UWA Philosophy Society

The University of Western Australia Philosophy Society is the University's main forum for philosophical discussion outside the context of instruction. The regular flow of visitors to Perth also ensures that there is a steady supply of presentations from interstate and overseas.

Click here to see the Current Programme of seminars.

Visitors who have given papers to the Society over the years include the following:

Michael Arbib, David Armstrong, Michael Ayers, John Bigelow, Margaret Boden, Andrew Brook, Andy Clark, Lorraine Code, John Cottingham, Martin Davies, Phil Dowe, Hubert Dreyfus, Robyn Ferrell, Peter Forrest, Paul Griffiths, Cliff Hooker, David Hull, Frank Jackson, John Kleinig, Peter Lamarque, David Lewis, Brian McLaughlin, Alfred R. Mele, D. H. Mellor, Alan Millar, Chris Mortensen, Adam Morton, Graham Nerlich, Justin Oakley, Philip Pettit, Graham Priest, Holmes Rolston III, Mark Sagoff, Mark Sainsbury, Eike von Savigny, Peter Slezak, Michael Smith, Stephen Stich, Charles Taylor, Douglas Walton, Karen Warren, Bernard Williams, Robert A. Wilson, Peter Winch, Julian Young, Uriah Kriegel, Bill Fish, Lisa Bortolotti, Andy Hamilton, Lubica Ucnik, Richard Hamilton, Barry Maund, Hartley Slater, Martin Smith, Miri Albahari, Michael Levine

The person who arranges the Philosophy Society seminars is currently Nic Damnjanovic. (Click on the name to find an email address.)

Current Programme of Seminars (Semester 2 2009)

Meetings are held:

Fridays

UWA Arts: Room 1.33 4.30pm

Click on the title below to see an abstract (if available).

July 31st	Tamas Pataki	'In this paper I consider various relations between religion and mental illness, and try to determine (i) whether religion is, in some corporate sense, a mental illness or class of such illnesses and (ii) whether certain religious people (mostly at the fundamentalist end of the contemporary monotheisms) are, by virtue of their religion, mentally ill. The fact that both the concepts of religion and of mental illness are so stubbornly vague complicates the inquiry considerably.'
August 7th	Timothy Mooney (Univ College Dublin)	'Conceptualising Seeing in Hussari'
August 14	Andy Lamey	'Temple Grandin and the Ethics of Humane Slaughter'
August 21	David Scaife	tba
August 28	Danny Cairns	'Towards a characterization of the basic orientation of Heidegger's early philosophy (1919 - 1929): Authenticity and the Ontological Difference'
September 4	Katherine Dellar	tba
September 18	Mike Workman	'Token Identity and the Exclusion Problem'

September 25	Kieran Golby	' "Thank goodness that headache which McTaggart's paradox gave me is over": why an A-theorist who adopts the theory known as ERSATZ PRESENTISM can say it and mean it.'

October 2	Ryan Cox	"Great Expectations: Cognitivism About Intention and the Transparency of Mental Attitudes.
October 9	Luke Russell	tba
October 16	Amanda Prestipino	tba
October 23	Patrick Greenough	tba
October 30	Craig Edwards	Craig Edwards: 'Substituted decision-making and the 'Other Self' problem'

Abstracts from some previous seminars

A Perfect Language, A Projectivist Theory of Perceptual Experience, The Scope of Parity Reasoning, Against Secular Creationism: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Biology, Should the classical notion of self be preserved?, Ethical Egoism: It May Be Nasty, but is it also Incoherent?