Philosophy events

September 13

Philosophy Department Brownbag Talk Series
Jon Mandle (UAlbany)
"Global Public Reason"

Time: Noon - 1 p.m.
Location: HU-354

September 27

Caelan Knapp (UAlbany, Graduate Student Essay Contest Winner)
"What Shouldn't AI Do for Us? Art and Ethics as Reserved Human Projects"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

October 18

Julia Jorati (UMass, Amherst)
"The Association of Slavery and Blackness in Early Modern Philosophy"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

November 1

Jeffrey S. Helmreich (UC, Irvine)
"I Promise it's True"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

November 8 [co-sponsored with the UAlbany East Asian Studies Department]

Jay Garfield (Smith College and Harvard Divinity School)
"Falling Hairs and Crumbling Foundations: What Tibetan Madhyamaka Can Contribute to Contemporary Epistemology"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

February 9

Rafeeq Hasan (Amherst)
"Frederick Douglass on Domination and Freedom"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

March 1

Philosophy Department Brownbag Talk Series
Monika Piotrowska (UAlbany)
"Reversing Gene Drives: Insights from the Art of Restoration"

Time: Noon
Location: Arts & Sciences 122 (note location change since original posting)

March 8

Kieran Setiya (MIT)
"Proleptic Grief"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

April 5

L.A. Paul (Yale) 
"Value by Acquaintance"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

Spring 2024 16th Annual Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

April 20
Conference Theme: Perspectives in Environmental Philosophy

Keynote Presenter: Evelyn Brister (RIT)

Time: begins at 11 a.m. (Refreshments beginning at 10:30 a.m.)

Location: UAlbany Fine Arts Building, Room 126 (note the location change from original announcement)

September 15

Ilva Llakmani (UAlbany, Graduate Student Essay Contest Winner)
"Causally Adequate Minds: The Consistency of Descartes' Mind-Body Account and his Causal Adequacy Principle"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354
 

October 20 [co-sponsored with the UAlbany History Department & Jewish Studies Program]

Iryna Mykhailova (European Union Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow, Harvard University)
"From Marburg to Harvard: Metaphysical Odyssey of Erich Frank (1883-1949)"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

October 27

Jonas Vandieken (Munich/Toronto)
"The Moral Nexus, Accountability, and Deliberation"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354
 

December 1

Umrao Sethi  (Brandeis)
"Existence 'in' the Mind"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

March 3

David Sobel (Syracuse)
"The Subjective/Objective Distinction"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354
 

March 24

Nada Gligorov (Alden March Bioethics Institute)
"Eliminativism Redux: The Case of Pain"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

September 9

Nicholas Boles (UAlbany, Graduate Student Essay Contest Winner)
“Human Duties: Who is Obligated to Fulfill Claims of Human Rights?”

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: HU-354

October 21

Alison McIntyre (Wellesley)
"Reconstructing an Owner's Manual for the Passions: Bishop Butler on the Proper Uses of Anger, Resentment, and Vengefulness"

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: SS-256

February 25

Samuel Reis-Dennis (Albany Medical College)
“Elevation and Dignity”

Time: 3 p.m.
Talk delivered on Zoom.
 

March 25

Maité Cruz (Union College)
"Shepherd’s Critique of Hume on Causation"

Time: 3 p.m.
Talk delivered on Zoom.
 

April 1

C. Thi Nguyen (Utah)
“Transparency Is Surveillance”

Time: 3 p.m.
Talk delivered on Zoom.

April 2-3

UAlbany Graduate Conference
 

April 29

Richard Moran (Harvard)
"Self-Consciousness and Self-Division

Time: 3 p.m.
Talk delivered on Zoom.

September 17

Ilva Llakmani (UAlbany, Graduate Student Essay Contest Winner)
"A Promisor's Rights"

Time: 3:15 p.m.
Location: HU-354

October 8

Jenann Ismael (Columbia)
"Time and the Visual Imagination: from physics to philosophy"

Time: 3 p.m.
Talk delivered on Zoom.

UAlbany Philosophy Association talk

February 26, 3 p.m. via Zoom
Quayshawn Spencer (Penn)
"A Metaphysical Mapping Problem for Race Theorists and Human Population Geneticists"
 

Workshop on Practical Reason and Morality

Friday and Saturday, March 12-13 via Zoom

• David Owens (King's College, London)
• Hille Paakkunainen (Syracuse)
• Tamar Schapiro (MIT)
• Michael Smith (Princeton)

Graduate Student Conference

Philosophy of Biology

Keynote speaker: Justin Garson (Hunter College, CUNY)
"What Biological Functions Are and Why They Matter"

Other speakers: Tim Elmo Feiten (Cincinnati), Kenny Knowlton, Jr. (Oregon), Alistair Whittle (Bristol), Vincent Sater (Montreal), Paul Kelly (Wisconsin-Madison)

2 - 5 p.m. April 2, 2 - 6 p.m. April 3

E-MAIL [email protected] for info.

Research Symposium

April 30, 3 - 5:30 p.m.

Three PhD students will give short presentations of their research.

• Kali Milner, "Partially Pretend Things"
• Will Kidder, “The Role of Empathy in Moral Inquiry”
• Nicholas Jacobson, "Pereboom's Four-Case Argument"

Fall 2020

Fall Colloquia were be held via Zoom.

October 2

David Braun (University at Buffalo)
"Questions and Answers"

November 6

Margaret Gilbert (University of California, Irvine)
"Collective Belief: Kinds, Contexts, and Consequences

Spring 2020

March 6

Work-in-progress talk
Nick Boles
"Justifying the Innate Right to Freedom in Kant's Metaphysics of Morals"

HU 290, 3 p.m.

April 4

Note: Because of Covid-19, the conference was canceled.

UAlbany Philosophical Association
12th annual graduate student conference
Topic: Philosophy of Biology
Keynote Speaker: Justin Garson (Hunter College)

April 17

Note: Because of Covid-19, the workshop was canceled.

Workshop on Practical Reason and Morality

• David Owens (King's College, London)

• Hille Paakkunainen (Syracuse)

• Tamar Schapiro (MIT)

• Michael Smith (Princeton)

Fall 2019

September 6
Gunnar Babcock
The 2019 Philosophy Graduate Essay Prize Winner
"Asexual Organisms, Identity and Vertical Gene Transfer"

September 27
Kathryn Tabb (Bard College)
"Thinking about Genetics When We Think about Each Other"

October 18
Sally Scholz (Villanova University)
"Solidarity as Sanctuary"

November 8
Ron McClamrock (UAlbany)
"How big do things look?"

November 22
Nora Boyd (Siena College)
"Observation and Intervention are Irrelevant to Empirical Science"
 

Spring 2019

February 8
Tony Manela (Siena College)

March 15
One-day Workshop on Constitutivism
Matthias Haase (Chicago)
Michelle Kosch (Cornell)
Sharon Street (NYU)
David Velleman (NYU)

Saturday, April 6
Rage Against the Armchair
UAlbany Philosophical Association, 11th annual graduate student conference

April 26
Marianna Bergamaschi Canapini (Union College)
 

Fall 2018

September 7
Scott Wolcott, Graduate Essay Prize Talk
What It Means To Be Lucky

September 28 in FA126
Evelyn Brister (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Biotechnology for Conservation: Philosophy and Policy

October 26
Russell Powell (Boston University)
 

Spring 2018

March 9 in HU354
Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury College)
Idealizations and Understanding: Much Ado About Nothing?

March 23
Evelyn Brister (Rochester Institute of Technology)
Event cancelled.

April 27
Charlotte Witt (University of New Hampshire)
 

Political Philosophy

UAlbany Philosophical Association, 11th annual graduate student conference

Saturday, April 7
9:30 - 5 (with lunch 12:15-1:15)
HU 354

Keynote speaker: Carol Gould (Hunter College)
The All-Affected Principle and Labor Rights

Crossroads Of Philosophy, Russia and the US: Fictionalism And Problems Of Sense

Ninth University at Albany - Lomonosov Moscow State University Philosophy Video Conference

Friday, April 13, 2018
10 a.m. - 2 p.m. / 17 – 21 (Albany / Moscow)
HU 290 (Albany)
 

Fall 2017

October 6
Natasha Karablina (University at Albany)
Winner of the Graduate Essay Prize
Ruled by Reason: Plato on War, Justice and Justified Intervention

November 3
Douglas Edwards (Hamilton College)
Truth and Social Ontology

December 1
Joseph Cruz (Williams College)
Knowing How to Reason
 

Spring 2017

Saturday, April 8
10th Annual UAPA Graduate Philosophy Conference
Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics

Friday, April 28
Pablo Gilabert, Concordia University
Kantian Dignity and Marxian Socialism
3:30 in HU354
 

Fall 2016

September 16, HU 354
Will Kidder
"Imagining Bad: Television Antiheroes, Empathy, and the Aesthetic Value of Imaginative Resistance in Degrees"
Graduate Essay Prize Talk

October 28
Krisanna Scheiter, Union College
"Aristotle's Non-Retributive, Non-Sadistic Justification for Revenge"

November 18
Chad Horne, UAlbany
"Insurance and Equality Revisited"

December 2
Melissa Zinkin, SUNY Binghamton
"Moral Depth and the Systematicity of Reason in Kant"
 

Spring 2016

Friday, February 12
Matthew Mosdell (UAlbany)
"Acquiring Knowing How"

Friday, February 26
Avery Archer (George Washington University)
"Do we need partial intentions?"

Friday, April 15
Lilian O'Brien (University College Cork)
"Advice for Those with Cold Feet"

Saturday, April 23
Graduate student philosophy conference
Keynote speaker: Joseph Levine (UMass Amherst)

Friday, April 29
"Roundtable on Minority Success in Philosophy"
Sponsored by the UAlbany Minorities And Philosophy (MAP) chapter, the event will feature philosophy almuni who will share their stories of what they've gone on to do.
 

Fall 2015

Friday, September 25
2:30-4:30 in BA 233
Berislav Marušić (Brandeis University)
"Do Reasons Expire"

Friday, October 23
3 in HU 354
Keith Sherman, graduate essay prize winner
"Enhancement and Other Animals"
 

Spring 2015

Saturday, April 18
HU 354
UAlbany graduate student conference
Environmental and Animal Philosophy
Keynote: Lori Gruen (Wesleyan University)

April 24
HU 354
John Doris (Washington University)
"Character Trouble"

Tuesday, May 19
Mark Sheehan (Oxford University)
"The ethics of assent to research"

7th Annual videoconference with Moscow State University

Thursday, May 21
Topic: Early Modern Philosophy
10 a.m. - 1 p.m., HU 290

Third annual Capital District Feminist Studies Conference

January 30
9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Assembly Hall (Campus Center)

UAlbany Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Studies speaker series

Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Political Science, UAS, and the Office for Diversity and Inclusion

January 23
3 - 5:30 p.m. in the Standish Room of the Science Library
Charles Mills (Northwestern University)
"Decolonizing Western Political Philosophy"

January 23
3:30 - 5 p.m. at Rockefeller College
Charles Mills (Williams College)
"Angela Y. Davis: Abolitionism, Democracy, Freedom"

January 23
3:30 - 5 p.m. at Rockefeller College
Nimu Njoya (Williams College)
"Autonomy after Postcolonialism: Gendered Representations of the Unbounded Self"
 

Fall 2014

September 12
Humanities 354
Jesse Prinz (CUNY Graduate Center)
"The Moral Self"

Thursday October 2
Igal Kvart
Hebrew University
"Action-Directed Pragmatics and the Putative Pragmatic Intrusion into the Semantics of Knowledge-Ascriptions"

November 7
Humanities 354
Catherine Wearing (Wellesley College)
"Images in Metaphors"

December 5
Sydney Faught
(winner of the Graduate Student Essay Prize)
"'A Quite Sophisticated Apparatus:' A Rawlsian Approach to Intergenerational Justice and Environmental Sustainability"
 

Spring 2014

Friday, February 28
Karen Frost-Arnold (Hobart and William Smith)
"Social Media, Trust, and the Epistemology of Prejudice"

Saturday, April 5
UAlbany graduate student conference
Moral Psychology
Keynote: Timothy Schroeder (Ohio State)

Annual videoconference with Moscow State University

Thursday, May 22
Topic: Free Will, Mental Causation, and Moral Responsibility
9 a.m. - 2 p.m., HU 290
 

Fall 2013

September 20
Ruth Boeker
"Locke on Persons and Personal Identity"

October 4
Sydney Faught
(winner of the Graduate Student Essay Prize)
"The Right to Love [Drugs]"

October 25
Vanessa DeHarven (UMass Amherst)
"A More Sensible Reading of Plato on Knowledge in Republic V"
 

Spring 2013

January 25
Janelle DeWitt (King's College)
"Respect: The Emotional Side of Reason"

February 15
Bonnie Steinbock (UAlbany) and Paul Menzel (Pacific Lutheran University)
"Advance Directives, Dementia, and Physician-Assisted Death"

March 1
Bruno Whittle (Yale University)
Humanities 123
"Incompleteness and the Limits of Mathematical Knowledge"

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Bioethics

Friday, April 12
Pre-Conference Talk:
"Wrongful Life and Procreative Decisions"
Bonnie Steinbock (UAlbany)
5 p.m. in HU-290

Saturday, April 13
Keynote Address:
"Reflections on Procreative Ethics."
David DeGrazia (George Washington University)
2:30 p.m. in the Standish Room of the Science Library

Annual videoconference with Moscow State University

Tuesday, May 21
Topic: Aesthetics
9 a.m. - 2 p.m., HU 290
 

Fall 2012

September 14
3 p.m., Assembly Hall, Campus Center
James Nickel, University of Miami
"Personal Desert and Human Rights"

October 5
Nir Eyal
Harvard Medical School (Division of Medical Ethics)
"Against Fair Chances"

Thursday, October 11
lunchtime talk: noon, HU 290
Simon Noriega-Olmos
University of Sao Paolo (Brazil)
"The Ontology of Plato's Cratylus (439D-440C)"

November 2
Greg Frost-Arnold
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
"When, How, and Why Did People Begin Classifying Themselves as 'Analytic Philosophers'?"

November 30
graduate prize essay talk
Nicholas Partyka
The University at Albany
"Two Problems of Externalities"
 

Spring 2012

February 10
Ernesto Garcia, UMass Amherst
Kant on Treating People as Ends-in-Themselves

March 30
Laurence Goldstein (University of Kent)
Clambering out of the Soritical Bog

Saturday, April 14
UAlbany graduate student conference

Sharon Street
keynote address

April 20
Allan Hazlett (Edinburgh) and Simon Feldman (Connecticut College)
In Defense of Ambivalence

May 11 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Annual spring video conference with Moscow State University
Kantian philosophy
 

Fall 2011

September 9
Hanifi Ozcan, Dokuz Eylul University
Abu Mansur Al-Maturidi's Religious Pluralism

September 23
Rachel Cohon, The University at Albany
Virtue as a Means to Happiness in Hume's Second Enquiry

October 21
Graduate Prize Essay Talk
Ed Dubois
Situationism, Virtue Ethics, and Moral Exemplars

Nov. 11
Japa Pallikkathayil, New York University
The Truth About Deception
 

Spring 2011

Jan. 28:
Douglas Patterson, Kansas State University
Theory and Concept in Tarski's Philosophy of Language

Feb. 11:
Nomy Arpaly, Brown University
Deliberation and Responding to Reasons
note: this talk will be held in HU 354

Feb. 25:
Uriah Kriegel, University of Arizona
The Experiential Origins of Intentionality

April 9:
Fourth Annual Graduate Student Philosophy Conference
Topic: Metaphysics
Keynote Speaker: Ted Sider, New York University
The Metaphysics of Fundamentality

April 29:
Marta Soniewicka, Fulbright fellow with the Department of Health Law, Bioethics, and Human Rights at Boston University
Genetic Testing and Screening to Prevent Future Harms

May 19:
Videoconference with the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University
This year's topic is the history of philosophy
9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
 

Fall 2010

Oct. 1:
Matthew Evans, New York University
"Making the Best of Plato's Protagoras"

Oct. 14:
brown bag lunch workshop -- 1:15 p.m., HU 130
Helga Varden, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Priority of Rightful Care to Virtuous Care: A Kantian Critique of the Care Tradition

Oct. 15:
Shelley Weinberg, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness in Locke's Theory of Personal Identity

Nov. 19:
Graduate Prize Essay talk -- 4 p.m.
Kimberly van Orman, The University at Albany
The Laplacian Worldview and the Explanatory Gap
 

Spring 2010

Mar 5:
Stephen Darwall, Yale University
The Right and the Good in Hobbes' Moral Philosophy

Apr 17: Graduate student conference
Keynote: Jeff McMahan, Rutgers University
 

Fall 2009

Sep. 11:
Graduate Student Essay Prize Talk
David Pinkowski
"Practically Equal: How Indifference Leads to Equality"

Oct. 2:
Christopher Hill, Brown University

Oct. 30:
K. Brad Wray, SUNY Oswego
Epistemic Privilege and the Success of Science

Nov. 20:
Matti Eklund, Cornell University
Objectionable Concepts, Moral Semantics, and Moral Realism
 

Spring 2009

March 28
Thomas Pogge, Yale University
keynote for the 2009 UAlbany Grad Student Conference

April 24
Joe Moore, Amherst College
Musical Works: a Metaphysical Mash-up

May 1
Claudia Card, University of Wisconsin-Madison
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Special Seminar, Sexual Violence At War and At Home
3:30-5:30 p.m.: Departmental Colloquium, Discrimination Against Men
Open to all.

Both events with Professor Card are funded in part by the University Commission on Diversity and Affirmative Action and the Department of Women's Studies.
 

Fall 2008

October 24
2007 Graduate Student Prize Essay
Pete Murray, University at Albany
Liberalism and the Common Good

November 7
Casey Perin, UMass Amherst
 

Spring 2008

Tuesday, January 22
Jason D'Cruz, Brown University
Real Fictional Emotions

Monday, January 28
Elizabeth Fenton, University of Virginia
Towards a Capabilities Theory of Human Rights

Monday, February 4
Alan Rubel, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The Particularized Judgment Account of Privacy

Friday, February 8
Agnieszka Jaworska, Stanford University
Vanishing Persons and the Authority of the Former Self: Dilemmas in Alzheimer's Disease

Friday, February 29
Timothy Schroeder, Ohio State University
Explaining Virtue

Saturday, April 11
Philosophy Graduate Student Conference

Friday, April 18
Leif Wenar, Sheffield University (visiting at Princeton)
Property Rights and the Resource Curse
 

Fall 2007

September 28
2007 Graduate Student Prize Essay
John Milanese, University at Albany
Taking the Jury Theorem to Trial

November 16
Alvin Goldman, Rutgers University
Externalism, Internalism, and the Architecture of Justification
 

Spring 2007

Friday, January 12
Nathan Powers (Princeton University)
Ancient versions of the argument from design

Tuesday, January 16
Mariska Leunissen (University of Leiden, Netherlands)
Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle's Cosmology

Friday, January 19
Keith McPartland (Cornell University)
Aristotle's Theory of Relations

Monday, January 22
Andreas Anagnostopoulos (University of California, Berkeley)
Aristotle's Parmenidean Dilemma

Wednesday, January 24, 4, SS 117
Shlomi Segall (Harvard University)
Is Health Care (Still) Special?

Monday, January 29, 3:30, SS 117
John K. Davis (University of Tennessee)
Selecting Potential Children and Unconditional Parental Love

Friday, February 2, 3:30, SS 117
Maureen Kelley (University of Alabama, Birmingham)
Moral Compromise and Transitional Justice

Wednesday, February 7, 3:30, SS 117
James Tabery (University of Pittsburgh)
A 'Genetic Predisposition' to Violence?: Rethinking the Ethical and Legal Implications of Genetic Research on Antisocial Behavior

Wednesday, February 14, 4, SS 117
Scott James (University of Kentucky)
The Caveman's Conscience: Evolution and Moral Realism

Friday, February 16, 3:30, SS 117
Lisa Fuller (University of Sheffield)
Pogge on International Non-Governmental Organizations: A Critique
 

Fall 2006

September 15
2006 Graduate Student Prize Essay
Kevin Olbrys, University at Albany
Aristotle on Moral Motivation and Weakness of the Will

September 29
Jerrold Levinson, University of Maryland
Beauty is not One: The Many Species of Beauty

November 3
Livia Mara Guimaraes, NYU & Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
Skeptical Tranquility and Hume's Manner of Death
 

Spring 2006

Monday, Jan.23
Kristen Hessler, Iowa State
Agricultural Biotechnology and Human Rights

Friday, Jan.27
Adrienne Martin, National Institutes of Health
Hope Must be a Minefield: A Theory of Hope in Practice
Location: Campus Center Assembly Hall

Monday, Jan.30
J. Jeremy Wisnewski, East Carolina University
What We Owe the Dead

Friday, Feb.10
Derrick Darby, Georgetown, Texas A&M
Making the Souls of Black Folk

Friday, Apr.21
Alex London, Carnegie Mellon University
Reasonable Risks in Clinical Research: The Integrative Approach

Friday, May 5
Lisa Warenski, Union College
on naturalized epistemology

The Future of Bioethics in a Divided Democracy
July 13-14, 2006
The Alden March Bioethics Institute (AMBI) is holding a Special Summer Conference of the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities.
 

Fall 2005

September 16
Roy Sorensen, Dartmouth College
A Seance with an Immortal

November 18
Roger White, New York University
Explanation and Underdetermination

December 9
Christopher Mirus, UAlbany
Aristotle on Beauty and Goodness in Nature
 

Spring 2005

March 4
J. C. Beall, University of Connecticut
True, False, and Other

March 11
Jon Mandle, University at Albany
Rawls on Domestic and Global Justice

April 22
Jeff McMahan, Rutgers University
Just Cause for War

April 29
Michel Seymour, University of Montreal
Allen Buchanan's Remedial Right to Secede

May 4 at 4 p.m.
2005 Graduate Student Prize Essay
Peter Murray, University at Albany
The Ontological Status of Mathematical Objects in Plato's Republic