News in Brief - June 2022
Featured News
School Research Centres celebrated in special event.
As mass extinctions loom, these philosophers could help us rediscover our place among other animals.
School of the Arts celebrates REF achievements.
Online Book Launch: Michael Hauskeller (ed.) The Things That Really Matter. Philosophical Conversations on the Cornerstones of Life (London: UCL Press 2022)
Naming Ceremony for "Gillian Howie House".
News
Thanks to our wonderful MA student Ellie Palmer, we had our first ever department end of year party.
The PhD student annual conference took place, with papers by Harry Drummond, Ian Dunbar, Lauren Stephens and Stephen Kearn.
Vid Simoniti was on BBC R3 ‘Free Thinking’ to talk about the significance of soil.
Katherine Furman and Vid Simoniti each participated in public discussions as part of the SOTA lecture series. Katherine spoke about ‘Values in Climate Science Communication’ and Vid on ‘Sustainable Art for a Changing Climate’
Stephen McLeod and Attila Tanyi wrote on ‘Liberalism and the right to strike’ for the Public Ethics blog.
Rachael Wiseman and Clare Mac Cumhaill wrote about ‘Women Philosophers Writing about Women Philosophers’ for the Project Vox blog.
Vid Simoniti read his essay, ‘The Paradox of Ecological Art’ on BBC R3’s ‘The Essay’
‘The Mystery of Consciousness’, hosted by Jack Symes, took place in the Tung Auditorium
Lauren Stephens has accepted a position as an Adjunct Professor of Art History at East Tennessee State University starting in the autumn teaching online courses
On 19 May Michael Hauskeller took part in a panel discussion on “sex, gender, and social justice” at the Horasis Global Meeting
Robin McKenna spoke at a workshop on Epistemic Normativity in Glasgow 18-19th May. The talk was called “The Duty to Listen”
Rachael Wiseman and Clare Mac Cumhaill wrote an article for the Chronicle Review about their book, Metaphysical Animals. The also wrote a piece for The Tablet on Elizabeth Anscombe called ‘The Metaphysical Mother’.
Ian Dunbar’s letter on the ontology of mathematics was published (as Editor's Pick) in New Scientist (7 May).
In his article, Timothy Revell asks: “Mathematically, infinity is useful, but does it really exist in the physical world?” This question raises issues beyond the nature of infinity, questions about the ontology of mathematics, and its relation to physics and the physical.
Our knowledge of arithmetic seems to be at least as secure as that of the physical world. It is therefore hard to see why numbers should be seen as less real than physical objects. Moreover, mathematical physics is full of references to numbers, so the physical and mathematical worlds appear to overlap. Nobel prizewinner Eugene Wigner called this “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences”.
Forthcoming Events
9-10th June
The Philosophy of Digital Images (Vid Simoniti, Claire Anscomb & Lauren Stephens)
School of the Arts Library, University of Liverpool & Online
https://pdiconference.wordpress.com
13-14th June
The Psychology and Epistemology of Political Cognition (Robin McKenna)
School of the Arts Library, University of Liverpool
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/news/stories/title,1327948,en.html
Publications
Michael Hauskeller (ed), The Things That Really Matter. Philosophical Conversations on the Cornerstones of Life (London: UCL Press 2022). The book includes a conversation with Yiota Vassilopoulou.
‘What is the Incoherence Objection to Legal Entrapment?’ by Daniel Hill, Stephen McLeod and Attila Tanyi is available open access in Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. https://jesp.org/index.php/jesp/article/view/1181
A Romanian translation of Michael Hauskeller’s Mythologies of Transhumanism has been published.
A German translation of Rachael Wiseman and Clare Mac Cumhaill’s Metaphysical Animals has been published.