SCOTS PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION

Tuesday, 19 May, at the University of Stirling, Campus Central, 3.04 

In the past decade, commemorations (including statues and monuments) that have substantial ties to colonialism, slavery, and other forms of injustice have been targeted by activists. In response, the English Government has published the ‘Retain and explain’ guidance to protect “historic statues.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-custodians-on-how-to-deal-with-commemorative-heritage-assets-that-have-become-contested

This interdisciplinary workshop seeks to reflect upon the moral and political implications of the policy and guidance by bringing scholars from art, law, philosophy, memory studies, and urban design into dialogue. 

Location: Campus Central, 3.04, University of Stirling

Schedule:

9:30 Welcome 

9:40 – 10:30 Katie McClymont (UWE Bristol)

10:30 – 11:20 Paul Max Morin (Stirling)

11:20 – 11:30 Break

11:30 – 12:20 Daisy Dixon (Cardiff)

12:20-1:10 Lunch

1:10 -2:00 Jack Hume (KCL)

2:00 – 2:10 Break

2:10 – 3:00 Chong-Ming Lim (Sheffield)

3:00 – 3:15 Break

3:15 – 4:05 Miros?aw Micha? Sadowski (Strathclyde)

4:05 – 4:30 Discussions 

https://sites.google.com/view/immorality-set-in-stone-by-law/home

We will have coffee breaks and lunch, so please register. For catering purposes, please complete the form before 8 May.

https://forms.gle/3dGrNG8NXo8A7Edt5

If the link doesn’t work, please email ten-herng.lai@stir.ac.uk

Getting to Campus Central 3.04

https://use.mazemap.com/#v=1&config=stirling&campusid=2058&zlevel=3&center=-3.920931,56.145671&zoom=18&sharepoitype=identifier&sharepoi=3.04

On Google Maps, this building is also called “University of Stirling Library” and “Andrew Miller Building.” It shares a building with “Macrobert Arts Centre.” In the middle of the building, there’s a triangle-ish staircase. It is on the 3rd floor. The elevator is very close to the staircase.

The workshop is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant SRG2425\250508.

You are warmly invited to this year’s Scots Philosophical Association Annual Conference to be held at the University of Stirling, on the 8-9th December. The line up and schedule are below.

If you plan to attend, we would be grateful if you’d fill in this registration form for catering purposes: https://forms.gle/ZLGvHZVH76fQvgfF8

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Monday 8th December, Seminar Room 3.04 in Campus central (for directions see here: https://link.mazemap.com/PCIIBONg)

2-3.15: Ten-Herng Lai, University of Stirling: “Resisting moral blackmail”

Coffee

3.45-5: Pekka Väyrynen, University of Leeds: “Make It Right”

Drinks at the Westerton Arms, Bridge of Allen 

7.30 Dinner 

Tuesday 9th December: Seminar Room 3.04 in Campus central (for directions see here: https://link.mazemap.com/PCIIBONg)

9-10.30 SPA committee meeting

Coffee

10.45-12 Marion Boulicault, University of Edinburgh: “Sex in the medical machine: How algorithms can entrench bioessentialism in precision medicine” 

Lunch

1.-2.15 Jade Fletcher, University of St Andrews: “??Realism and Error about Socially Constructed Kinds’’

Coffee

2.45-4 Crispin Wright, University of Stirling: “Timothy Williamson meets the New Evil Demon”

4-6 June, 2025 in Glasgow

We will have a range of philosophy talks on all things sensory that have been core to the work at the CSPE, such as perception, illusion, hallucination, imagination, and the senses. We will particularly hear from those who have worked, visited, and contributed to, the CSPE and its projects and events over the years. The speaker list is below.

We will have lots of time for informal discussion, and to facilitate this, we will have a poster session and would encourage all attendees to exhibit a poster summarising a paper that you are working on.

We are also offering a variety of sensory experiences for you to try, including experiencing the content for VR that we and others have created in our multi-person VR labs, and a talk about our work on VR by Prof Neil McDonnell. We hope that other experiences will be announced soon.

Attendance at the conference is free and includes free tea, coffee, conference lunches, and food at the after party. Conference dinners are available to purchase when you register for the conference. The number of places at the conference are strictly limited so we would encourage those that wish to come to register for the conference as soon as possible. In any event, registration will close on 19th May 2025.

If you have any questions, please e-mail j.harber.1@research.gla.ac.uk<mailto:j.harber.1@research.gla.ac.uk>.

Old Senate Room, King’s College, University of Aberdeen

5th-6th of December

• Speakers include Eilidh Beaton (Aberdeen), Jack Shardlow (Edinburgh), Mahrad Almotahari (Edinburgh),Petronella Randell (St Andrews), and David Boylan (Glasgow).

Wednesday, 5th October, 4pm – 6pm
Venue: Dalhousie Building, Room 2F13, University of Dundee

Don Ihde (Stony Brook University)

“Letting Things Speak: Material Hermeneutics”

Abstract:  I contend that there is a current Second Scientific Revolution from the 20th-21st century by way of imaging technologies.  These technologies ‘let things speak’ as never before, but call for a visualist hermeneutic for interpretation.  I shall give a few examples, beginning with Otzi the Iceman, Viking invasions of England, Spanish explorations of North America, to illustrate how such a revolution can enrich previously linguistically restricted hermeneutics.

For further information, please contact Ashley Woodward.  a.z.woodward@dundee.ac.uk

Dear all,

The Philosophy programme at the University of Dundee and the Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy are pleased to present quite an extravaganza of philosophical events in Dundee next week. Following is a schedule of the events, followed by further details on each. Please contact me if you would like any further information: a.z.woodward@dundee.ac.uk

Cheers,

Ashley.

Schedule:

Wed 30 March: Information, Nihilism, and Art book launch and panel discussion.

Thurs 31^st March and Fri 1^st April: The End(s) of Art symposium.

Sat 2^nd  and Sun 3^rd April: Continuities in Modern French Philosophy workshop.

Nihilism, Information, and Art: A Panel Disscussion

5:30 – 7:00pm Wednesday 30 March

@ G E N E R A T O R Projects

Unit 25/26/Mid Wynd Ind Est, Dundee DD1 4JG

Launching the book: Ashley Woodward, Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition: Reflections on Nihilism, Information, and Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

Participants: Dr Sarah Cook (DJCAD), Dr Dominic Smith (Philosophy, UoD), Dr Ashley Woodward (Philosophy, UoD). Please join us for a discussion on the themes of Ashley Woodward’s new book. All welcome. Free drinks and light refreshments.

The End(s) of Art

An Art and Philosophy Symposium, exploring the notion of where art is going and the idea of its supposed end in the twentieth century. Free, all welcome.

Lecture Theatre 1, Dalhousie Building

Thursday, March 31

9.30-10.00 Meet and Greet with Tea and Coffee

10-11 Diarmuid Costello – ‘James Welling, Philosopher of Photography?’

11-12 John Dummett – ‘A History of Twilight in Seven Colours’

12-1.30 Lunch Break

1.30-2.30 Lucy Byatt – ‘Investing: The Realisation that Private is taking the Form of the Public’

2.30-3.30 Dominic Smith – ‘Drawn Into Tomorrow: Three Questions for IC-98’

3.30-4.00 Tea and Coffee Break

4.00-5.00 Oisín Keohane – ‘The End of the Nude: Aphrodite sé derobe’

Friday, April 1

9.30-10.00 Meet and Greet with Tea and Coffee

10-11 Eoin Carney – ‘Technologies and the End of the Artist’

11-12 Isabel Rocamora – ‘Restoring Being: The Dwelling Figure and the Moving Image’

12-1.30 Lunch Break

1.30-2.30 Graham Fagen – ‘This is the End’

2.30-3.30 Roundtable with Tea and Coffee

Continuities in Modern French Philosophy Workshop

The aim of this international workshop is to explore some of the philosophical continuities between early and late 20th century French philosophy. Free and all welcome, but please register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/continuities-in-modern-french-philosophy-tickets-22706330245

Room 2F15, Dalhousie Building

Saturday, April 2

12.15 – 1:15 Coffee and welcome.

1.15 – 2.00 Judith Wambacq (Gent) – ‘The structuralist dimension in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze’

2.15 – 3.00 Walter Pedriali (St. Andrews) – ‘An Unpoetic Journey To e Unnameable Elements of Bergsonism in Badiou’s Metaontology’

3.30 – 5.00 Jeffrey Bell (SELU) – ‘The Primacy of Deception’

5.00 – 7.00 Drinks

7.00 Workshop Dinner

Sunday, April 3

9.00 – 9.45 Coffee

9.45 – 11.15 Alan Schrift (Grinnell) – ‘Jean Wahl and Gilles Deleuze: Opening the way to Nietzsche and the Philosophy of Difference’

11.30 – 12.15 Moritz Gansen (Berlin / Darmstadt) – ‘”To make us think, in French, things which were very new.” Jean Wahl and Gilles Deleuze’

12.15 – 1.15 Lunch

1.15-2.00 Stephen Noble (Paris xii) – ‘The Thinker and the Painter. Thinking through art in Twentieth Century French Philosophy’

2.15 – 3.00 Gavin Rae (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) – ‘From Nothingness to Difference: Critiquing Presence with Sartre and Derrida’

3.30 – 5.00 Howard Caygill (Kingston) – ‘The Psychopathology of Eugene Minkowski’

A correction to the last weekly events announcement: Dom Lopes will be speaking (about “Aesthetic Agency and Value”) at Edinburgh on Wednesday, 11th February (not Thursday, 12th February).  For more information:

http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/events/view/scottish-aesthetics-forum-1

With the 2012 Annual Meeting concluded, we need to agree to a date for the 2013 Annual Meeting, to be held at the University of Stirling.  In the past, this has been held on the first weekend in December; if this precedent were followed, the 2013 meeting would be held at Stirling on 6th – 7th December.  However, the idea of changing the date of the Annual Meeting was mooted at the recent AGM, e.g. to the first weekend in November.  I would like to solicit feedback on this proposal.

Here’s what was mentioned in favour of moving the meeting from December:

• The weather.  It was pointed out that inclement weather makes can make travel in December difficult.  (E.g., the 2010 meeting was cancelled due to bad weather.)
• Teaching and/or exams.  It was pointed out that some members might prefer a different date for the meeting, given their teaching responsibilities.  (Although a December date might be better for others, in connection with teaching responsibilities, given different teaching schedules.)

One thing that is important: we need to have a meeting date that is firm and settled and the same from year to year.  Once we have this in place, I can advertise the date widely and request that other philosophy events at the six departments not be scheduled at the same time as the Annual Meeting.  (I made the mistake this year of not having a firm and settled date this year, with the result that several conferences were held at the same time as the Annual Meeting.)

If you’ve feedback on this, can you please pass it on your departmental representative on the SPA committee: Jesper Kallestrup,  Sarah Broadie, James Williams, Ben Colburn, Peter Sullivan, or Guido Baccigaluppi.  Thank you!