Except where noted otherwise, audio recordings of past
events are available to Philsoc members via the
Events Archive page.
General events information
Unless stated otherwise, all listed events take
place in Rewley House
– click the link for a map.
Except for the Members'
Day event, which has its own booking form (available when
appropriate from the Members' Day page), all bookings
are done through OUDCE. For events which are still
pending, clicking on a course title will
take you to a page giving course details and offering a
link for electronic booking (and a link to a PDF form if
you prefer to apply by post).
A note concerning bookings. Most Rewley House weekends end up
in the large lecture room by Saturday evening. In some cases
it has already been decided where earlier lectures are
to take place and if so, this is indicated on the above list.
Please note that if the weekend is allocated
to Tawney or Sadler rooms you should assume limitations on the
number who can attend and book as early as possible. Here are
the room capacities:
Sadler 50
Tawney 40
Lecture room 120
Feedback
If you have any feedback comments about weekend schools,
weekly classes, online courses or summer schools please contact
Marianne
Talbot directly as she would be very happy to hear any
suggestions for improvement or for different topics.
Please also contact Marianne if you have any suggestions for
additional ways to publicise the courses.
Other OUDCE courses
Members may be also interested in courses being run by the
Oxford University Department for Continuing Education:
John Preston, Reading University (Lecture Theatre)
We'll be looking at how Wittgenstein distinguished
philosophy and science, his beliefs about how they were
related, the 'net' metaphor of the Tractatus
Logico Philosophicus,and the kind of approach to
science that would result from taking it seriously.
Was Wittgenstein really hostile to science as many
have thought?
Dan Isaacson, Oxford and Richard Pettigrew, Bristol
(Tawney Room)
What (if anything) is mathematics about? How is it
possible to know any mathematics? The attempt to give
an account of mathematics that can answer both questions
has been a major catalyst to development in the
philosophy of mathematics over the past fifty years.
We'll be looking at both questions.
Robert Stern, Sheffield and Stephen Houlgate, Warwick
(Lecture Theatre)
Our aim is to shed light on Hegel's idealism,
attitude to scepticism, his views on history, on ethics,
freedom, art and religion. We'll consider Hegel's most
difficult text, the Science of Logic, to explain
how and why it transforms our understanding of basic
categories, such as "being" and
"something".
Catherine Osborne, UEA (Sadler Room)
Thales suggested that the earth floats on water.
Parmenides proposed that nothing changes and there is
only one thing. Primitive? No, the Presocratics were
already considering deep issues such as what there is,
why and how can we know about it? A lively exploration
of the beginnings of philosophy.
Past events
Audio recordings of most of the below listed past events are
available to Society members trough the
Events Archive page.
January 14-15:
Utilitarianism, Prohibitions, and Prerogatives
Brad Hooker, Reading Univ. (Lecture Theatre)
Utilitarians believe the right action is that which
(tends to) produce the greatest happiness of the
greatest number. Utilitarianism might reasonably be
called the ethics of modernity. These lectures
introduce utilitarianism, distinguish different versions,
discuss objections and outline what might be salvaged to
form a plausible moral theory.
Robert Stone, Ann Long, Peter Gibson and
Peter Ells (Lecture Theatre)
October 29-30:
The Aesthetics and Criticism of Music
Roger Allen, Oxford and Paul Harper-Scott,
Royal Holloway (Sadler Room)
This course considered issues in the Aesthetics of
Music from both historical and contemporary philosophical
perspectives. Roger Allen examined the
nineteenth-century debate between music as autonomous
object and expressive force as epxressed in the writings of,
inter alia, Wagner, Hanslick, Schopenhauer and Nietszche.
He aslo considered how ideas of the Sublime might impact
on issues of music analysis, with specific reference to
Bruckner. Paul Harper Scott continued the Wagnerian
theme in a contemporary context through engagement with
radical philosophical persepectives of sex and capitalism.
October 17 – November 21:
An Introduction to the Philosophy of the Emotions
Rachel Paine (Lecture Theatre)
A series of six Monday lectures, all 14:00 - 15:30
(no recordings available).
A new debate in the philosophy of emotion opposes
thought to feeling. The problem turns on clarifying
what is meant by 'thought' and 'feeling'. We will
consider historical and modern accounts of the
emotions from Aristotle to Heidigger.
October 17: Thought and feeling: Introducing the debate
October 24: Le coeur a ses raisons: The emotional life of human beings
October 31: The power of emotion to move us: Aristotle, Descartes, Malebranche and Hume
November 7: The felt qualities of experience: Nietzsche, Dewey, James and Langer
November 14: Emotional niches: Evolution and society
November 21: The emotional ground: Husserl and Heidegger
November 26-27:
A Romp Through the Philosophy of Mind
Marianne Talbot (Tawney Room)
Where would we be without the mind? But what is the
mind? Is it the brain? Descartes thought definitely
not. But don't we know better in our scientific
times? So why is dualism again attracting philosophers,
and what is it that science will never tell us
about the mind?
Steve Chinn, Rob Judges, Alan Bailey, Ann Long,
James Calvert, Peter Townsend.
MP3 recodrings of the individual contributions are available in the
Recordings Library
section of this site.
Debate on Dawkins' 'God Delusion'
Marianne and Stephen Law.
Marianne's slides are available as
Powerpoint or as
PDF.
The OUDCE website holds
an MP3 audio recording
of the complete talk.
Critical Reasoning for Beginners
Marianne Talbot No recording available.
The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
Anthony Hatzimoys and Sorin Baiasu
War Torture and Terrorism:
Are they ever Justifiable?
