disobedience from Black Lives Matter to the Capitol (2pm)
26th March	Laura Valentini (LMU Munich)	Normative Powers
23rd April	Jimmy Lenman (91Ö±²¥)	Confucius or Plato?
30th April	Jules Holroyd (91Ö±²¥)	Bad Praise
7th May	Muhammad Ali Khalidi (CUNY)	Language & Social Ontology
14th May	Jessica Leech (KCL)	Martha Kneale's Necessary A Posteriori

2020

Autumn 2020

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
9th October	David Enoch (Hebrew University)	Why Care about Morality, Robustly Realistically Understood
16th October	Caspar Hare (MIT)	Pleasing the Crowd Within
23rd October	Liz Camp (Rutgers)	Perspectival Complacency, Perversion and Amelioration
30th October	Justin Clarke - Doane (Columbia)	Russell's Regressive Method in Mathematics and Philosophy
6th November	William Paris (Wesleyan)	Looking for Tomorrow in Yesterday: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Utopia of The Souls of Black Folk.
13th November	No Seminar	Reading Week
20th November	Thi Nguyen (Utah)	Value Capture and Value Collapse (4pm)
27th November	Carrie Fidgor (Iowa)	What Could Cognition Be, If Not Human Cognition?
4th December	Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (91Ö±²¥)	Now and Then: Thinking about Time
11th December	Margot Strohminger (ACU)	Supposition, Imagination, and Offline Belief (Time TBC)
18th December	Harjit Bhogal (Maryland)	Strikingness (3pm)

Spring 2020

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
14 February	Seiriol Morgan (Bristol)	On Entitlement
28 February	Tom Stern (UCL)	Nietzsche's Ethics
6 March	Natalie Ashton (Stirling)	Productive Online Environments: Why Twitter is (Epistemically) Better than Facebook Minorities And Philosophy (MAP) Annual Lecture Please note change of venue to Hicks Lecture Theatre 5
20 March	Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (91Ö±²¥)	'Now' Thoughts
27 March	Boudewijn de Bruin (Groningen)	Self-Fulfilling Epistemic Injustice
3 April	Carrie Figdor (Iowa)	Towards a Non-Anthropocentric Psychology
1 May	Dan Watts (Essex)	Kierkegaard on the Limits of Reason and the Freedom to Judge
15 May	Jessica Leech (King’s College London)	Martha Kneale on Why Metaphysical Necessities Are Not A Priori Annual Women in the History of Philosophy lecture

2019

Autumn 2019

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
4 October	(Barcelona)	Imperative Transparency
18 October	Max Hayward (91Ö±²¥)	Terrestrial Ethics
25 October	(University College Dublin)	Fragrant Games - Playing With Perfumes
1 November	(Durham)	How To Be An Epistemic Constitutivist
8 November	(Duisburg-Essen)	The Dark Side of Forgiveness
29 November	(Oxford)	Skepticism 91Ö±²¥ Cases in Philosophy, Near and Far
13 December	(Kings College London)	The Wrong of Untruthfulness

Spring 2019

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
8 February		Are the Norms of Assertion Social Norms?
22 February		Epistemic Dilemmas and the Fixed-Point Thesis
1 March		Minorities and Philosophy Annual lecture: Holding Resistance Hostage: When Resistance Is Futile
8 March		Self-Trust and Discriminatory Speech
22 March		Responding to The Negative Repugnant Conclusion
29 March	Tatjana von Solodkoff (University College Dublin)	Cancelled
5 April		Annual Women in the History of Philosophy lecture: Rose Rand (1903–1980) from the Archives: Real and Unreal
3 May	Megan Blomfield (91Ö±²¥)	Epistemic injustice in asylum claim credibility assessments
10 May		On biological individuality

2018

Autumn 2018

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
12 October	Dr Chris Marshall (91Ö±²¥)	Killing Innocent Threats and Ducking Harm
19 October		Disagreement about Logic: How and When
26 October		TBA
2 November		Inter-temporal choice and the metaphysics of time
16 November		Pluralism about moral worth
23 November	Prof. Robert Stern (91Ö±²¥)	Beast or Neighbour? Logstrup and Levinas on the Relation Between Ethics and Politics
30 November		Is Aesthetic Immoralism Obviously True
7 December		Risk Imposition and Duties of Care

 Spring 2018

Date	Speaker	Title of paper
16 Feb		Minorities and Philosophy Annual lecture: "Slaves and Tyrants: Freedom and Domination in the Vindication of the Rights of Women"
2 March		Meaning Pluralism, Linguistic Register and Slurs
9 March	Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (91Ö±²¥)	Homo Aestheticus
16 March		Ambivalence - cancelled due to proposed UCU industrial action.
20 April		From Duty for the Right Reasons
27 April		Virtual Representation in Pictorial Space
4 May		Annual Women in the History of Philosophy lecture: "The Republican Family in the Revolution: Adapting and Subverting Rousseau"
11 May		Culpable ignorance and mental disorders