Tomorrow, Dr Anne Schwenkenbecher (Murdoch University) will talk to us about “Why cosmopolitan duties are not duties of ‘collective beneficence'”.

As usual, the seminar runs from 4pm to 5.30pm in room C2.05 on our Burwood campus.

For the paper’s abstract, as well as Anne’s bio, please see this Philevents entry.

Our next seminar, which is open to all, will take place on Tuesday March 24, 4.00-5.30pm, in room C2.05 on our Burwood campus.

Dr Andrew Inkpin (University of Melbourne), “What is, and to what end does one study, phenomenology of language?”

Abstract: Most philosophy of language in the English-speaking philosophical world is theory-driven in the dual sense of being based on broadly Fregean theoretical assumptions about the primacy of propositions and of aspiring to a systematic theory of meaning. Drawing on some of the main ideas in my forthcoming book (Disclosing the World), the aim of this talk is to introduce an alternative, phenomenological approach to philosophy of language, guided principally by the requirement to describe language accurately from the perspective of speakers’ lived experience. Based on my reading of the early Heidegger I suggest that such a conception of language should be characterized by an overall picture of the role of language as ‘language-in-the-world’ and by a specific view of linguistic signs as conjoining presentational with pragmatic functions. I go on to indicate how the work of Merleau-Ponty and the late Wittgenstein can be used to enrich Heidegger’s overall picture and to explicate these two functions of linguistic signs. Finally, I consider how such a phenomenological approach might be expected to contribute to philosophical understanding of language more broadly, in particular how it challenges today’s dominant theory-driven approach.

Bio: Andrew Inkpin is a lecturer  in contemporary European philosophy at the University of Melbourne. His research centres on phenomenological approaches to meaning, particularly with regard to language, practice, pictures and the visual arts more generally (including connections between phenomenology and recent embodied-embedded cognitive science). His book Disclosing the World: On the Phenomenology of Language is forthcoming in MIT Press.

The program for the coming weeks can be found here. For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden.

The seminar series is hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI), with the generous support of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The philosophy seminar series kicks off for 2015 on Tuesday March 10, 4.00-5.30pm, in room C2.05 on our Burwood campus.

Virtual Meeting Point: ARTSED VMP SHSS. Direct dial number: (+613) 5223 9354. On joining a VMP, see here.

Dr George Duke (Deakin University), “Aristotle’s Constitutional Theory”

Abstract: This paper seeks to develop and defend a broadly Aristotelian account of constitutional legitimacy. Section one maps out similarities and differences between the Aristotelian politeia and modern constitutions. Having established the applicability of Aristotle’s theory of the politeia to contemporary debates on constitutional legitimacy, in section two I argue that Aristotle’s appeal to the common advantage offers better material for a normative justification of the validity of the constitution than concepts such as constituent power and popular sovereignty.

Bio: Dr George Duke is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University. His current research interests include natural law jurisprudence and the legal thought of Aristotle.

The program for the coming weeks can be found here. For any inquiries, please contact Sean Bowden.

Tomorrow, Dr Pat Stokes will be hosting a workshop at the Burwood Corporate Centre titled ‘Living with the Digital Dead’.

Researchers across a number of disciplines have noted that the internet, and especially the increasing ubiquity of social media, is changing the ways in which the dead figure in the lives of the living. New means of commemorating, remembering, forgetting, interacting with and even denigrating the dead have emerged in online contexts, from online memorial sites, to new conventions of public mourning, to Facebook users continuing to post on the walls of deceased friends, to speculative new technologies that will create interactive avatars of the dead. Such practices raise important questions about the ontological, ethical, and social standing of the electronically-mediated dead and the digital ‘remains’ in which they are instantiated.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers working on this topic from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including philosophy, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

For further information, see this page.