Past Events
5th Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
Keynote Speaker: Dr. Andrea Westlund (FSU) This event is hosted by the UF Undergraduate Philosophy Society. Free and open to the public.
Big Data Policing
Dr. Duncan Purves (UF) I am interested in the way that the promise of greater efficiency from AI-assisted decision-making can distract our attention away from pertinent ethical concerns like fairness and discrimination. There is a great deal of focus on the fact that the tech “works,” and diminished concern for whether it works in a way …
Philosophy and Habit Workshop
Two days and ten speakers on the matter of habit. Free and open to the public.
Too Close: The Ethics of Displaying Art in the Era of #MeToo
Dr. Jaime Ahlberg (UF Philosophy) & Jillian Hernandez (UF Gender Studies) When high-profile artists are accused of sexual misconduct, how should the art world respond. Inspired by CENTURY's Chuck Close photograph of...... Lorna Simpson, and John Berger’s provocative claim that 'looking is a political act,' we explore the ethics of promoting work by high-profile artists embroiled in the …
Dialectic in the Cave
Dr. Hugh Benson (Univ Oklahoma) A common crux in Republic scholarship surrounds a passage found near the end of Plato's image of the Cave in which Socrates instructs...... Glaucon to apply this image to what was said before. How — the problem goes — are we to apply (προσαπτε'ον) the image of the Cave to what has been …
ETHICS CAFES: Talk About What’s On Your Mind
Topic: Climate Change Wrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
Florida Philosophical Association Conference
The 64th annual meeting of the FPA takes place November 1st & 2nd on the UF Campus. Dr. Leslie Francis (Utah) Keynote Speaker
Beauty and Its Beasts: The Ethics of Appreciating the Art of Immoral Artists
24th Annual Food & Talk event! Join us for dinner and discussion on a topic of broad philosophical interest Professors Jaime Ahlberg and Jon Rick will open the discussion with remarks on the ethics of appreciating the art of immoral artists.
ETHICS CAFES: Talk About What’s On Your Mind
Topic: Free College Wrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
‘A Coming Out of Ourselves’: Knowing Our Place in Racial Justice
Dr. Christopher Lebron (Johns Hopkins) Racial injustice has remained a stubborn feature of American society. One reason for its persistence is that everyday Americans fail to understand...... the problem of racial injustice as a lived experience. In his talk, Dr. Lebron will explore the uses of moral imagination to expand white Americans' awareness of racial inequality …
Ethics Poster Fair!
Students participants in UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere will present posters reflecting their group research and analysis of the ethical dimensions of contemporary public issues. Poster topics will include gender equity, sustainability, food, immigration, race, education reform, and religious pluralism. Come to explore how we can tackle complex issues and learn more about the …
World Philosophy Day
The United Nations celebrates the "enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought." World Philosophy Day 2019 is dedicated to "highlighting the importance of philosophy in different regional contexts -- regional contributions to global debates on contemporary challenges that support social transformations -- stimulating global collaboration to address major challenges such as migration, …
Avoiding the Regress Problem for Moral Uncertainty Principles
Michael Bukoski (FSU) People are often uncertain about what they morally ought to do, sometimes because they are uncertain about relevant moral facts or principles....... Moral uncertaintists argue that moral uncertainty of this sort makes a difference to what one morally ought to do; for example, perhaps someone who believes that raising and killing animals for …
ETHICS CAFE on: Free Speech on Campus
Smathers Library 100 Smathers Library, Gainesville, FL, United StatesWrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
Distributive Justice and Autonomous Vehicles
Philosophy Library 303 Griffin Floyd Hall, Gainesville, FL, United StatesDr. Nick Evans (UMass-Lowell) Research into the ethics of autonomous vehicles focuses, almost exclusively, on whether decisions by individual cars conform to, reflect, or promote certain values. Less discussed is whether, or how, autonomous vehicles ought to be developed and deployed from the perspective of distributive justice. Here, I argue that autonomous vehicles—as an object of …
ETHICS CAFE on: Gender Violence
Smathers Library 100 Smathers Library, Gainesville, FL, United StatesWrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
ETHICS CAFE on: Reparations
Smathers Library 100 Smathers Library, Gainesville, FL, United StatesNOTE: This event was cancelled due to the pandemic. Wrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
ETHICS CAFE on: Wealth Inequality
The Thomas Center 302 NE 6th Ave, Gainesville, FL, United StatesNOTE: This event was cancelled due to the pandemic. 7:00-8:30 in The Thomas Center (302 NE 6th Ave) Wrestle with hard questions in a friendly, civil setting. No previous training is necessary. Ethics Cafes is organized by UF Intersections on Ethics in the Public Sphere.
Colloquium Talk: Louise Antony
ZoomJerry Fodor argued that concept acquisition can neither be a psychological nor “rational-causal” process, but must be a “brute-causal” process. But this gives rise to the notorious Doorknob Problem: it makes a mystery of why experience with things would be a way of acquiring concepts of them at all. Resolving this problem requires recognizing a third type of causal process.
Southeastern Epistemology Conference
Philosophers from across the Southeastern United States will be coming together for a two-day virtual epistemology conference, organized by Dr. Rodrigo Borges. The event is free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to register in advance by contacting dept@phil.ufl.edu.
Food and Talk 2020
Zoom"A Philosophical Forum on Racial Justice" Dr. Tom Auxter and Dr. Arina Pismenny discuss the roots and the current manifestations of systemic racism exacerbated by the pandemic, reflecting on the Black Lives Matter movement, and ways to combat racism in our own backyards. The event is open to all undergraduates, and will take place over …
Colloquium Talk: Robert Smithson
ZoomIn the hope of providing a fully explanatory, monistic metaphysics, philosophers have recently defended two versions of idealism: microidealism and cosmic idealism. But neither view seems to provide a genuine explanatory advantage over materialism. Instead, I will consider the prospects of macroidealism: the view that physical truths metaphysically depend on truths about the phenomenal experiences of macroscopic subjects.
Ethics Cafe: Reparations
ZoomReparations have been debated for decades as a form of compensation for systemic racism, historical trauma, and racialized violence. At this Ethics Café, we will discuss the ethical issues raised by the question of reparations for Black descendants of enslaved people in the US. In particular, we will ask how we, as a society, cope with and understand the racial injustices of the past.
Colloquium Talk: Peter Spirtes
ZoomThis talk will give a broad coverage of central concepts and principles involved in automated causal inference and emerging approaches to causal discovery. After reviewing some central concepts, I will present the constraint-based approach to causal discovery, which relies on conditional independence relationships in the data, and discuss the assumptions underlying its validity. I will then focus on causal discovery based on structural equation models, in which a key issue is the identifiability of the causal structure implied by appropriately defined structural equation models. Finally, I list a number of open questions in the field of causal discovery and inference.
Ethics Café: Let’s Talk About Consent
ZoomThe Intersections Group on Ethics in the Public Sphere has organized an upcoming Virtual Ethics Café on Consent that will be held on March 4, 2021 from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm. Ethics Cafés provide an organized forum for wrestling with difficult issues in a friendly, civil setting. Bring an open mind, a willingness to listen and share, and a desire to learn with and from the members of your community.
Workshop on the Ethics of Criminal Justice AI
ZoomDr. Duncan Purves and Dr. Jeremy Davis are organizing a workshop on ethical issues arising in connection with the use of AI in criminal justice.
Colloquium Talk: Kirk Ludwig
ZoomEnglish common law draws a distinction between those who participate in a crime, on the one hand, and accomplices and accessories, on the other. I am concerned with the question of the moral significance of these distinctions. I approach this question from the standpoint of a general theory about responsibility of individuals in the context of collective action. I argue that in many situations, participants, accomplices, and accessories are all fully liable for the harm that occurs.
Virtual Roundtable on Education and COVID-19
ZoomHow has COVID-19 affected all education levels? Hear perspectives from educators, parents, administrators, students, and community advocates who will discuss hardships, losses, successes, and everything in between! We welcome students of all ages, parents, educators, and community members to join us. There will be short presentations by the panelists, followed by a moderated discussion.
Ethics on Tap: Community Conversation on Gentrification
Cypress and Grove Brewing Company 1001 Northwest 4th Street, Gainesville, FloridaCome join us for a night of socially-distanced discussion on the ethical issues raised by gentrification in the Gainesville community. This event is free and open to members of the UF and Gainesville communities.
FraMEPhys – UF Joint Conference: Humeanism and the Pragmatic Turn
ZoomRecent work on Humean approaches to laws of nature has attempted to situate our understanding of the laws within an explicitly pragmatic context. This two-day virtual conference brings together some of the leading thinkers in the field to discuss Humeanism and its "Pragmatic Turn".