Department of Philosophy News

We are delighted to announce that Dr Miranda Fricker will be joining the department in September 2012, to take up a professorial post. Miranda is currently the Head of Department at Birkbeck College in London, where she is also a Reader in Philosophy; she is also the Director of the Mind Association. Miranda is well known for her pathbreaking work in ethics, epistemology, and in those regions of feminist philosophy that concern social identity, power, and the authority of reason.

The University of Sheffield was named as the University of the Year at the recent Times Higher Education Awards. Among other things, the university was noted for its imaginative and innovative programmes for widening participation; and in its submission for the award, the university cited Philosophy in the City as a shining example of its outreach work. Very many congratulations to Philosophy in the City for their significant contribution to the university’s success – and, more importantly, for their continuing and exciting work in taking philosophy outside of academia and into the lives of young people attending local schools.

Bob Stern’s new book has just appeared with Cambridge University Press, entitled Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard. He has also had his commentary on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Sprit translated into Chinese.

In honour of Chris Hookway’s 25 years of association with the department of philosophy at the University of Valencia, he was awarded the University’s Medal of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education.  He was also the guest of honour at a workshop in Valencia on his work in pragmatism and epistemology, which included scholars from the UK, Spain and Canada. Many congratulations to Chris on a well-deserved honour.

The website for the Implicit Bias and Philosophy international research project, as directed by Jenny Saul and funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Sheffield, is now operational. To find out more about the project, and about implicit bias more generally, visit the following webpage:

http://www.biasproject.org/

Jenny Saul has taken over from Rob Hopkins as Head of Department.

Very many thanks to Rob for all that he has done for the department over the last three years and very best wishes to Jenny in her new post!

The Department recently held a conference in honour of Bob Hale’s retirement. An all-star list of speakers featured, as well as Bob himself, Crispin Wright, Kit Fine, Ian Rumfitt, Stewart Shapiro, John Divers and Sonia Roca-Royes. The lively discussions their various contributions triggered carried on into the evenings.

Bob will now be Emeritus in the Department. His many readers will be delighted to know that he shows no sign of losing his interest in the discipline.

Here are some photos from the conference; the first shows Bob himself, the second shows Crispin Wright and Kit Fine, and the third shows Stewart Shapiro:

17th-18th September 2011, University of Sheffield
Keynote Speakers:
Josh Knobe (Yale University) “In Search of the True Self”
Paulo Sousa (QUB) “The folk metaphysics of free action & moral responsibility
Workshop includes presentations of new experimental findings, research training for philosophers wanting to conduct their own experiments and discussion regarding future experimental work.
Visit our website for more details: http://sites.google.com/site/experimentalphilosophygroupuk/second-workshop
Click here to register online.

Jessica Leech has become the newest member of academic staff. Jess is currently finishing a PhD that will be awarded jointly by Universities of Sheffield and Geneva. The thesis develops a distinctively Kantian approach to fundamental questions concerning modality, and in particular the issue of the source of the various forms of necessity. In 2011-12 Jess will be a Junior Research Fellow at Kings College Cambridge. She’ll start teaching in the Department from September 2012, offering modules on Kant’s First Critique and Modality.

Steve Makin has received a prestigious Senate Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching (http://www.shef.ac.uk/lets/reward/senate). This is a richly merited acknowledgement of the inspiration, encouragement and amusement Steve has offered many generations of Sheffield undergraduates. Steve, who teaches ancient philosophy and metaphysics, has long been one of the Department’s teaching stars.

Other members of the Department have also won recognition, this time from the Student Union: Jenny Saul for the best Personal Tutor in the Faculty, and Chloe Ashley for her work as Union rep in the Department.

The Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award is awarded by The Society for Women in Philosophy. Below is an excerpt from the society’s announcement:

Jenny Saul has demonstrated courage and leadership, and she is leading feminists forward to new ways of thinking and connecting. We applaud Dr. Saul’s willingness to take a public stand against sexism everywhere, especially in our profession. She is one of the founders of and co-bloggers for Feminist Philosophers, an excellent, trans-continental forum for highlighting gender-bias in the academy. The Feminist Philosophers blog has become a wonderful example of collective feminist work that has led to other initiatives like the “Gendered Conference Campaign,” “What is it Like to be a Woman in Philosophy?” and “What are we Doing about What it is Like” message boards. Dr. Saul has also directed SWIP UK, helped to implement the ‘woman-friendly initiative award’ and will be co-chairing the SWIP/British Philosophical Association’s Sub-Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession. Her work on implicit bias has done much to bring in allies to the advancement of women in philosophy, including many who would not ordinarily consider themselves feminist. Her scholarship in Philosophy of Language is also most notable and there is much praise for her book, Feminism: Issues and Arguments. Dr. Saul has done a great deal to make all our lives better and, as both a mentor and scholar, her colleagues have found her to be most worthy of the Distinguished Woman Philosopher Award.

For the Feminist Blog’s post on the award see: http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/distinguished-woman-philosopher-2011-jennifer-saul%E2%80%8F/

In Knowledge on Trust, Paul Faulkner presents an epistemological theory of testimony, or a theory that explains how it is that we acquire knowledge and warranted belief from testimony. The key questions addressed in this book are: what makes it reasonable to accept a piece of testimony? And what warrants belief formed on this testimonial basis? Faulkner argues that existing theories of testimony largely fail because they do not recognise how issues of practical rationality motivate the first question, and this is what makes testimony distinctive as a source of knowledge.

PinC has now been supporting students in and around Sheffield for five years, and is a one of a kind student-led project, at the time there was no other like it.

During this time the various committees have worked very hard to expand and improve the programme, rolling out a new programme in primary schools “philosophy for children”, forging contacts with local refugee charities and by introducing more mentoring in those particularly underprivileged communities in which we work.

This years committee also believe that being a part of the project has become much more enjoyable, as this year’s committee have worked to ensure that team-building and training are a real focus when attracting volunteers, in addition we have organised more socials and allowed the volunteering to be more flexible in order to meet our sixty+ volunteer’s needs.

But their aims are bigger than this; ideally we would like to encourage other countries Universities to adopt the same practices. We really believe we have made this happen by being awarded the opportunity to present ourselves at the Mount Holyoke University “Engaging Philosophy Conference”. This opportunity allows us to showcase our project to influential American Universities, such as Yale and Harvard, and may allow us to persuade their students into running similar schemes – hopefully!

In short, PinC has worked hard to make sure students of all level, from all backgrounds can access philosophy in an interesting, and informative way through our sixty dedicated volunteers. Or through ideas such as our summer school “Philosophize”.

This hard work and determination has obviously paid off and the committee were nominated and shortlisted for the Student’s Union “SheffieldVolunteering Student-Led Volunteering Project of the Year”. Good luck to them!

Our confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Jonathan Wolff, UCL and Professor Carrie Jenkins, University of Nottingham.

The conference is set to be on the 11th-12th April 2010 at the Douglas Knoop HRI Cente.

More information can be found at our website, where you can access our registration form and find a little more information about the timetable - (please note you must complete the registration form).
http://www.shef.ac.uk/philosophy/research/conferences/ugconference.html

Or you can email the committee at:
ugphilconf@sheffield.ac.uk

Jenny Saul has been awarded over £100,000 by the Leverhulme Trust to establish a network in Implicit Bias and Philosophy. In recent years it has become increasingly clear that human beings are subject to unconscious biases that conflict with their conscious attitudes. These biases are especially important when they concern groups that have historically been victims of oppression, such as women and racial minorities.  There are enormous philosophical implications of this psychological research, but philosophers have almost completely ignored the literature on implicit bias.  This project aims to remedy this, by exploring the implications of this research to philosophical theories of the mind, of rationality and reasoning, and of racism, sexism and discrimination.

The grant will fund three international workshops, will lead to an edited collection and a website, and will strengthen research ties between those working in the area in several countries.

On Monday 28th March at 5pm in St George’s Church, Jenny Saul will give a talk
entitled
“Why is Philosophy so White, Male and Middle Class?  Implicit Bias,
Stereotype Threat and Under-represented Groups in Philosophy”.

The talk is open to everyone; see below for an abstract. After the talk there
will be chance to chat about the issues and have some free wine or fruit juice.

We’re proud to announce some recent developments in the careers of four  of our grad students. Drew Howat (PhD Sheffield 2009, currently a temporary Lecturer) has accepted a tenure track post at the University of California, Fullerton. Julien Murzi (PhD 2010) will leave his postdoctoral position in Munich to take up a permanent lectureship in philosophy at the University of Kent. Jessica Leech (current joint Sheffield-Geneva PhD candidate) has been offered a Research Fellowship at King’s College Cambridge. And Suilin Lavelle (thesis submitted 2011) has accepted a two year teaching and research post at the University of Edinburgh.

The department is launching a new series of event  for alumni and current students. The series will give a chance for current staff and students to meet former students and for alumni to keep in touch with the department. Join us for a drink, discussions of philosophy and life after philosophy and presentations by staff of their current research.

The first event in the series is an informal seminar on Tuesday 23rd November at 7.30pm. Yonatan Shemmer will give a talk titled  ”Despotic Constitutions and Despotic Reasons – on the Different Ways in which Societies and Individuals Control their Future Selves” followed by an informal discussion . This will be held in the upstairs bar of MishMash, 617 Ecclesall Road
(www.mishmashsheffield.co.uk <http://www.mishmashsheffield.co.uk/>).

Please do come along, bring friends to what promises to be a lively and interesting evening.

Last Wednesday 10.11.2010 will definitely go down in history as a day that saw one of the largest student protests, and perhaps even the biggest protest of our generation!

As most of you will know the cuts to higher education, announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review are colossal: 40% overall, including an 80% cut to the teaching grant.  Universities are the drivers of economic growth and innovation, and these cuts come at a time when the rest of the world is investing in higher education. Obviously Sheffield’s concern is to protect the rights of future students to a high quality affordable education system that is accessible to all, not just the wealthy.

Hence the march, “Cuts are Nuts” organised jointly by NUS and UCU gave our more politically active philosophers a chance to share their thoughts with the wider world! Their route covered a one and a half mile strech from  Horse Guards Avenue to a rally outside the Tate Britain where protestors heard from UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt, NUS president Aaron Porter and TUC deputy general secretary Frances O’Grady.

All in all, despite the protests at Millbank, the demonstration was a great success, with over 50,000 students, university staff and members of the general public attending. it appears that nobody from Sheffield was involved in the violence. Our Students Union President, and current PhD Philosophy student (he’s on sabbatical leave for a year) Josh said “We organised transport for over 600 Sheffield Students and we demonstrated peacefully along with the vast majority of others. We are very disappointed that a small minority of the 50,000 on the march took action which detracts from the key issues in this debate.  The key issues being that the governments announced cuts, coupled with the proposed increases in tuition fees means the effective privatization of our Universities, and will put barriers in the way of many future students accessing a high quality higher education.”

In all there were about 600 students from Sheffield University and approximatley 50 staff members. Our local Labour MP Paul Blomfield also attended as did over 12,00 0 members of the general public.  Well done to all those involved!

From left to right.

Josh Forstenzer (Union Preisdent), Chloe Ashley (Philosophy Students Union Councillor), Dr. Graeme Forbes, Prof. Jennifer Saul, Lindsey Porter (PhD student), Paniel Osberto Reyes Cárdenas (PhD student), Maiya Jordan (MA student) and Jack Wilson (MA student).

One of our third year undergraduate students Tom Belt recently participated in the University’s SIFE project at the World Cup.

SIFE stands for “Students in Free Enterprise”. The project aims to raise money through entrepreneurship in commercial projects which in turn helps to fund social projects. These social projects have taken place all over the world from Bangladesh to Lesotho, and of course in Sheffield. And the activities have ranged from everything from reducing child labour in Bangladesh by helping their Mothers establish a tailoring business so that they can go to school, to implementing new harvesting techniques in Lesotho’s communities who suffered as a result of de-forestation.

As for the World Cup itself a National Champion of SIFE projects competes with each in presenting their past year achievements via giving a presentation followed by questions from the judges. The judges coming from all sorts of companies including KPMG, and HSBC.

You can find out more here: www.sheffieldsife.org

Chloe Ashley who is a third year undergraduate in our department was recently re-elected as our Students Union Councillor, and on the same day she appeared on BBC News 24 talking about the possible cuts to higher education.

Chloe appeared alongside four other students Caitlin-May,Alexa and Rob (all from other departments).  Discussing everything from losing lecturers, to postgrad funding and students welfare.

It is hoped that the interview will encourage the local community to get behind the students cause and rally the students into demonstrating on 10.11.2010 at the NUS “Cuts are Nuts” event.

Click to view: Chloe on BBC

Rosanna Keefe recently featured on Melvyn Bragg’s influential Radio 4 programme ‘In Our Time’. Rosanna was one of three guests invited to discuss the nature, history and importance of logic. To hear what she had to say, visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl

This conference will offer a forum for the discussion of the ideas of Knud Ejler Løgstrup (1905-81). The focus will be on Løgstrup’s central conception of the ‘ethical demand’ as a basic phenomenological feature of moral experience, which is both particularistic and radically open-ended. This idea has relations to the ideas of Kierkegaard on the one side, and Levinas on the other, while Løgstrup’s outlook differs interestingly from them both.

For further details please go here.

Congratulations to our new graduates. After three years of hard philosophizing they received their well deserved degrees during the week of the 19-23 of July. We are very proud of them.  Shown here celebrating  after their graduation ceremony are our Single Honours.

The White Rose Association of Political Philosophy is holding a conference at Sheffield on “The Future of Political Theory”  5th – 7th July 2010. More information can be found here.  http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/politics/latest-news/conf-msleat.html