Department news from the start of the summer term.
The following grad student MA defenses took place in late April. Congratulations to all!
• Anthony Nguyen: "Lockean Forensic Persons & The Having of a Body"
• Cody Britson: “Motivating a Variant of Anscombe's Conventionalism: A Proposal and Defense”
MA grad student, Lauren Perry was awarded a master’s level SSHRC grant, the Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s (CGS M). Her proposal is titled “Anne Conway and the Principle of Continuity.”
A paper by assistant professor, Nic Fillion,”Conceptual and computational mathematics,'' was published in Philosophia Mathematica.
MA grad student, Mojgan Jafari presented at the local Salish Sea Aesthetics Workshop ; her paper is titled The Universality of Judgment of Beauty in Kant’s Third Critique of Reason and the Role of Understanding within Experience.
Mojgan also reported back from the APA (pacific division, Vancouver 2019 meeting) held in April, attending mostly sessions held by Society for the Study of Early Modern Women (SSEMW). She found the sessions interesting, informative and useful to her current studies, especially John Wright's paper, “Will and Habit in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy”. This focused on discussing the relationship between habit and will in early modern philosophy. Mojgan found it of special importance for her spring semester in Professor Shapiro’s class on “Descartes and early modern women philosophers”, studying “The role of Habit in Descartes Theory of Error”.
"Overall, I found the Pacific APA Vancouver meeting to be both informing and insightful,” she says. “I grasped a better idea of the general picture of what is going on Philosophy by attending different sessions. It helped me with understanding that some subfields are way more popular than I had assumed. It also helped me to have some ideas on issues or topics in the field that were totally new for me. In general, as a result of attending various sessions I found out that academic philosophy is more inclusive than I had assumed. By attending Early Modern sessions on women philosophers I also managed to learn about current discussions, scholars working on the sub-field and the kind of work you can do considering the archival limits and other methodological limits regarding history of women philosophers."
The Greater Cascadia History and Philosophy of Science workshop organized by associate professor, Holly Andersen takes place this week. It also includes a behind the scenes tour of the jellyfish area at the Vancouver Aquarium on the day before.
MA grad student, David Rattray will be in Dublin at the end of May to give a talk on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling at Trinity College & University College Dublin's yearly Philosophy Grad conference.
Nic Fillion has also been busy with presentations recently.
• "Conceptual and computational mathematics'' Department of Philosophy, McMaster Universiy, 2019.
• "Organizing an Ethics Bowl: the levels of involvement,'' The Collaborative workshop, McMaster, 2019.
• "Ontology in arithmetic and logic,'' Workshop on Ontology in Arithmetic and Logic, UQAM, 2019.
• "A mechanism of meaning: One interpretation instrument for classroom historical inquiry,'' 22nd Annual IOP Conference, UBC, 2019.
SFU Philosophy joined up with the APA and SFU’s Public Square to deliver a public session on The Philosophy of Fake News in April. The event, part of Public Square’s community summit series Confronting the Disinformation Age, was extremely well attended, filling the Asia Pacific Hall at SFU’s Wosk Centre for Dialogue to capacity.
Later in April, the two winning teams from the BC’s first Ethics Bowl regional heats travelled to Winnipeg for the first ever national competition. Although neither Sands Secondary nor Ideal Mini School advanced to the semi-finals, Nic Fillion is already planning the second year of this SFU-led provincial initiative to refine their skills. Manitoba should watch out as BC is coming for the title next year.
Metaphysics and its History: Regress Arguments ran at the beginning of May as a two-day conference organised by Dai Heide and Fatema Amijee.
Holly Andersen will be giving a talk for the Science Studies Colloquium at the University of Oslo in June. The audience is a group of philosophers, historians, and scientists who have a colloquium series with scholars of common interest.