Skip to main content

Past Speakers

Fall 2018-Spring 2019

Ben Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State)
Valuing and the True Self
September 7, 3:00-5:00
AH 302

Linda Radzik (Texas A&M)
Title TBA
October 19, 3:00-5:00
Location TBA

Matthew Babb (Washington University St. Louis)
Title TBA
November 9, 3:00-5:00
Location TBA

Ellen Fridland (King's College London)
Skill and Control
CANCELLED

Isaac Wiegman (Texas State)
Does Punishment Have a Goal?
February 15, 3:00-5:00
AH512

Fall 2017-Spring 2018

Integration, Segregation, and Gentrification in our Houston Neighborhoods: A Community Discussion on Philosophy and Politics
Speakers:  Rep. Garnet Coleman (Texas State Representative Dist. 147), Dr. Ronald Sundstrom (U. San Francisco), Dr. Assata Richards (Sankofa Research Institute and Emancipation Economic Development Council)
October 19, 7:00 PM
The Historic Eldorado Ballroom, 2310 Elgin St.
(In partnership with The Hobby School for Public Affairs)
Flyer

UH Faculty Senate Assistant Professor Excellence Lecture (APeX)
Cameron Buckner (University of Houston)
Can Animals Understand that Others Have Minds?  Putting Psychology, Biology, and Philosophy Back Together Again
October 25, 12:15-1:15 PM
UCBB 506
Light refreshments (brown bag lunches welcome)
Flyer

Fall 2016-Spring 2017

Tenth Annual Conference of the Leibniz Society of North America
November 4-6
Room 118 CBB

Kenneth Taylor (Stanford)
APA Annual Board Meeting Lecture
November 18th 2:30-3:30
Reception to follow

Katherine Dunlop (UT Austin)
Gareth Evans on Molyneux's Problem
March 31, 3:00-5:00
AH 104

Katherine Dunlop (UT Austin)
Meeting of the Houston Circle to discuss paper "The Formality of 'General' Logic and the Content of 'Transcendental' Logic in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason"
April 1, 2:30
AH 512
(Those interested should contact Dr. Hattab for the paper)

Fall 2015-Spring 2016

Kenny Easwaren (Texas A&M)
Newcomb-style Decision Problems
October 16 3:00-5:00
Location TBA

Sophie Horowitz (Rice)
October 30 3:00-5:00
Location/Title TBA

Shannon Spaulding (OSU)
Divergent Social Interpretations
November 5 3:00-5:00
AH 16

Joshua Weisberg (UH)
Schmonsciousness Explained?  On the Proper Subject for a Theory of Consciousness
Feb 5 2:00-4:00
AH 302

Kate Abramson (Indiana)
February 19 Time TBA
Location TBA

Martha Nussbaum (Chicago)
*Cancelled due to Denver blizzard!*
Anger and Revolutionary Justice
March 25th 1:00 PM
UH Law Center 144 TUII

Sally Haslanger (MIT)
Lone Star Speaker Series
March 28 4:00-6:00
Racist Ideology and Racist Practices: Moving Beyond Critique 
AH7

David Shoemaker (Tulane)
April 15 3:00-5:00
“You Oughta Know: Defending Angry Blame”
SEC 203

Fall 2014-Spring 2015

Karen Bennett (Cornell)
Building and Causing
November 13, 4:00-6:00
Location 002 AH

Alan Hazlett (Edinburgh) 
Imagination that Amounts to Knowledge from Fiction
Friday, November 21, 3:00-5:00 
Location 304 AH

Dien Ho (MCPHS) 
Buying Children:  How Paid Surrogacy is Really Money for Offspring
Friday, March 13, 3:00-5:00 
Location SEC 201

Workshop on Cognitive Science and Robotics
In collaboration with Osaka University
Monday, March 23, 11:00-4:00 
Location:  Heyne 135

Symposium on Animal Cognition
5 talks by UH Faculty and Graduate Students
Friday, March 27, 3:00-6:00 
Location SEC 201

David McNaughton and Piers Rawling (Florida State) 
Should We Act for the Best?
Friday, April 3, 3:00-5:00 
SEC 201

Roger Wertheimer 
Speaking with Objects
Friday, April 17, 3:00-5:00 
AH 301

Spring 2014

Andrew Kania (Trinity) 
An Imaginative Theory of Musical Space and Movement
Friday, April 25, 3:00-5:00 
Location TBA

Nicoletta Orlandi (Rice) 
Seeing without Inference 
Friday, March 28, 3:00-5:00 
Location TBA

Ali Fatollahi (Princeton) 
Biased Assimilation and Belief Polarization
Friday, March 21, 3:00-5:00 
AH 512

Fall 2013

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (Duke)
Friday, November 15, 3:00-5:00
Does Neuroscience Undermine Responsibility?
PGH 232

Joseph Rouse (Wesleyan)
Lone Star Tour Lecture
Friday, October 18th, 3:00-5:00
Two Concepts of Objectivity
Room TBA
Reception to follow 

Cameron Buckner (UH)
Friday, Oct 4, 1:00-3:00
UH Networks Seminar
Semantic Networks in the Humanities
SEC 206

Hagop Sarkissian (City University of New York, Baruch College)
Friday, September 13th, 3:00-5:00
Resonance Ethics
Room TBA
Reception to follow in AH 512

Spring 2013

Daniel Povinelli (University of Louisiana)
Friday, March 22nd
Journal Club and Grad Student Lunch
Details TBA

Jenann Ismael (University of Arizona)
Friday, April 5th
Details TBA

David Bourget (University of London)
Lecture 1 (Digital Humanities Lecture Series): PhilPapers-A Platform for Digital Philosophy
Sponsored by the El Paso Corporation Lecture Series
Monday, February 25th
4:00-6:00 Roy G. Cullen 104
Lecture 2: What Is It to Grasp an Idea?
Tuesday, February 26th
5:30-7:30, Roy G. Cullen 104

Printmaking & Philosophy of Art Workshop
Feb 21st - Feb 23rd

Justin Coates (University of Chicago)
Friday, February 15
Blame and Forgiveness
3:00-5:00, Room TBA

Daniel Koltonski (Amherst College)
*RESCHEDULED*
Tuesday, February 12
Friendship, Moral Disagreement and Political Obligation
5:00-7:00, TBA

Kathleen Higgins (University of Texas)
Friday, February 8th
Grief and Aesthetics:  The Unrecognized Connection
3-5 pm AH 202

Evan Williams (Purdue)
Friday, January 25th
Compensation for Risk
3:00-5:00, Room TBA

Iskra Fileva (UNC, Chapel Hill)
Friday, January 25th
The Sources of Passivity
3:00-5:00, AH 303

Fall 2012

Russ Schafer-Landau (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Friday, December 7th
Moral Realism vs. Moral Constructivism:  Normativity & Grounding
3-5:00, AH 302

Ruth Grant (Duke)
Friday, November 30
Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives
5:00
The Honors College Commons

Christy Mag Uidhir (University of Houston)
Friday, November 30
Art, Metaphysics, & the Paradox of Standards
4:00-6:00 PM
Rice University, Humanities Building #119

Robert Howell (Southern Methodist)
Cogito Contextualism
3:00-5:00, AH 230
Friday, November 2nd

Tom Hurka (Toronto)
Aristotle on Virtue:  Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong
AH 106
3:00-5:00
Friday, October 26th

Richard Boyd (Cornell)
Evolutionary Theory as Methodological Anesthesia:  Methodological and Philosophical Lessons from Evolutionary Psychology
3:00-5:00 PGH 232
Friday, October 19th

Spring 2012

Nancy Sherman (Georgetown)
Lone Star Tour, April 9-13
(co-sponsored by UH and Rice Philosophy Departments)
UH Lecture
"Accountability for Emotions:  Aristotle, the Stoics, and Kant"
Monday, April 9th
3:00-5:00
108 M

Roger Wertheimer 
"Meaning as Explanation"
Friday, March 30
3:00-5:00
301 Agnes Arnold

Professor Wertheimer has worked throughout his career in both ethics and the philosophy of language/logic.  His first published paper was “Conditions” (JPhil, 1968), which was followed by The Significance of Sense (Cornell) and his much-anthologized “Understanding the Abortion Argument” (PPA) in the early 1970’s.   His Empowering Our Military Conscience (Ashgate, 2010) is a collection based on talks given at the U S. Naval Academy while he served there as Distinguished Chair of Ethics (2001-2003), and includes essays by Richard Miller, T. M. Scanlon and Michael Walzer, as well as two of his own.

He has been working on matters bearing directly on “Meaning as Explanation” at least since the late 1990’s.    

Jonathan Dancy (University of Texas, Austin)

"From Thought to Action"
Friday, March 2
3:00-5:00
Agnes Arnold 301

Laurence Goldstein (University of Kent)
"Clambering out of the Soritical Bog"
Monday, Feb 27
4:00-6:00 pm
SEC 204

Colin Allen (Indiana University, Bloomington)
"Do Fish Feel Pain?"
Wednesday, January 25
10:30-12:00
Phillip Guthrie Hoffman Hall 232

Fall 2011

Neil Sinhababu (National University of Singapore)
"Ethical Reductionism"
Monday, Nov. 14
4:00 - 6:00
204 Agnes Arnold

Timothy Sundell (University of Kentucky)
"Metalinguistic Disagreement and the Shared Meaning Task"
Friday, Nov. 11
3:00 - 5:00
301 Agnes Arnold

Jim Garson (UH Faculty Work-in-Progress Talk)
"On Open Futures in Propositional Logic"
Friday, Nov. 4
3:00 - 5:00
301 Agnes Arnold Hall

Pete Mandik (William Patterson University)
"Conscious-state Anti-realism and the varieties of consciousness worth being a realist about"
Friday, Oct. 28
3:00 - 5:00
301 Agnes Arnold Hall

L.A. Paul (North Carolina)
"Experience and Temporal Asymmetry"
Friday, Oct. 21
3:00 - 5:00
301 Agnes Arnold Hall

Spring 2011

burqa panel

Friday March 25, 12 p.m. Honors Commons. A panel discussion titled "Banning the Burqa in France: Where Multiculturalism and Secular Values Collide" will feature Ron Mallon, Department of Philosophy at the University of Utah; Dina Alsowayel, Department of Women's Studies, University of Houston; Fatima Hye, student, University of Houston; Robert Zaretsky, Department of History and Honors College, University of Houston. The panel is sponsored by Phronesis: A Program of Politics and Ethics in the Honors College.

Dr. Mallon

Friday March 25, 4 p.m. Honors Commons. Ron Mallon, associate profesor of Philosophy at the University of Utah will present a lecture titled "All the World's a Stage? Presenting and Excusing the Natural Self." The secondary title for the lecture is "How we use beliefs about the natural world to make ourselves up." The lecture is sponsored by Phronesis: A Program in Politics and Ethics in the Honors College. Mallon's research is in social philosophy, philosophy of cognitive psychology, and moral psychology. His articles have appeared in EthicsJournal of Political PhilosophyMind and LanguageNoûsPhilosophy and Phenomenological ResearchSocial Neuroscience, and Social Theory and Practice, and many other scholarly journals.

Friday, January 28
George Sher (Rice)
The Unity of Luck Egalitarianism
3-5 p.m., Room TBA

Fall 2010

Friday, October 15
Anna Christina Ribeiro (Texas Tech)
What is a Work of Poetry?
4-6 p.m., Agnes Arnold Room 202

Friday, November 19
Thomas Kelly
Department of Philosophy, Princeton University
3-5 p.m., Friday, Nov. 19
302 Agnes Arnold Hall


2009-2010

Brown

Friday, April 23
UH Faculty Talk
Prof. Joshua Brown
"Natural Objects and Restricted Composition"
3-5 p.m., Room: Roy Cullen 104

Prince

Friday, April 16
Brian Prince (Rice University)
"A Metaphysical Monstrosity: the Form of Soul"
3-5 p.m., Room: Roy Cullen 104

See/hide abstract »

The final argument for the soul's immortality in the Phaedo presupposes a Form of Soul, although the text does not mention it. I survey a number of passages in which Socrates describes his theory in ways that imply a very large number of Forms; such passages show that we have no reason to deny the Form of Soul. I then show that several attempts to argue for a limit on the number or kinds of Forms in the theory fail. I then examine the final argument for immortality in detail, and show that its background assumptions and logic positively require a Form of Soul.

Kane

Thursday, March 4
Robert Kane (University of Texas-Austin)
"Are All Values Relative? Seeking Common Ethical Ground in a World of Conflicting Beliefs"
4:30 p.m., Room: Honors Commons

Friday, March 5
Robert Kane (University of Texas-Austin)
"Rethinking Free Will: New Perspectives on an Ancient Problem"
3-5 p.m., Room: Agnes Arnold 302

Sommers

Friday, Feb. 26
Fred Sommers (Brandeis University, Emeritus)
"The Elephant in the Logic Classroom"
3-5 p.m., Room: Agnes Arnold 302

Bolton

February 12
Martha Bolton (Rutgers University)
"Leibniz and Locke on Substance and Moral Subjects"
4-6 p.m., Room: Agnes Arnold 302

Smith

January 25
Lone Star Tour: Michael Smith (Princeton University)
"Williams vs. Scanlon on Internal Reasons"
4-6 p.m., Room: Agnes Arnold 2

October 1
UH Faculty Talk: Jim Garson
"The Incompleteness of Propositional Logic: Can Syntax Determine a Semantics?"
3:00 – 5:00
512 Agnes Arnold Hall

November 14
David G. Dick (University of Calgary)
"The Normativity of Unbreakable Rules"
3:00 – 5:00
Location TBA

2008 – 2009

show/hide section »

Hill

 

  • Thomas Hill (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)
    "Moral Responsibility of Bystanders"
  • Ken Kipnis (University of Hawaii, Manoa)
    "Forced Abandonment and Euthanasia: A Question from Katrinas"
  • Aime Thomason (University of Miami)
    "Ontology Made Easy"

2007 – 2008

show/hide section »

  • Timothy Williamson (Oxford University)
    "What is A Priori Knowledge?"

2006 – 2007

show/hide section »

  • Robert Brandom (Pittsburgh)
    "Kantian Lessons about Mind, Meaning and Rationality"

2005 – 2006

show/hide section »

  • Susan Wolf (University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill)
    "The Meanings of Lives"
  • Stephen Yablo (MIT)
    "Limits to Imagination"
  • Mary Domski (University of New Mexico)
    "Locke, Newton, and the Mathematical Nature of Natural Philosophy"