News in Brief: June 2019
Featured Research
Steve McLeod talks about his research into the ethics of police entrapment and last month’s workshop on The Ethics of Police and Media Stings.
Featured Teaching
Final-year Philosophy student, Charlotte Burns, awarded prestigious Wellcome Trust summer Internship with Humanities and Social Sciences.
Featured News
We launched our brilliant new Philosophy and the Future webpages. Thanks to Barry Dainton, Michael Hauskeller and Jonny Davis Le Brun – and all those who contributed – for building this.
Dr Yiota Vassilopoulou was an NHS Wonderwoman! She featured in a new series of short films showcasing the talent of North West women in health and social care research.
Other News
Vid Simoniti spoke on "The Nature of Satire" at the symposium opening the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts on 8 June. He also gave talks on "Deception in Alt-Right Visual Culture" at two conferences: "Uncertainty, Turbulence and Moving Image Archives" at UCL, 11-12th June 2019, and "Protest Art in the New Autocracy" at the University of Cambridge, 20 June 2019 - 21 June 2019. And, together with art historian James Fox, Vid organised the Forum on "Art and Moral Conscience" at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park in Canada, held on 24-26 June 2019.
Michael Hauskeller was interviewed on Sky News about the science and ethics of radical life extension. He also featured in this Sky News documentary, Can We Live Forever? https://news.sky.com/story/off-limits-can-we-live-forever-11744787. Michael also gave a talk on 'Postmortality for All' at the Liverpool Make-Fest. https://igniteliverpool.com/about/
Michael was also elected to University Senate as a Faculty representative.
At the start of the month, Becky Davnall was at the 'Agency and Education Symposium' at Liverpool Hope University, workshopping her paper, 'Apparatuses of Agency'. Between 19-21 July, Becky was at 'Kultur Symposium Weimar' (https://www.goethe.de/prj/kwe/en/index.html) in Weimar, Germany, participating in a panel discussion called 'Entering Unknown Worlds' about alternative video game narratives on the Friday. And from 27th-28th she was at the Autonomous Vehicle Ethics: Beyond the Trolley Problem Workshop (https://www.cevast.org/workshop/) with the the Karel Čapek Center for Values in Science and Technology (CEVAST), presenting 'When the Car Knows Too Much'.
Xiaoyan Hu has been busy! She presented her paper 'Some Kantian Resonances to the Reconciliation of Aesthetic Autonomy and Moral Relevance in the Context of Classical Chinese Art' at the European Society for Aesthetics 2019 Annual Conference on 12th – 14th June 2019 in Warsaw, Poland. This paper was shortlisted for the ESA 2019 Essay Award.
Xiaoyan presented 'Some Kantian Resonances to the Moral Relevance of Chinese Art' at the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy 51st Annual Conference on 18th – 21st June 2019 in Bath Spa University. In addition, Xiaoyan was invited by Queen's University Belfast to give a talk on 'Some Kantian Resonances to the Moral Relevance of Chinse Art' in the Comparative Philosophy Workshop in Queen's University Belfast, the UK on 27th – 29th June 2019.
Xiaoyan is presenting three papers — 'The Reconciliation of Artistic Autonomy and Moral Cultivation: A Comparison between Chinese Aesthetics and Kant’s Philosophy', 'Balanced Human Nature Fulfilled through Classical Chinese Art', and 'The Efficacy and Issue of Projecting Kant’s Account of Spontaneity of Genius into a Classical Chinese Artistic Context’— at the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics on 22th – 26th July 2019 in the University of Belgrade, Serbia.
To fund her travels, Xiaoyan was awarded £800 travel grant by the British Society for Aesthetics. This is the second time she has been given the BSA award.
Rachael Wiseman and Clare MacCumhaill (Durham) were awarded an AHRC research grant (standard route) for their project Perception, Action and the Genesis of Everyday Ethics. Their work was featured at the British Academy Showcase (https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/blog/summer-showcase-2019-women-philosophy-everyday-life) and they were interviewed for BBC Radio Oxford about the exhibition. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07c89g0.
Rachael was also on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000677g
Richard Gaskin’s workshop The Question of Linguistic Idealism took place on June 19th. Richard and Rachael gave papers, along with Michael Morris (Sussex) and Julian Dodd (Manchester). https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/events/the-question-of-linguistic-idealism/
Daniel Hill hosted Professor Mark W. Elliot for the 2019 Lecture of Jonathan-Edwards Centre, UK. Prof Elliot spoke on ‘Johnathan Edwards and his “biblical Aesthetic”’
Greg Miller was on the podcast The Partially Examined life discussing David Chalmers’ ‘Consciousness and its place in Nature’. https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2019/06/24/ep218-2-chalmers-consciousness/
Yiota Vassilopoulou and Daniel Whistler’s workshop, Thinking: Scenes from Its Philosophical History, took place on 11-12 June. Yiota spoke about Plonitus and art. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/news/stories/title,1142684,en.html.
The second NHS / NW Catalyst event took place as part of the Philosopher-In-Residence Programme. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/research/research-projects/philosopher-in-residence/
Publications
Xiaoyan Hu’s paper 'Genius as an Innate Mental Talent of Idea-giving in Chinese Painting and Kant' (a short version of chapter 3 of my PhD thesis) has been published by the journal 'Philosophy East and West' on the early release online platform (https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.0.0175).
Another paper 'A Kantian Reading of Aesthetic Freedom and Complete Human Nature Nourished through Art in a Classical Chinese Context' has been published by the journal Asian Philosophy 29: 3 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2019.1610526 ). The paper is a short version of chapter 6 in her PhD thesis.