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We’re told we now live in a ‘post-truth’ era. But are we? What does that mean? Is being ‘post-truth’ even possible? And if that’s really where we are, how do we get out? Deakin’s Dr Cathy Legg offers some pragmatist responses to the ‘post-truth’ era, as well as telling us what it’s like working as a philosopher in the tech industry.
Originally a special issue of Angelaki (23.2), Problems in Twentieth Century French Philosophy has now been published in book form by Routledge. Co-edited by Sean Bowden and Mark G.E. Kelly, it features articles by Deakin philosophers Bowden, Matthew Sharpe and Daniela Voss.
Daniel Goldsworthy, associate lecturer in Deakin’s law school, was recently shortlisted twice for New Philosopher Magazine’s Writers’ Award, for articles on the topics of ‘Life‘ and ‘Power.’
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a remarkably rich and at times contrary range of interpretations
Deakin’s Dr Cathy Legg has just completed a major rewrite of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy‘s entry on Pragmatism. The SEP is one of the world’s leading resources for philosophers and it’s a testament to Dr Legg’s expertise and profile to be asked to revise such a high-profile entry.
The past is a reconstruction, the future is an expectation. But really if we take care of the present, in many ways we have time to reflect on the past and to look forward into the future without this stress of a linear idea of time.
For the new year, Deakin Philosophy lecturer Dr Leesa Davis spoke to this. about the nature of time and living in the here-and-now:
Jean-Baptiste Belley, Deputy of Saint-Domingue and French National Convention member (1793-97) with a bust of Abbé Raynal.
Associate Professor Matthew Sharpe has a timely new piece in The Conversation entitled “Criticism of Western Civilisation isn’t new, it was part of the Enlightenment”:
The duelling sides in today’s cultural wars about “Western civilization” are united in one thing, at least – each is inclined to gloss over the extent to which “Western civilisation” has always been deeply complex and divided.
Read the full article here.
Deakin philosophers were recently involved in two events working with the Philosophy in Schools community:
On Thursday 30th Patrick Stokes delivered a speech to students at the Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools (VAPS) Victorian Secondary Schools Philosophon. Patrick and Cathy Legg then helped judge the competition. The standard was incredibly high and we were deeply impressed at the calibre of young philosophers!
On Friday 31st August Deakin hosted the first ever VCE Philosophy Unit 2 [Year 11] forum for teachers and students, in association with VAPS. This was a great success and we’re looking forward to expanding the event in future.
Deakin Philosophy’s Cathy Legg and Jack Reynolds have just had a review discussion of Mark Eli Kalderon’s book Sympathy in Perception published in Notre Dame Philosophical Review:
Kalderon may be a philosopher who lives by the Rylean injunction that he would not be part of any ‘ism’ or philosophical group that might claim him. The reviewers found the corresponding broad-mindedness refreshing in these days of small and often rather ‘sealed-in’ philosophical communities and debates.
Read the full review here.
We’re delighted to say that Associate Professor George Duke has won the Federal Law Review’s 2018 Zines Prize for Excellence in Legal Research, for his essay “Popular Sovereignty and the Nationhood Power.” Congratulations, George!
Over at The Junkyard, Deakin’s Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Talia Morag writes:
Philosophers mobilize the term “imagination” for many explanatory tasks, including empathy, mindreading, counterfactual reasoning, and pretending. The recent flourishing of the study of the imagination favors the active exercise of imaginative capacity. When Amy Kind declares this to be the “primary sense” of the imagination, she reflects a contemporary trend (Kind 2013, 145). Kind contrasts this active sense to occasions where ideas “pop” into one’s mind, which she identifies with what Currie and Ravenscroft call “the creative imagination”, that is, “put[ting] together ideas in a way that defies expectation or convention” (Currie & Ravenscroft, 2002, 9). I prefer to call this associative capacity “the passive imagination.”
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