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Department of Philosophy

Events

The Department is active in sponsoring and hosting events for our students, faculty, and the public.  All are invited to publicly advertised events.  Past events can be seen via the links in the menu.

Upcoming Events for Fall 2023:

 
Sarah McGrath (Princeton University)
USC First-Year Experience
Thursday, October 12th, 6-7:30 p.m., LeConte Room 102 
email for details: Kathryn Lindeman
 
The philosopher Bernard Williams once observed, “There are, notoriously no ethical experts…anyone who is tempted to take up the idea of there being a theoretical science of ethics should be discouraged by reflecting on what would be involved in taking seriously the idea that there were experts in it.” Is Williams right that there is no such thing as an ethical expert? If he is right, what does this imply about whether ethical questions can have objective answers? What does it imply about how hard they can be? If he is wrong, then who are the experts?

 

Sarah McGrath (Princeton University)

USC Philosophy Department Colloquium Series
Friday, October 13th, 3:30-5 p.m., Close-Hipp Room 303  
email for details: Kathryn Lindeman

 

Christopher Tollefsen (University of South Carolina)

USC First-Year Experience
Friday, November 3rd, 3:30-5 p.m., Close-Hipp Room 303  
email for details: Christopher Tollefsen
 
Michael Schur asks a lot of moral questions in How To Be Perfect, and enlists a murderers’ row of philosophers to help answer them: Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Rawls, Scanlon and others. But where is Plato, author of philosophy's single greatest work, The Republic? Attending to Plato uncovers a further question that I'll argue is central to morality. In this talk, I'll identify that question and say something about what an answer to it might look like.

 

Thi Nguyen (University of Utah)

USC Humanities Collaborative Talk Series
Thursday, November 30th 
email for details: Tyke Nunez

 

Thi Nguyen (University of Utah)

USC Philosophy Department Colloquium Series
Friday, December 1st, 3:30-5 p.m.  
email for details: Tyke Nunez

 

Regina Rini (York University)
Cancelled!!! - Rescheduled for Spring 2024
USC Philosophy Department Colloquium Series
email for details: Tyke Nunez
 
We live in a time of science-denial. From the realities of covid-19 to climate change, childhood vaccines and even the shape of the earth, many people now seem to actively reject the authority of scientific experts. Philosophers often bemoan populist ignorance, but I will argue that this response evades the fundamentally rational core of science-denial. I will show that modern specialized sciences have a Hobbesian epistemic structure, one that makes resentment of scientific elites both predictable and (partly) rational. Modern sciences are so specialized that they force non-experts into a deep form of epistemic dependence, such that experts play the Hobbesian role of Leviathan, with unquestionable authority over certain epistemic norms. This parallel to political theory helps us see the tragic dilemma built into the reception of science in democratic societies. While we rightly resent and reject the unquestionable authority of Hobbesian politics, epistemic dependence makes rejecting similar authority in science untenable. But here the rational grounds for accepting scientific authority come apart from the rational grounds for resenting Leviathan. What remains is a rational residue of resentment, directed against the democratic inequality of scientific expertise. Failing to acknowledge the rationality of this resentment has left us poorly equipped to respond persuasively to science-denial. 

 

 


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