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Philosophy News Update June 2019
News and updates from your friendly neighbourhood philosophy department …
MA Defenses
The following grad student MA defenses took place in May and early June. Congratulations!
• Dzintra Ullis : Do You Hear What I Hear? Individual Differences in Speech Phenomenology
• Caroline von Klemperer : Developing a Fuller Picture of Moral Encroachment
Awards and Publications
Philosophy MA graduate, Damien Chen, was part of an interdisciplinary SFU team that won first place at the Canadian Evaluation Society’s student case competition last month. Read all about how Damien credits his training in writing philosophy papers for cultivating big-picture thinking and and check out the mention on SFU News.
The 2019 Horban Awards have been announced; congratulations to Alexander Chernets and Grace Stanyer for their winning essays.
Events
Convocation at SFU takes place this week; hearty congratulations to all our Philosophy graduates for this Thursday’s ceremony. Well done and all the best for a bright future.
Conferences and Speaking Engagements
The Greater Cascadia History and Philosophy of Science workshop organized by associate professor, Holly Andersen took place in mid-May; read Honours student Branwen Stroll’s account of the pre-conference visit by academic philosophers to the Vancouver Aquarium jelly lab.
The Canadian Philosophical Association annual congress took place at UBC at the beginning of June. SFU Philosophy was strongly represented by faculty, grad students and graduates. (apologies if I've missed anyone)
• Reza Abdolrahmani : William Alston's Account of Disagreement in Mystical Perceptual Beliefs: Two Problems and New Solutions
• Haley Brennan : Cavendish on Figures and Individuation
• Zoe Ashton : Silencing Oneself: A Result of Epistemic Injustice
• Michaela Manson : Astell on Governing the Body
• Caroline von Klemperer : Developing a Fuller Picture of Moral Encroachment
• Nicolas Fillion and Dale Martelli : Critical thinking in the new BC K-12 curriculum: challenges and opportunities from the Philosophy in Schools session
• Evan Tiffany : The Fair Opportunity to Avoid Ignorance, and The Metaethics of Insanity and the Normative Authority of Law
MA grad student, David Rattray gave several presentations in May, the University College Dublin/Trinity College Dublin's 2019 Graduate Philosophy Conference (UCD/TCD), the Canadian Society of History and Philosophy of Mathematics (CSHPM) and the Canadian Society of History and Philosophy of Science (CSHPS).
• Movements of Faith: Towards a Broader Understanding of Kierkegaardian Faith (UCD/TCD)
• The Liar in Context: Revisiting Barwise & Etchemendy’s Russellian Solution (CSHPM)
• Kraepelin in the Pragmatic Age: Transitions from Germany to the United States (CSHPS)
David notes that along with varied and wide-ranging programs, presenting at the conferences gave great opportunities for networking, in addition to generating useful questions and feedback.
“I found it particularly exciting that [after my presentation] a grad student from London emailed to suggest further research avenues,” he says, adding that he also got the chance to talk with academic philosophers working on related topics.
“In particular, I spoke with a prof from the University of Guelph who is currently working on a related topic in the history of psychiatry. She had some great suggestions, and was very encouraging.”
Upcoming
Holly Andersen is taking part in a symposium on Unculturable Organisms in the Big Data Era, with bioinformatician Anders Krabberød and philosopher Kathleen Creel (SFU MA grad) at the biennial ISHPSSB (International Studies in the History Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology) meeting in Oslo in July.
As Holly notes, “I am very excited about this one, because Anders essentially invented a new method of genetic amplification for doing DNA testing on organisms that cannot be cultured in the lab (culturing is usually required to get enough of the genetic material of a single organism to run the DNA sequencing).”