The 32nd annual Spindel Conference will be held September 26-28, 2013 under the direction of Dr. Stephan Blatti. The topic of this year's conference is "The Lives of Human Animals." Specifically, the conference will focus on the anti-Lockean view of "animalism" which maintains that our fundamental nature is given by our biological constitution and not by our psychological capacities. The conference will bring together current debates in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, biology, ethics, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of religion, and feature keynote speakers John Dupré (University of Exeter) and Paul Snowdon (University College London). For more information, see the conference webpage.

As part of Dr. Gallagher's project, "Space, Science, and Spirituality," funded by the John Templeton Foundation, he will be presenting two lectures. The first is a public lecture at the University of Cologne on June 24, 2013 entitled "Space and Spirituality: Experiments in Mixed and Virtual Reality." Gallagher will be joined for a panel discussion by the German novelist Martin Mosebach, winner of the Georg Büchner Prize in 2007, and by the German astronaut Gerhard Thiele who was part of a 2000 Space Shuttle mission.  Gallagher's second lecture is a keynote lecture entitled "Consciousness in Outer Space" to be delivered at the 17th Annual Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness in San Diego in July. Both talks will provide details of the empirical study on aesthetic and spiritual experiences during space flight reported by astronauts, conducted by an interdisciplinary team of scientists led by Gallagher.

The new issue of the Philosophy Department newsletter has been published. See what we have been up to the last year -- including alumni, student, faculty, and conference updates -- here!

Professors Pleshette DeArmitt and Kas Saghafi will present lectures on Derrida, in a session entitled “What Remains--Of Mastery and Ipseity,” at The London Graduate School’s Inaugural Summer Academy in the Critical Humanities. Sarah Marshall, a doctoral student, was selected to participate in the week-long program of lectures and intensive workshops on European thought, which will take place between June 24 and June 27, 2013. The LGS Summer Academy program can be found here. 

Professor Shaun Gallagher was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Durham University England. The position runs for three years starting January 1, 2013.  Dr. Gallagher is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, a five-year appointment that started in August 2010.

The College of Arts and Sciences approved the award of a Professional Development Assignment for Professor Tim Roche for the fall semester of 2013. The sabbatical will support his research on a project entitled "Aristotle's Nicomachean Conception of Happiness." The project represents a final stage of a research agenda aimed at the production of a book defending a unique interpretation of Aristotle's conception of eudaimonia (happiness) in his Nicomachean Ethics.

The University of Hertfordshire (UK) has awarded Prof. Somogy Varga a $4000 grant to map the influence of the Embodied and Narrative Practices Framework (Daniel D. Hutto and Shaun Gallagher) in field of clinical psychiatry, and to contribute to its further development. The work will involve cooperation with clinicians in the UK, Germany and Italy who are engaged in the design of novel diagnostic tools and methodological guidelines.

The American Philosophical Association has just issued its official guidebook to Graduate Programs. Please see our updated statistics here.

Graduate Student News

More News

Schizophrenia Workshop hosted at Memphis.

Roundup of conference hosted during the 2012-13 school year.

Prof. Shaun Gallagher receives Humboldt Foundation Award.

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