Australasian Philosophy Postgraduate Conference 2009
Schedule
A schedule has been organised. You can download a copy of the schedule in .pdf here, .rtf here or browse the schedule and abstracts by going here.
To check if there have been any changes to the schedule please check the announcements page of our sister web page here.
To view the flyer for the Philosophy in Education public forum hosted on the 15/4/2009 from 7:00pm onwards with light refreshments offered from 6:30pm click here.
Please see below for a list of our Keynotes.
Keynotes
*Associate Professor JEANETTE KENNETT*
Just say no? Addiction and self-control
9:30 am, X5B Lecture Theatre 1, T1, 15/4/2009
Chemical dependence or addiction is seen as both a serious threat to
self‑control and as the outcome of a series of failures of self‑control or
self‑regulation. But what, more precisely, is self‑control, how is it
exercised, and what kinds of internal and external circumstances can
undermine it? In part one of this talk, I will lay out a philosophical
framework for thinking about self‑control and then discuss some recent work
in the developmental literature and in addiction neuroscience which bears on
that framework. In part two, I will explore the social aspects of
self‑control and the ways in which the addicted person's efforts at
self‑control may be supported or thwarted.
*Dr. JEREMY SHEARMUR*
Values, Objectivity and the Real World: Hayekian Liberalism
9:30 am, X5B Lecture Theatre 1, T1, 16/4/2009
If we are concerned, as philosophers, with issues in the real world,
our
approach will typically be influenced by our values. But how should
we
appraise our values – and those of others with whom we are in
disagreement– and the work to which they lead? My own concern with this problem
stems
from a substantive interest in what might be called a Hayekian version
of
classical liberalism. Others may have very different viewpoints, or
may be
interested in the problem because it, or something close to it, arises
from
a range of recent philosophical work – from MacIntyre’s concerns
about
competition between traditions, to Rawls and Habermas’s worries about
the
place of religious concerns in the public sphere.
In this paper, I canvas the merits of a general approach to this issue
of
appraisal which draws on ideas about ‘research programmes’ in the
work of
Popper and of Lakatos. I then discuss – from such a perspective –
the
specific, and substantive ideas to which I am attracted, and finally
suggest
what the general approach to appraisal would imply concerning how they
might
be evaluated, vis a vis competing ideas.
My aim will, thus, be to offer and defend a general theory about how
these
problems should approached, and in addition to explain and to try to
bring
out the merits of what a specific such viewpoint might look like.
There
should be more than enough here to provoke discussion – from which I
would
hope to learn a lot. At the same time, insofar as you find either
aspect of
my paper defective, I hope that what I have to say will provoke you
into
trying to produce something better.
*Professor JOHN SUTTON*
Collaboration, improvisation, and embodied interaction: after the
philosophy
of mind?
9:30 am, X5B Lecture Theatre 1, T1, 17/4/2009
Is there space for mind between the subpersonal and the social? While
some
wish to dissolve philosophy of mind and action into the cognitive
neurosciences, others urge a turn to practice and culture by which
mental
life is produced and sculpted in complex interpersonal engagements. In
this
talk I argue that these apparently opposed tendencies can be
reconciled,
since the neural and the social bases of action, emotion, and cognition
are
interdependent. I take skill acquisition and apprenticeship as
exemplary
topics for such pluralist analysis. We can begin to theorize the
pervasively
collaborative and improvisatory nature of much intelligent embodied
human
action, both ordinary and extraordinary. I discuss select examples from
work
on memory, conversation, dance, music, yoga, and sport, aiming to
illustrate
fruitful alliances between social theory, phenomenology, and cognitive
science.