The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series is pleased to present the
Panel on Campus Protests & Universities

Shannon Dea (University of Regina)
"Campus Protests and Universities’ Duties of Proximity"

Dax D'Orazio (Queen's University)
"After the Encampments: The Law, Policy, and Limits of Campus Expression"

Eric Schliesser (University of Amsterdam)
“On the Compatibility between Student Protests and Academic Freedom" 

Thursday, November 21, 2024

4:00 pm

Watson Hall, Room 517

EVERYONE WELCOME 

If you have accessibility requirements, please contact philosophy@queensu.ca

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series is pleased to present

Ram Murty
(Queen's University)

"The Meaning of Yoga"

Date: Thursday, October 24, 2024

Time: 4:00 pm

Watson Hall, Room 517

The word "yoga" is now commonplace and widely used to refer to "stretching exercises".  However, the Sanskrit word refers to a system of Indian philosophy rooted in antiquity and connotes "the stretching of the mind."

Traditionally, Indian philosophy recognizes six systems.  Of the six,

three of them,  namely Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta, are interconnected by the concept of yoga, which runs like a colorful unifying ribbon through them all.

I will discuss informally these three philosophies and delve deeply into the meaning of yoga implied by all of  them.  The talk assumes no previous knowledge of Indian philosophy and should be accessible to a wide audience.

EVERYONE WELCOME 

If you have accessibility requirements, please contact philosophy@queensu.ca

The Department of Philosophy presents the Graham Kennedy Memorial Lecture

Christopher Ba Thi Nguyen (The University of Utah)

"Scoring Systems and Mechanized Values"

Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 4:00 pm

Dunning Hall, Room 11

Scoring systems set targets, and serve as the basis for evaluations. We find mechanical scoring systems aplenty in both games and institutional life – in all the rankings and metrics which surround us. Such systems have a typical function: to encourage convergence on a singular evaluation. What is gained, and what is lost, when we make our evaluation procedures more mechanical? I offer an account of “mechanical” procedures, drawing on the philosophy of law and Science and Technology studies. Mechanical procedures offers us gains in transparency, accessibility, and consistency. But, at the same time, mechanical procedures deprive us of certain forms of discretion and sensitivity in judgment. When we adopt such mechanical procedures into our evaluation procedures, we bring those same trade-offs into our valuing process. Mechanical scoring systems enable greater fungibility of evaluators and auditors, but to do so, they need to re-format the evaluation procedure into mechanically repeatable terms. They encourage us to value what is easiest to count, using scalable institutional techniques. This suggests that there is a price to the demand for public reason, a price that is perhaps clearest in our experience of the insensitivity of metrics.

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series is pleased to present

David Bakhurst
(Queen's University)

"Anscombe versus Austin"

Date: Thursday, September 12, 2024

Time: 4:00 pm

Watson Hall, Room 517

My topic is the relation between Elizabeth Anscombe’s form of linguistic philosophy and the ordinary language philosophy of J. L. Austin. In Metaphysical Animals, Clare Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman observe that Anscombe and Austin hated each other and portray Anscombe’s loathing as expressing a deep aversion to Austin’s conception of philosophy. In response, some commentators have criticised this interpretation, arguing that Anscombe’s contempt for Austin was grounded in merely personal reasons, which prevented her from appreciating that Austin was involved in a similar reformatory project to Wittgenstein and Anscombe herself. In my paper, I evaluate this dispute, exploring the similarities and differences between Anscombe’s and Austin’s ideas of philosophy—focusing on their notorious symposium on pretending and their respective writings on perception and its objects. I will argue that attention to the metaphysical dimensions of Anscombe’s “grammatical” inquiries can reveal the ways in which Austin’s philosophy is, by comparison, superficial.

EVERYONE WELCOME 

If you have accessibility requirements, please contact philosophy@queensu.ca