2024- 2025
Fall and Winter

- “Why Hope? Reflections on Addiction and Psychedelics”
- “Existential Therapy and Climate Anxiety”
- “Care in Buddhism and Neoplatonism”
- "For the Love of Time: Co-Creating a Living Present through Philosophy and Literature"
- "Numbers: Discovered or Invented?"
- "The Rule of Law and the Problem of Too Many Laws"
2023- 2024
Fall and Winter
September 8, 2023 What Do We Owe Each Other? |
In a duly famous article, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality,"Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer defends the following principle:"if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it." While seemingly uncontroversial, the principle has far-reaching consequences. Many of us can forgo luxuries without losing anything of moral significance, thus we should be giving those resources to those who live in poverty. In this presentation, O'Hagan will outline Singer's argument and then invite the audience to participate in small group discussions., followed by the usual Q&A. The discussion will help us develop our own thinking on the broader question, 'what do we owe each other?' "For those interested, Singer’s paper can be found here: |
October 13, 2023 Musical Ontology: Works, Versions, and Lineages
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Musical works, such as Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C minor, are philosophically puzzling entities. The main reason for this is the phenomenon of musical multiplicity, the fact that there can be multiple performances of a given musical work, none of which can be individually identified with it. Moreover, simple attempts to accommodate multiplicity by identifying works with structural types or kinds run afoul of musical flexibility, the fact that there can be structurally different performances of any given work. Finally, whatever relation between works and performances one endorses, an adequate account of musical works also needs to explain musical audibility, the fact that one can hear a work by means of listening to performances which are distinct from it. In this talk, a number of common theories of musical works are shown to run into insuperable difficulties and an alternative which avoids these problems is defended. |
November 10th, 2023 Understanding and Resisting Epistemic Injustice |
Epistemic injustices are wrongs incurred on individuals in their capacity as knowers in society. This talk will draw upon Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing to briefly explain the two sorts of injustices outlined in this book: testimonial injustice, where an individual's testimony is not adequately valued due to their social position, and hermeneutical injustice, where a gap in society's shared conceptual resources prevents one from being understood. The second part of the talk aims to demonstrate that certain cases of religious offense give rise to situations that should be classified as instances of epistemic injustice. |
November 24th, 2023 Adorno’s Hamlet Problem: Modelling the Reflective Individual |
Adorno’s work testifies to a career-long interest for what he, along many others, termed the ‘Hamlet problem’. In short, the Hamlet problem refers in a very basic sense to Prince Hamlet’s hesitation to avenge the murder of this father. Needless to say, interpretations of this issue abound. Adorno, for his part, proposes a surprising and characteristically paradoxical interpretation of this problem. Indeed, he refers to Hamlet, the character, as the prototype of the reflective individual and claims that Hamlet, the play, “is as much the protohistory of the individual in its subjective reflection as it is the drama of the individual who, in the course of their action, is paralyzed by that reflection.” In this paper, I will argue that to make sense of this complex and somewhat mysterious claim, one needs to read the play as a kind of modelling of one constitutive feature of the modern individual, namely reflectivity. |
December 8, 2023 What exactly is the ethics of care? |
Care ethics is widely understood as concerned with determining which care practices and values will best allow us to maintain and reproduce ourselves and our worlds. This talk challenges this conceptualization of care ethics, and instead contends that the ethics of care is better conceived of as a commitment to an iterative process of decentring the self to know the other. I discuss epistemic resources that help us with this decentring – our bodies, imagination, and humility – and show that it is through this difficult work that we come to revise and enrich our understandings of care (as both value and practice) in an ongoing way. |
January 12, 2023 Why Should We Trust Scientists? |
Science and scientists have been subjected to increasing public distrust in recent years, worryingly so for many of us during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Reflecting on whether, when and why we should trust scientists thus seems more important than ever. Drawing on the work of philosopher of science Helen Longino, in this talk I explore why even though scientists individually are just as worthy of distrust as non-scientists, we can locate the real objectivity of science in its social nature and structure. This shows us why trusting science makes sense and why it is a mistake to view scientific disagreement as a ground for distrust. |
February 9, 2023 Free Will and Mad Scientists |
Do humans have free will, or are humans determined to act as they do? Compatibilists say both; humans are determined to act as they do, but they are still free because they want to act as they do, and are guided by reasons they endorse. The manipulation argument against compatibilism introduces a mad scientist who tweaks our brains such that we not only act as the scientist wishes, but he also makes us want to act this way, and be guided by reasons we endorse. 'Surely we cannot still be free in this case?', or so says the manipulation argument. In this talk I consider, and ultimately reject, various compatibilist responses to the manipulation argument. |
March 8, 2023 What Is the Anthropocene? Philosophical Perspectives |
In a scientific note published in 2000, Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer proposed that a new marker be added to the geologic calendar: the Anthropocene. While the post- glacial epoch, the Holocene, was characterized by the relative stability of Earth's systems, they argued that the impact of anthropogenic activity on our planet's systems now warranted the introduction of a new geologic epoch. As we know, their proposal has since sparked intense debates in the Earth science community. But their proposal was also to have a deep impact well beyond the confines of that community. Indeed, the concept of the Anthropocene seems to have acquired a life of its own. It has gained tremendous currency in the public and has been appropriated in a wide array of academic disciplines. So what does this concept actually mean? Should it be viewed as a properly geologic concept? Is the fate of this concept tied to its adoption in geology? What motivates its widespread appropriation? Are there reasons to worry about the bounds of its legitimate use? These are some of the questions I will examine in my talk. |
2022- 2023
Term 2 Only
What's So Great About Gratitude? |
Many claims are made about the value of gratitude. In this talk, I will briefly outline some characterizations of gratitude in moral life in Western philisophical tradition. Turning to contemporary views, I'll distinguish between two different kinds of gratitude: gratitude to persons (for example, one's loyal friend), and gratitude for the conditions one finds oneself in (for example, for having a warm winter coat on a cold day). Are these different kinds of gratitude related? If not, are they both actually kinds of gratitude? I'll suggest that they are conceptually related, but they play different roles in the development in character and virtue. |
Can Psychedelics Really Make People Better?
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Scientific evidence of the potential of psychedelic drugs for the treatment of a variety of mental health conditions abounds. Data suggests that psychedelic use is associated with lowered risks of criminality and anti-social behaviors. And there is a long history of the religious and ritual use of these substances around the world. The positive transformative power of psychedelic experience seems well supported by these facts, which further suggests that psychedelics have the capacity to make people better, both in terms of health and morality. In this talk I explore some ways we might account for this and suggest a role that the aesthetic aspects of psychedelic experience might play in its transformtion. |
Fame, Heroes, Memory, and the Stories We Tell |
The heroes of the past sought fame as a means of securing both personal glory and an enduring place in history. We can understand this quest for narrative immortality as a manifestation of the human existential struggle for permanence of identity against the oblivion of time and memory. It can also be an attempt to assert agency into a future in which one no longer participates. This talk explores some of the motivations for fame and recognition, as well as its futility. |
2021- 2022
Cancelled due to Covid -19
2020- 2021
Cancelled due to Covid -19
2019- 2020
Sep. 13 | Will Buschert "Affective Computing: The Last Frontier of Privacy?" (Prof, Philosophy) Information technology is threatening our privacy!” By now most of us are familiar with the idea – maybe so much so that we have become numb to it. But when we think of technological threats to privacy what seems to come to mind for most people is threats to data privacy (meaning, roughly, privacy regarding what can be known about our identity, location, or actions). Yet machines are also becoming increasingly good at inferring things about our emotions and dispositions – things that, for most of our history as a species, could at least sometimes be effectively hidden ‘inside our heads’. So-called “affective computing” technologies use facial microexpressions, eye movement, gait, galvanic skin response, and other factors in order to recognize and interpret human emotions. In this talk I argue that these technologies constitute a threat to our emotional (but not only emotional) privacy and that this threat is particularly revealing about why we value privacy in the first place. |
Oct. 11 | Tate Williams “A Defense of Belief Without Evidence” (MA Student, Philosophy) Do our beliefs need evidence to be rational? I will argue that there is an important subset of knowledge which is rational and not dependent on evidence: trusting in testimony. After defending this position I will explore what it is that makes a person or institution trustworthy and how this information might improve our communities. |
Nov. 8 | Emer O’Hagan “Buddhist Reflections on Forgiveness” (Prof, Philosophy) The phrase “forgive and forget” suggests that in forgiveness we wipe the slate clean, and let go of anger or resentment concerning a misdeed. Contemporary Western philosophers typically hold that forgiveness is nothing like forgetting on the grounds that forgetting is passive, and compatible with a failure to acknowledge the wrongness of misdeed. Buddhist philosophy, by contrast, has room for an account of forgiveness that is much closer to ‘virtuous forgetting’. Because Buddhist philosophy takes anger to be a dangerous moral emotion, it emphasizes practices for overcoming anger at significant wrongs that challenge Western views. In this talk I will outline the competing views, some problems with these views, and open things up for discussion. |
Dec. 13 |
Glen Luther “Police Street Checks as a Roadblock to a Free and Inclusive Saskatchewan” (Prof, Law) |
Jan. 10 | Dwayne Moore "Is The World Getting Better or Worse?" (Prof, Philosophy) Is life getting better or worse for humans? When polled on such questions, Hans Rosling points out that humans usually perform worse than chimpanzees. For example, when polled on whether the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has increased, decreased or stayed the same over the past thirty years, only ten percent correctly answer that it has decreased. In this talk I outline some data suggesting human life is getting better, as well as considering data suggesting it is getting worse. I then offer some considerations about why we tend to think life is getting worse, when it is actually getting better. |
Feb. 14 | Pierre-Francois Noppen “What is Socialism? The Past and the Future of an Ideal” (Prof, Philosophy) Whatever happened to socialist ideals? Have they been definitively discredited by failed historical attempts at giving them a consistent form, or by the success of market-based regimes? It now seems that the Great Recession and its aftermath have rekindled an interest for socialism, both in academia and in the public sphere. In this talk, I will examine some recent perspectives on the idea of socialism in light of its history. |
Mar. 13 |
CANCELLED Sarah Hoffman “Enlightenment and Intoxication” (Prof, Philosophy) Can intoxication be a path to enlightenment? Intoxication is often conceived as a form of impairment or incapacity, a state that actually impedes knowledge. But there are also long traditions in human thought that associate states of intoxication with special knowledge and access to realms of the world not otherwise available. In this talk I will consider intoxication as a concept, and a state, draw out what generates these conflicting views of intoxication's epistemological status, and explore some reasons for thinking that the positive view of intoxication may have something important right. |
2018- 2019
Sep. 9 | "Is Life Absurd?"
Professor Emer O'Hagan |
Oct. 14 | "Positivism vs. Realism: Psychology's Struggle for Scientific Status"
Professor Valery Chirkov |
Nov. 11 | "Magical Thinking, Anger and Forgiveness: Reflections on Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice" Erin Delathouwer (College of Education, University of Saskatchewan) Martha Nussbaum urges us to consider how magical thinking fuels anger. She suggests that even when anger is well-grounded, its justification is often rooted in magical thinking, which makes anger irrational. Further, to the extent that anger is irrational, forgiveness too (at least, forgiveness of the transactional sort) is irrational. The common idea here is that both anger and forgiveness are motivated by payback wishes and down-ranking of relative status. Payback wishes are problematic insofar as they result from a belief in a kind of “cosmic balance”. Down-ranking behaviours are similarly grounded in unjustified, irrational, beliefs about the relative status, or unequal value, of persons. Therefore, neither anger nor forgiveness seem fully justifiable. And yet, insofar as forgiveness can propel relationships forward – even begin to heal wounds of oppression – it must be justifiable under at least some circumstances. Might anger, too, be justifiable when it is forward looking – when it is not focused on payback? Nussbaum argues that a very specific kind of anger – Transition Anger – is justifiable. Transition Anger stands apart from our ordinary concept of anger, and describes the kind of anger that propels interactions aimed at greater justice in an unjust world. As compelling as Nussbaum’s view of anger is, I’m left wondering if it is ‘magical thinking’ that leads us astray. Indeed, even Transition Anger, which moves us to possibly successful actions aimed at a more just world, seems to find its justification in some form of magical thinking. In this talk, I will sketch Nussbaum’s argument and articulate some of its formidable strengths, as well as a possible shortcoming. |
Dec. 9 | "Are We Living in a Post-Truth Society?" Professor Susan Dieleman A series of recent articles in venues like The New York Times and The Economist have either heralded or pushed back against the idea that we are living in a "post-truth society" where the public have neither the time nor the taste for facts and evidence. Brexit and Trump campaigns in particular have been identified as harbingers of a new political era characterized by "misinformation." In this presentation, I examine what commentators mean by "post-truth society," investigate whether there is any merit to the claim that we now live in such a society, and explore whether we should be doing anything about it. |
Jan. 13 | "Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful, or Are You Beautiful Because I Love You?" Professor Dwayne Moore This question, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, captures the deep divide in classical theories of love. According to the Erosic model of love, “I love you because you’re beautiful,” or, the lover appraises the value of the beloved. According to the Agapic model, “You’re beautiful because I love you,” or, the lover bestows value onto the beloved. Both models correctly capture certain intuitions about the nature of love, but are also defective in other respects. I will survey the strengths and weaknesses of both theories, and consider the merits of various compromise positions. |
Feb. 10 | "Women’s Libbers and Radical Mothers: Indigenous Feminism during the Second Wave" Professor Sarah Nickel When did Indigenous women become feminists and what did that look like? What can 20th century Indigenous women’s political organizations tell us about Indigenous feminism and the nature of Indigenous politics? Here, I will explore the ways in which Indigenous women in the 1960s-1980s combatted their unique gendered and racialized political suppression through interactions with mainstream second wave feminism and the male-dominated Indigenous rights movement. |
Mar. 10 | "Sex Robots: The Good, the Bad, and the Weird"
Professor Will Buschert In this talk I’ll be exploring some of the moral implications of (highly anthropomorphic, socially interactive, possibly artificially intelligent) sex robots. Some experts predict that such robots are a near-future possibility. According David Levy, for instance, by 2050 sex robots will be commonplace and socially accepted. And, at least on Levy’s analysis, this will be a good thing in that they will provide sexual and emotional gratification to millions of people who, for whatever reason, are unable or unwilling to enter into real life intimate relationships. Others are not nearly so optimistic. For instance, Kathleen Richardson and other proponents of the Campaign Against Sex Robots argue that sex robots ought to be outlawed, on the grounds that they will reinforce the objectification of women and children and replicate essentially exploitative client-john relationships. In my view, there may be no easy answers in this domain, but we probably can’t avoid asking the questions. |
2017 - 2018
Sep. 8 | "Is Chatting Cheating?"
Professor Sarah Hoffman In a much discussed article, John Portmann argues that rather than facilitating a new way to have sex online erotic chat rooms simply allow for a new way to talk about sex. Chatting, according to Portmann is thus not cheating. This raises interesting questions about the nature of sexual and romantic fidelity as well as the metaphysics of sex itself. What are the aspects of sex that make cheating or adultery morally problematic? Even if sex chatting has more in common with flirting than sexual intercourse, are these parallels enough to conclude that sex chatting outside of marriage is really no more morally objectionable than flirting? |
Oct. 6 | "What’s so great about modesty?"
Professor Emer O'Hagan When we describe someone as "modest" we seem to be paying them a complement, acknowledging a morally admirable character trait. But what is it that makes modesty a virtue, and what exactly is modesty? In this talk I will discuss several competing accounts of modesty, and some objections to them. I will conclude by outlining my own position on modesty, and open things up for discussion. |
Nov. 10 | "Just Kidding - Philosophical Reflections on Humour"
Professor Peter Alward In this talk, I will consider a number of philosophical issues concerning humour. First, I will discuss the nature of humour and how jokes differ from regular speech. Second, I will consider under what circumstances offensive speech can be excused by pointing out that the speaker was joking. And finally, I will address the question of whether and why it can be appropriate for an insider to make a joke targeting his or her community but inappropriate for an outsider to tell the same joke. |
Dec. 8 | "Reflections on the nature of psychological autonomy: Is it possible to be free in the unfree world?" Professor Valery Chirkov |
Jan. 12 | Professor Erika Dyck (Department of History, Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan) TBA |
Feb. 9 | "Prejudice, Stereotypes, and Credibility: Understanding Epistemic Injustice"
Professor Susan Dieleman We tend to think that prejudices and stereotypes are ethically problematic, but recent philosophical work has suggested that they are likely to be epistemologically problematic as well. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of "epistemic injustice," which refers to the phenomenon of being wronged in one's capacity as a knower, and explore its epistemological, ethical, and political implications. |
Mar. 9 | "Are Emotions Irrational?"
Professor Dwayne Moore Ken is afraid of flying, even though he knows it is safe. Jen is falling for John, even though she knows he isn't right for him. Are emotions irrational? Is there a great chasm between the heart and the head? Or, perhaps emotions are rational? Perhaps the heart has its own reasons? In this talk, I will briefly define 'rational', and then assess whether emotions are rational or not according to this definition. I conclude that emotions bear marks of both rationality and irrationality. |