The University of Southampton will host two one-day workshops in April that might be of interest to Pea Soup readers. The first, on April 13th, is on Taking Pregnancy Seriously in Ethics and Epistemology. The second, on April 18th, is on Ethics and Emotion in the Post-Kantian tradition. Further details below the fold.
Taking Pregnancy Seriously in Ethics and Epistemology Workshop II
Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, 13th April 2015
Speakers
Rebecca Kukla (Georgetown), 'Equipoise, Uncertainty, and Inductive Risk in Research Involving Pregnant Women'
Sally Fischer (Warren-Wilson), 'A Phenomenology of Early Motherhood: The practical implications of taking the '4th trimester' seriously'
Lindsey Porter (Sheffield), 'Gestation and Parental Rights: Why is Good Enough, Good Enough?'
Fiona Woollard (Southampton), 'Motherhood and the Reason/ Duty Distinction'
In applied ethics, much has been written in relation to pregnancy – based either on a conception of pregnancy as the ‘hosting of a stranger’, or focusing on the rights of the foetus whilst disregarding that foetus’s existence as intertwined with that of its mother. Neither of these two approaches takes the unique physical, relation and transformative state of pregnancy seriously. Pregnancy also raises epistemological issues. Does the radically transformative character of pregnancy mean that those who have never been pregnant are excluded from certain kinds of knowledge about pregnancy and its consequences? And are pregnant women taken seriously now as knowers and testifiers? These epistemological issues have important implications for the appropriate way to approach the ethical debate.
For more information see: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/philosophy/news/events/2015/04/13-pregnancy-workshop.page?
Ethics and Emotion in the Post-Kantian Tradition
Avenue Campus, University of Southampton, 18th April
Funded by the Royal Institute of Philosophy and the Southampton Ethics Centre
The vexed and varied role emotions play in human life is reflected in their uncertain place within the history of philosophy, and the history of ethics more narrowly. Kant offers a powerful perspective from which most emotions appear dangerous and unreliable, lacking the impartiality and universalizability that many regard as the touchstone of the ethical. From a Humean or Aristotelian perspective, by contrast, emotions lie at the very heart of ethical life. Contemporary philosophical work on ethics and the emotions tends to take inspiration from one or another of these vastly different historical streams, or to stake out intermediate positions between them. The proposed workshop seeks to encourage broader reflection on the place of the emotions in ethics after Kant and to orient contemporary work on the emotions within a richer understanding of the post-Kantian tradition.
Speakers
Alix Cohen (University of Edinburgh): 'Kant on the Nature of Emotions'
Sacha Golob (King's College London): 'Anxiety and Value in Heidegger'
Jonathan Webber (Cardiff University): 'Sartre's Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions'
Sebastian Gardner (University College London): 'The Content of Emotion and the Form of Feeling'
For more information, see: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/philosophy/news/events/2015/04/17-ethics-and-emotion.page?