Relocation

I'm currently in the process of moving my blog to my main website (www.megankime.net). This site will remain as an archive but I won't be posting anything new here from now on.

BSET 09

Registration for this year's British Society for Ethical Theory conference is now open.

BSET 2009 -- a three-day residential conference
University of Reading: 13 - 15 July 2009.

Keynote Addresses

"Pleasure, Desire, and Practical Reason"- James Lenman (Sheffield)
"Intention, Permissibility, Terrorism, and War"- Jeff McMahan (Rutgers)

Submitted Papers

"Objective versus Subjective Moral Oughts"- Krister Bykvist (Oxford)
"Practical Bracketing"- Garrett Cullity (Adelaide)
"Truth and Error in Morality"- Dale Dorsey (Kansas)
"Moral Blameworthiness and the Reactive Attitudes"- Leonard Kahn (Calgary)
"Owning Up and Lowering Down: The Power of Apology"- Adrienne Martin (Pennsylvania)
"Shapelessness and the Thick"- Deborah Roberts (Reading)
"Second-Order Equality and Levelling Down"- Re'em Segev (Hebrew, Jerusalem)
"Non-monotonicity and Moral Particularism"- Alan Thomas (Kent)
"Cynicism and Morality"- Samantha Vice (Rhodes)

CFP: Manchester Green Political Theory Workshop

Workshops in Political Theory Sixth Annual Conference
Manchester Metropolitan University
2-4 September 2009

Workshop on GREEN POLITICAL THEORY
Conveners: Stijn Neuteleers (K.U.Leuven, Belgium), Corey MacIver
(University of Oxford, UK)

The management of environmental problems and the rise of the environmental movement pose significant challenges for contemporary political philosophy. These challenges can be found both on a global level and on a local level. At the global level, for instance, climate change is one of the major issues in real-life international politics and has induced a growing debate on the ethics of climate change (global distributive justice, intergenerational justice, etc.). At the local policy level, we are confronted, on the one hand, with the conflict of environmental values with other values such as economic growth and justice. On the other hand, we have to deal with conflicts among environmental values themselves (biodiversity, restoration, wilderness, etc.). Our political and economic instruments and theories have difficulties to cope with these challenges e.g. cost-benefit analysis, value of privacy, discount rates, aggregative models of democracy, etc. The broad field of political philosophy and the environment tries to provide answers to these challenges.
The workshop aims to cover a broad range of green political theory topics such as:
- Ethics and politics of climate change
- Democracy and the environment
- Public policy and the environment
- Environmental citizenship
- Environmental justice
- Green economics
- Environmental decision-making

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please submit an abstract of 300-500 words (or a full paper) to stijn.neuteleers@econ.kuleuven.be and corey.maciver@nuffield.ox.ac.uk by April 30, 2008.

Practical information (registration, fees, etc.) can be found on the conference website.

Carnegie Council Video Webcasts

The Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs have announced that they will be making their upcoming events available as live video webcasts. The programme for April is as follows:

April 2, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa
Dambisa Moyo

April 6, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World
John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge

April 7, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing
Ian Bremmer

April 9, 12:00-2:00 PM EST
Restoring Trust in the Global Financial System
Thomas Donaldson, Neal Flieger, Stephen Jordan, Seamus McMahon, Christian Menegatti

April 20, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Prospects for U.S.-Russia Relations
H.E. Mr. Sergey Kislyak

April 22, 5:30-7:00 PM EST
Economic Crisis: A National and International Perspective
Ray Epping, Steven Greenhouse

April 29, 8:00-9:15 AM EST
The Crisis of Islamic Civilization
Ali A. Allawi

If you cannot watch these events live, go to the Carnegie Council website for videos, audios, and transcripts of past events, or download them as podcasts.

CFP: The Ethics of Climate Change

Call For Papers:

The Ethics of Climate Change: Intergenerational Justice and the Global Challenge

October 30th-31st, 2009, Clayton Hall, University of Delaware.

Deadline for submissions: June 15th 2009.

Keynote Speakers:

John Broome, White's Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University

Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O'Neill Family Professor, Notre Dame University

Robert L. Nadeau, Professor of English, George Mason University

For further information see detailed CFP here

Open University Ethics Centre Public Lectures

The Open University Ethics Centre Public Lectures 2009

Integrity in Public Life

6th May - Dr John Githongo: The Paradox of Two Recessions
John Githongo, the Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner now working as Senior Advisor - Advocacy, World Vision UK, will consider some of the scandals that have come to light as the economic tide has gone out in European business. He will compare the apparent paradox whereby economic upturn and democratic recession have gone together in Africa.

20th May - Lord Butler of Brockwell: Integrity and Politics
Robin Butler will draw on his experience as a previous head of the Civil Service, and lead author of the Butler Report, to discuss the ethical pitfalls facing politicians and civil servants, and how to avoid them.

27th May - Professor John Cottingham: Integrity and Fragmentation
Professor John Cottingham (University of Reading) will argue that we are harmed by living in a compartmentalised culture. Our institutions are manned by specialists who have mastered a particular field, but are not expected to form a view of the whole. Yet the classical ideal of the unity of the virtues suggests that people cannot live well unless their activities are integrated into a meaningful structure, informed not just by narrow technical expertise but by an overall vision of the good for humankind. We need this idea today.

17th June - Baroness O'Neill: Trustworthiness, Accountability and Character
Onora O'Neill, cross-bench peer and President of the British Academy, focuses on the place of trust in public life, and explores what we should take as evidence of trustworthiness. Character, codes of conduct and formal systems of accountability can all be helpful for judging trustworthiness, but what can we do when they don't provide enough evidence?

These free lunchtime lectures are open to all and will be hosted at St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, London from 12.50 - 2pm. Click here for directions.

Admission is free but demand may be high for seats: please contact m.leroux@open.ac.uk to reserve your place at the lecture(s) you wish to attend.

Further inquiries to t.chappell@open.ac.uk

Goodin Lecture

The 2009 Edmund Burke Lecture in Practical Philosophy
"GLOBAL DEMOCRACY: IN THE BEGINNING"
delivered by Prof. Robert E. Goodin, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory at the Australian National University
with a response by Dr. Cillian McBride, Lecturer in Political Theory at Queen's University Belfast

Date and Time: Wednesday 22nd April, 6pm
Venue: J.M. Synge Lecture Theatre, Arts Building (TCD, College Green)

The lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

For further information download the poster or contact jurgen.dewispelaere@tcd.ie

----------------------------------------
Jurgen De Wispelaere
Editor, Basic Income Studies
Department of Philosophy
School of Social Sciences and Philosophy
Trinity College
Dublin

College Green, Dublin 2, IrelandTel.: +353 1 896 3136, URL
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ALSP
BIEN
BIS
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Guardian Human Rights Series

I've just come across an interesting series of essays on the Guardian website: 'Deconstructing rights' by Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law at Birkbeck College:

"Are human rights a barrier against domination and oppression or the ideological gloss of an emerging empire? Law professor Costas Douzinas traces the history and theory of rights, probing the paradoxes they offer in contemporary debates, including the questions of universalism, humanitarianism and individual versus collective rights."

International Encyclopedia of Ethics

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics will be a comprehensive, authoritative print and electronic Ethics resource. Its entries will discuss topics, movements, arguments, and figures in Normative Ethics, Metaethics, and Practical Ethics. It will cover major philosophical and religious traditions; entries will be written by highly respected thinkers from around the world. In its electronic form, each entry will be hyperlinked internally to other entries and externally to electronic editions of the renowned Blackwell Companions and Guides, in all, more than 1500 scholarly articles. The electronic version will be regularly updated, making IEE the preferred resource for any professional, layperson, or student wanting to know more about Ethics. The print edition will be 9-12 volumes. Work on the Encyclopedia is shepherded by an Editor-in-Chief and two Associate Editors. Its content is shaped by the distinguished members of the international Editorial Board. All entries will be reviewed by an independent Review Board. We currently settled on more than 400 topics for entries. We will be adding another 400-500 topics before we are done. From the IEE site (www.hughlafollette.com) you can see the current list of topics, as well as 500+ more topics that the Editorial Board is considering. Feel free to suggest additional topics and potential authors. Follow the link from the bottom of the IEE page.
Hugh LaFollette: hughlafollette@tampabay.rr.com, Editor in Chief

CFP: Climate Change

Call for Papers

What: Climate Change: A Conference on Politics, Policy, and Justice
Where: Bern University, Bern, Switzerland
When: August 19-21, 2009

Please send abstracts (500-800 words) for paper proposals to climateandjustice@gmail.com no later than May 1st. Applicants will know of their acceptance by May 15th. Quality papers will be invited to contribute to an edited collection of the conference proceedings. Graduate students are encouraged to submit proposals, as travel funding has been set aside to aid exemplary graduate student presenters. For more information, please see the conference website: www.climateandjustice.org. The site will be continually updated with travel and lodging information, the conference schedule, and other useful information as it becomes available. If you have further questions, please contact Sarah at sbkenehan@gmail.com.

Keynote speakers:
Simon Caney, Oxford
Lukas Meyer, Graz University
Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington

Conference Abstract: Since the late 1980s climate change has been centre-stage in the international policy arena. However, as of yet, little has been done to incorporate all global players while at the same time catalysing the type of action that must be taken in order to combat this problem. There are likely many reasons for this current inaction, including but surely not limited to: questions surrounding climate science and predictions; questions concerning the most effective way to cope with the problem; and questions relating to the fair distribution of the burden of dealing with climate change. The focus of this conference will be to discuss the latter issue, i.e. the role of justice as it arises in the context of climate change. Justice related issues emerge in the debate over climate change policy on many levels. First, and probably most obviously, it must be determined what role each global actor will play in any coordinated effort to mitigate climate change. The answer to this question is not straightforward, as there are numerous factors that must be considered, including whether rights to emit greenhouse gases (GHG) should be divided equally among all nations, or whether rights to emit should be a function of the geographical placement of a nation, the population of a nation, the level of development of a nation, or even perhaps some combination of these elements. Second, and intimately related to the first issue, it has to be decided to what degree (if any) a nation’s historical emissions ought to be considered. As with the first issue, there is no clear-cut way to work through this problem, since there are seemingly justifiable reasons for engaging in all of the following: severely limiting the largest historical emitters’ claims to present and future emissions, considering only the historical record from the point in time in which a nation could reasonably have known of the harm it was contributing to, or, alternatively, agreeing that historical emissions should have no weight in the discussion, but rather all nations should agree on a fair emissions target from the present forward. Third, it must be determined to what degree (if any) future people ought to be taken into consideration when establishing climate change policy, since it has been predicted that the effects of climate change will stretch far into the future. Addressing this question requires having discussions on how future people can have justice claims on current people, what those justice claims might be, and how far into the future these claims reach. Fourth, it must be determined what types of entities have viable justice claims. Is it only individual persons that can make coherent justice claims? Or can nations, industries, businesses, non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the like have and make meaningful justice claims? Finally, we must determine the level of responsibility individual actors have in mitigating and adapting to climate change, since it is not evident whether this responsibility falls only on nations, or whether it also rests with individuals, businesses, and industries, as well. Clearly then, the issue of justice and climate change is both complex and requires immediate attention.

Academic Earth

Via Virtual Philosopher, I've come across 'Academic Earth', a site devoted to video lectures from lecturers at some of the world's top universities. Of particular interest to me are Steven B Smith's  (Yale) 'Introduction to Political Philosophy' course, and Paula Goldman's (Berkley) 'Current Issues in International and Area Studies'. An amazing resource. 

Philosophers' Carnival

The 88th Philosophers' Carnival is here (I especially enjoyed the post on non-ideal political theory here).

Research Diaries

As part of the assessment for the political philosophy course that I will be teaching in the Autumn, we will be asking the students to complete a research project instead of an exam. This project will be based around a case study relevant to a particular problem or issue covered during the course. Because this will be a new form of assessment for many of the students, and also because we want them to actively reflect on their learning methods, we are going to ask them to keep research diaries during the module, and then to submit a sample or summary of the diary to be marked along with the project.
We will most likely be using the Blackboard system for our online content, and within this there is the capability to set up a diary for each student. These can be completely private, be only viewable by the student and us as course lecturers, or visible to all members of the module. There are of course advantages and disadvantages to each of these options - privacy encourages honesty, and some students will be less productive on a public forum than they will be when they are not worrying about other people's views. On the other hand, the module is trying to encourage collaborative learning, and allowing students to read and comment on each other's diaries would be one route toward this. I am however sceptical whether many level three students would take the time to do this productively.
In order to puzzle some of these issues out I've set up an online research diary for myself as a trial. I'm using Blogger at first because it is so simple to use and I already have an account. I'm going to keep it private to begin with, but I might change this later on depending on how it goes. I do already keep a research diary of sorts, in that I write dated notes to myself when I'm reading or working, and also through my record of supervision meetings. But this will be a way to keep all of these things in one place, that is accessible from both home and University (and on the move via my mobile). Hopefully it will therefore not only help with some of the teaching issues that I'm looking into but benefit my research as well!
If anyone has any thoughts about the usefullness of research diaries and the best format or location for them I'd be interested to hear them.

Fiona Robinson Interview

Interesting interview with Fiona Robinson about the ethics of care on the Carnegie Council's website here (the link is to the transcript, but there is video and audio also).

Brian Barry

As reported here and here, Brian Barry has died. As regular readers will know, my thesis attempts to defend a version of cosmopolitanism based on Barry's theory of justice. This is sad news for political philosophy.

CFP: Valencia -Ethics and International Development

Call for Papers:
Ethics of Human Development and Global Justice: Responsibilities of
Institutions and Citizens for Action on Poverty
Valencia, Spain,
30 November to 2 December, 2009

Contributions are invited for the *Eighth International Conference on Ethics and International Development*
The conference will focus on how various social actors can and ought to take responsibility for acting on poverty and expanding human development. Thus contributions are especially welcome on:
A. Responsibilities of business, political, and civic organizations
B. Responsibilities of active citizenship
C. Grounds of such responsibilities in the ethics of human development
D. Grounds of such responsibilities in theories of global justice
For elaboration of conference themes, see www.development-ethics.org
Proposals (including an abstract of 500 words, author's name, affiliation, contact information, and a biography of under 100 words) should be sent by June 1 to eticadesarrollo@uv.es.

Emotion, Value and Desire Workshop

Two Day Workshop: Emotion, Value and Desire
*07-08 May 2009*
*Thursday 07 May: Room G.019, Arthur Lewis Building*

10.00 - 11.15: Joel Smith (Manchester),"The Unity of Emotion"
11.15 - 11.30: Break
11.30 - 12.30: Gayle Impey (Manchester), "Motivating Imaginative Engagement"
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch (own arrangements)
13.30 - 14.30: Eva Düringer (York), "Care as the Link Between Emotions and Values"
14.30 - 15.30: Rebecca Reilly Cooper (Manchester), "The Role of Emotions in Democratic Deliberation"
15.30 - 15.45: Break
15.45 - 17.00: Michael Brady (Glasgow), "Attention and Emotional Motivation"

*Friday 08 May: 2nd Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building*
10.00 - 11.15: Sabine Döring (Tübingen), "Emotional Motivation: Beyond the Humean Theory"
11.15 - 11.30: Break
11.30 - 12.30: Chloë Fitzgerald (Manchester), "Emotion and Intuition"
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch (own arrangements)
13.30 - 14.30: Mar Cabezas (Salamanca), "Emotions Through Another Lens: A Critique of 'The Logic of Domination'"
14.30 - 15.30: Rory Donaldson (Manchester), *tba*
15.30 - 15.45: Break
15.45 - 17.00: Peter Goldie (Manchester), "What is the Source of Emotional Motivation?"

The workshop is free but space is limited, so please register your intention to attend by emailing Joel Smith
Location: *Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester* (Getting here)
Manchester Centre for Emotion and Value

Conference: Critique and Crisis

CRITIQUE AND CRISIS
Call for registration: Social and Political Thought Graduate Forum
28 March 2009, Institute of Advanced Study, University College London
-N336, Senate House North, Malet St, WC1

One-day Philosophy and Social Sciences Conference addressing the role of critique with respect to current economic and environmental crises.

Keynote: Raymond Geuss - 'On Bourgeois Philosophy and the Concept of Criticism'.

Interested graduate students are invited to register at:http://cli.gs/NNsqNe
-registration is free of charge

Programme:
Rodrigo Cordero Vega - Warwick - 'Crisis and Critique in Social Theory'
Matthew Bennett - Warwick - 'On the Validity of a Theory of Crisis'
Lorna Finlayson - Cambridge - 'Constructiveness in Political Criticism'
Nicholas Gray - Sussex - 'Two Aspects of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy'
Sara Wolcott - Sussex - 'Koselleck’s Critique-Politique and Global Governance'
Allen Radtke - Essex - 'Assigning Moral Responsibilities to Collective Entities'
Tom Stern - Cambridge - 'Nietzsche, Adorno, Substitution, Criticism'
Matthew Astill - Essex - 'Seeking the Right to Name'
Christian Hermansen - Warwick/Copenhagen - 'Winch, Wittgenstein, and Critical Social Science'

Re-engaging Citizens in Democratic Politics

Details of an upcoming event in Sheffield...

ESRC Festival of Social Science Event

As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science (6-15 March 2009), the Politics Department will be hosting the following event. Re-engaging Citizens in Democratic Politics - Thursday 12 March, 6-7:30pm.
This event brings together Professor Colin Hay (University of Sheffield, author of Why We Hate Politics) and Professor Gerry Stoker (University of Southampton, author of Why Politics Matters) to discuss the sources of political disaffection and what might be done to re-engage citizens in democratic politics in Britain today.
Venue: Showroom Cinema (Cinema No. 3), Paternoster Row, Sheffield.
The event is ticketed, but tickets are free. Tickets available from: Margaret Holder, Deparment of Politics, University of Sheffield (m.holder@sheffield.ac.uk).
Full details of the University's contribution to the ESRC Festival of Social Sciences can be found at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/icoss/whatson/esrcfest.html

IBL Module

I've recently been working with a fellow PhD student on an exciting proposal for a new third-year inquiry-based learning political philosophy module in the department. The module aims to explore the gap between theory and practice in political philosophy, and to equip students with the skills to engage with real-world political problems. We're hoping to engage with different methods of learning and teaching, and to integrate new uses of IT into the learning experience. To this end, we've been awarded some development money from the university's Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sociences (CILASS). This money allows us to spend a considerable amount of time researching and developing both the content of the module and the methods of learning and teaching that we will be employing. We'll also benefit from the invaluable advice of CILASS staff.