Past Talks
March 21st, 7:30pm (hybrid)
Shelley Alexander, Professor, Department of geography,
U of C
Social Science 1251 University of Calgary
TALK TITLE:
Liminal Beings: Wildlife Ethics
ABSTRACT:
Non-human animals are embedded differentially into human life. The entanglements between humans and those species are fraught with paradoxes: especially for ‘nuisance’ wildlife like coyotes. In my research, I have found that treatment of wildlife is driven more by emotions, beliefs or ideologies than evidence. Here, I explore the nexus of colonial ideology, animal ethics, and law in Canada. I make visible how that intersection normalizes oppression, marginalization and violence towards wildlife in everyday practice, management and science. Using coyotes as my entry point, I highlight animal capacities that could be used to decolonize the margins in which these species live, suggesting pathways to more ethical treatment of wildlife.
BIO - Dr. Shelley M. Alexander
Dr. Shelley Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. She has over 30 years of experience studying human-wildlife conflict. Specializing in wolves and coyotes, she founded the Canid Conservation Science Lab. Her research spans ecology, ethics, ethology, coexistence practice (including aversion conditioning), geospatial analysis and human dimensions. She engages non-invasive methods and the principles of Compassionate
Conservation in research. Shelley has provided expert review and testimony for international communities and developed ethical guidelines for human-coyote coexistence.
March 7th, 7:30pm (hybrid)
Apeiron Society Scrum II
Social Science 1251 University of Calgary
How Theology Pre-Empts Philosophy
The Ontological Argument Revisited
Epicureanism Part I - Mark Migotti
Graduate University of Calgary Philosophy Students
Old Ideas Die Hard: Why Pernicious Ignorance Persists in the Science and Politics of Sexuality
Ahmed AlJuhany
An Exploration of the Ontology of Pregnancy
Chantal Bazinet
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Graduate University of Calgary Philosophy Students
Passcode: 2Lra0g+S
Anna Folland
Anna Folland is a PhD Student at Uppsala University, Sweden.
The Harm Principle and the Nature of Harm
In this talk I will defend the Harm Principle, commonly attributed to John Stuart Mill, against recent
criticism. Some philosophers think that this principle should be rejected, because of severe difficulties
with finding an account of harm to plug into it. I examine the criticism and find it unforceful. Finally, I
identify a faulty assumption behind this type of criticism, namely that the Harm Principle is plausible
only if there is a full-blown, and problem-free, account of harm, which proponents of the principle can
refer to.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
The member generated, discussion-focussed meeting of November 15th will fall into two parts:
First: Andrew Palicz and Mark Migotti will introduce discussion with remarks on philosophical ramifications of disagreement.
After the break
Stan Hall will introduce the discussion with remarks on philosophical questions raised by CRISPR Gene Substitution.
ANDREW PALICZ: Some Philosophical and Other Benefits of Disagreement
Andrew has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy (1990) from the University of Calgary. He has had a life-long passion for philosophy, attending countless philosophy lectures and conferences. Born in Montreal in 1961, his family moved to Calgary in 1976. He brought with him from Quebec a fluency in French, which has allowed him to have philosophical discussions in that language! He has worked in the security sector for many years.
MARK MIGOTTI: Of Taste There Is No Dispute: Or, What is There to Disagree About? Mark is the President of Apeiron and a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary.
STAN HALL: Pondering ethics – CRISPR Gene Substitution and the Life Sciences Revolution. Stan received his PhD in organic chemistry UBC 1964. Studied and worked U. Liverpool (UK); National Institute Mental Health (USA); U. Calgary, Chemistry then Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Laboratory of Environmental Engineering (Oil-sands); Akrilon Industries (exterior insulation and wall coating systems). Retired 2007. Bookworm, eco- and cultural travels, personal study of other sciences, philosophy, history, chronic health issues and environment.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Jesse Hendrikse
Assistant Professor, Cummings School of Medicine
Jesse Hendrikse is a philosopher of science and primarily teaches undergraduate courses for the Bachelor of Health Science Program at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. His scholarly and teaching interests converge on how beliefs about the nature of science impact what sorts of inquiry are seen as legitimate.
Closing Ranks: Is Talking About How Science Really Works a Threat to the Academy?
On a radically unfair bifurcation, educated progressive types have well-founded trust in scientific evidence, while uneducated regressive types are irrational because they reject “the evidence.”
Philosophers of science are in the business of understanding whether and how science produces knowledge. We do this by revealing and interrogating science’s assumptions, inference patterns and practices. What emerges from this ongoing project is that science is not successful because it has hit on a distinctive combination of observation and reasoning that gets at truth. It’s not that simple. Science’s success seems instead to be a function of having hit on a distinctive social structure, a structure that supports a variety of assumptions and inferences that can be at odds with one another.
This messy image of science poses a problem for the academy. Particularly during the pandemic, scholars have tended to close ranks, establishing a unified front that masks the heterogeneity that makes science successful. However, climategate, Andrew Wakefield’s now retracted study which concluded the MMR vaccine can cause autism and disagreement among experts about
how to deal with the pandemic have revealed fissures in this unified front.
My sense is that selling a false story of unity has helped drive many people to rationally distrust science, and my goal in this talk is to explore whether the academy can better foster well-founded trust in science by talking openly about how science really works.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Apeiron Scrum 1: Digital Liberty, Rachel Taylor-Fergusson & Maria Genova
The session will feature a debate led by Rachel Taylor-Fergusson and Maria Genova, drawing on two Philosophy Now articles by Nevin Chellappah and Roberta Fischli and Thomas Beschorner as the basis for discussion. Rachel and Maria will each provide a brief summary of the articles, expand upon the arguments, and then provide some counter arguments.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Virtual Kananaskis Symposium
Saturday, May 7th, 10 am to 2 pm MDT
Dr. Chris Framarin
Professor of Philosophy and Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary
Chris Framarin is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy (Routledge 2009), and Hinduism and Environmental Ethics: Law, Literature, and Philosophy (Routledge 2014). He is currently writing a book on Hindu conceptions of renunciation and their implications for a theory of the good life.
The Superiority of the Householder in the Dharmasūtras
There is an initial puzzle in the Hindu dharmasūtra texts (texts on right conduct) of Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha. Both authors argue that all four modes of life – that of the student, householder, forest dweller, and renunciate – are equally legitimate. Their arguments for the importance of the householder, however, seem to imply that they count the householder as superior to the other three. This apparent contradiction is especially pronounced in Vasiṣṭha, who says explicitly that the householder is “the best of the four modes of life” (8.14) – despite the fact that this contradicts his official thesis (7.1-2). I offer objections to a number of seemingly plausible explanations for this contradiction and defend an original interpretation: Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha count the householder as equal to the student, forest dweller, and renunciate in his ability to attain the optimal personal prosperity of liberation. They count the householder as superior, however, in virtue of his contributions to the prosperity of others. If this is right, then the reasons in favor of the householder are moral, rather than prudential, and the four modes of life are not equal all things considered.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Chris Framarin
Dr. Blair Stonechild
Professor of Indigenous Studies, First Nations University of Canada
Blair Stonechild is a member of the Muscowpetung First Nation and is a survivor of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from McGill, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from University of Regina. In 1976 Blair joined the First Nations University of Canada as its first faculty member and has been Dean of Academics and Executive Director of Development. Major publications include Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion, (1997); The New Buffalo: Aboriginal Post-secondary Policy in Canada (2006); Buffy Sainte-Marie: It’s My Way (2012), The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality (2016) and Loss of Indigenous Eden and the Fall of Spirituality (2020). Blair is married to Sylvia and has three adult children.
Rediscovering Indigenous Philosophy
Indigenous philosophy has its roots in spiritual protocols, ceremony and inspiration which goes back tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. As the most recent arrival in the earthly community, humans had a sacred responsibility to be humble, grateful and to act as stewards of the natural world. The primary focus of Indigenous culture was not material exploitation, but rather the perfection of spiritual behavior (Seven Virtues) and learning of proper relationships. Spiritual wisdom was valued higher than rational thinking. Such a philosophy created abundant and nurturing life circumstances. In contrast, Euro-American philosophy which has its roots in Abrahamic religious beliefs, Greek philosophy and rationalism has produced a world of human self-centeredness, exploitation of the natural world and ultimately degradation of human well-being.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Blair Stonechild or view the PowerPoint slides
Philosophy Honours Students: Alex Duica, Mackenzie Fowler and Eli Noonan
Tuesday, April 5th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Alex Duica “Assessing the Deterministic Horn of the Obligation Dilemma”
Alex examines an interesting dilemma that makes it impossible for us to have moral obligations. Moral obligations are actions that morality requires agents to perform. Alex believes that moral philosophy can improve the choices we make individually and collectively, so her aim is to motivate further philosophical work to solve the dilemma. She hopes that her research will give us insights into the nature of morality and what it means to have an obligation, and how this connects to holding people responsible for their actions.
Alex is a member of the Arts and Science Honours Academy’s cohort 12 and a fourth-year BA (Hons) Philosophy student studying ethics and free will.
Mackenzie Fowler "Will Building: An Exploration of Mental Illness and Moral Responsibility"
Mackenzie’s thesis seeks to defend the notion that individuals with mental illness can be agents, and thus, morally responsible. She draws from Frankfurt's hierarchical account of moral responsibility to determine the requirements of agency and moral responsibility. She then turns to an article by King and May (2018) to provide a "nuanced" account of the symptoms of mental illness as they relate to moral responsibility. She finishes with a case study from Dr. Marsha's autobiography Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir to demonstrate the theories provided by Frankfurt, King and May can be applied to a living example.
Mackenzie holds a psychology degree with honours from Mount Royal University. Her honours research project at MRU focused on virtual reality and mindfulness, where she had participants rate their mood changes after experiencing a mindfulness exercise. She developed a passion for philosophy during that degree and applied to UofC to continue her studies. She is excited to bring her prior knowledge of psychology together with her passion for philosophy within this thesis.
Eli Noonan “A Defense of Pragmatism about Belief”
Contemporary evidentialism is the view that only evidence can a reason for believing something. It’s opposed to pragmatism, which says that considerations of the costs and benefits of believing can be reasons for believing or disbelieving something. In his thesis, Eli Noonan defends pragmatism against some evidentialist criticisms. In particular, he argues that pragmatic considerations are not just a reason to try to have a belief or to take steps which could lead to belief. Pragmatic considerations can be reasons to believe something in just the same way that pragmatic considerations can be reasons to do something.
Within the ethics of belief, there is a long-running debate surrounding normative reasons for belief. Evidentialists like William Clifford argue that only evidence can serve as a good reason for belief, whereas pragmatists like William James hold the position that, at least in some cases, non-evidential or practical considerations can be normative reasons for belief. I argue for a pragmatist position. After outlining some important features of the debate, I present some cases that I think provide intuitive support to the pragmatist position that non-evidential considerations can be normative reasons for belief. I then examine some evidentialist objections, and finally use the work of pragmatist Susanna Rinard to formulate a defense of pragmatism.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Philosophy Honours Students: Alex Duica, Mackenzie Fowler and Eli Noonan
Mark Migotti and Rod Wade - Apeiron Society Scrum II: Discuss selected Philosophy Now articles
Tuesday, March 15th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Mark and Rod will be discussed Raymond Tallis articles The Riddle of the Sphincter and On Making and Keeping Appointments from Philosophy Now.
Adrian Currie - Metaphors, the Fossil Record, and Lost Worlds
Saturday, February 26th, 2022, at 1:00pm
Science is awash with metaphors that shape how both scientists and laypeople conceive of, investigate, and see value in, the world. One example – that is remarkably ingrained – is the notion of the fossil record. That is, we understand the funny-shaped rocks that paleontologists investigate using a textual metaphor. Fossils constitute a chronology: a deceptive, incomplete and gappy one at that. I’ll consider what happens when we switch metaphors from the fossil record to the idea of a ‘lost world’. Lost worlds are times when things just worked differently to how they do now: populated by different critters and ruled by different dynamics. Seeing palaeontologists as undertaking a science of lost worlds, rather than compiling a gappy record, is revelatory of the nature, purpose and value of both paleontological practice and knowledge of the past. In particular, I’ll suggest that much of the value of historical knowledge lies in how it forces us to think about possibility, open contingencies, and how the present and future are likely unstable and idiosyncratic.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Adrian Currie
Stan Hall and Rachel Taylor-Fergusson - Apeiron Society Scrum I - Pros and Cons of Veganism
Tuesday, February 15st, 2022, at 6:00pm
Stan Hall and Rachel Taylor-Fergusson will discuss two Philosophy Now articles by Matthew Chalmers and Chris Belshaw. Rachel and Stan will each provide a brief summary of the articles, expand upon the arguments, and then provide a counterexamples to the opposing argument.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Stan Hall and Rachel Taylor-Fergusson
View the articles here for Matthew Chalmers and Chris Belshaw or accessed on the Philosophy Now website, Issue
146, October/November 2001.
Mark Migotti and Judy Alexander - Stoicism: What it is, What it Was, Why it Matters
Tuesday, January 18th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Mark Migotti and Judy Alexander so-hosted this talk on the origins of stoicism to Roman times to current times.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Mark Migotti and Judy Alexander
View Mark Migotti's presentation notes.
View Judy Alexander's slides and her bibliography.
Watch the recording of the second evening
Luke Neilson M.A. student - Eros, tragedy, and replaceability: a vindication of Diotima’s Scala Amoris
Tuesday, December 7th, 2021, at 6:00pm
Luke Neilson
Luke Neilson is an MA student at the University of Calgary, where he studies under the supervision of Dr. Mark Migotti. He is interested in ancient philosophy and epistemology. He is also interested in historical explanation. When not studying, Luke enjoys piano, hiking with his partner and hound, and diving.
Eros, tragedy, and replaceability: a vindication of Diotima’s Scala Amoris
Any satisfactory account of eros should accommodate both (what I call) the irreplaceability intuition and (what I call) the security desideratum. The former requires that love objects should not be replaceable by any object possessing relevant similar properties. The latter requires that loving, inasmuch as it is essential to human satisfaction, should not be susceptible to frustration. According to Martha Nussbaum (2001), Diotima’s account of eros in the Symposium can accommodate the security desideratum but not the irreplaceability intuition; the Symposium is thereby supposed to have trapped the lover in a tragic choice between loving irreplaceable individuals and loving securely. In this presentation, I argue that Eros assumes a tragic countenance only on the standard interpretation of the Symposium, according to which individuals as love objects are of central concern to Plato. I question this interpretation and argue that, insofar as individual love objects are concerned, the exemplar lover of Diotima’s Scala may regard the beloved as imaginably replaceable, which captures what is central to the irreplaceability intuition.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Luke Neilson (skip ahead to 42 min 45 sec)
Hannah O'Riain Ph.D student - Epistemic trust: warrant and vulnerabilities in the childbearing year
Tuesday, December 7th, 2021, at 6:00pm
Hannah O’Riain
Hannah O’Riain is a PhD student at the University of Calgary studying philosophy of biology and medicine. Their undergraduate degree studied health systems planning, interprofessional collaboration in health care, and the social determinants of health. Their undergraduate thesis studied the history and philosophical underpinnings of midwifery and obstetrics in Canada. After graduating from this health sciences program, Hannah spent 3.5 years in Mount Royal University’s midwifery program, and 1.5 years teaching physiology labs, before returning to U of C to think more about the epistemic and ontological questions they faced as a midwifery student. Current interests include ontological and epistemic questions about physiology, especially ontology of mammalian pregnancy, and risk assessment during the childbearing year. Hannah is interested in socially responsible philosophy, and hopes to organize epistemic collaboration between philosophers and local communities after this PhD.
Epistemic trust: warrant and vulnerabilities in the childbearing year
What makes a medical decision a good one? In recent decades, some researchers and clinicians have sought to improve medical decisions by applying evidence, for example from randomized control trials, to generate standardized protocols. The hope is that applying the best evidence will improve outcomes, by avoiding capricious human errors. These standardized, measurement-focused approaches though, face intense criticism from other clinicians and researchers.
Beyond the clinical literature, these approaches face epistemic challenges to their hope of improving medical decision-making. For example, RCT evidence is about the population of study, rather than any particular patient’s questions about their bodies. When people ask questions like “What will happen to my baby?”, clinicians cannot merely apply an average to produce a satisfying answer (Cartwright, 2016). Additionally, clinical teams sometimes need to make decisions that temporarily worsen outcomes for some patients; for example, see Atul Gawande’s discussion of surgeons learning a new technique in his popular book Complications.
So, if merely applying the best evidence or being measured to produce the best outcomes cannot reliably track good medical decisions, what can? My dissertation will argue for a procedural approach to defining “good medical decisions”. I will argue that good medical decisions are defined by the relationships and procedures that make them. Specifically, good medical decisions secure patient and health care provider confidence and acceptance of possible outcomes. Good medical decisions occur when decision-making provides warrant for patients and healthcare providers to form responsible epistemic trust in each other. I hope to investigate how decision-making teams can best secure this warrant, while navigating the epistemic vulnerabilities and strengths of different participants in medical decision-making.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Hannah O'Riain
Dr. Kirsten Walsh, Action at a Distance – Reflections on the History of Women in Science
Saturday, November 13th, 2021, at 1:00pm
Dr. Kirsten Walsh
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter
Kirsten Walsh is a Philosophy Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology (SPA) at the University of Exeter. She completed her PhD in 2015 at the University of Otago in New Zealand, focusing on the scientific methodology of Isaac Newton. Kirsten is interested in Isaac Newton’s methodology in both historical and philosophical contexts. She asks, how ought we understand his scientific achievements and what are the upshots for theoretical accounts of science? Her approach incorporates the tools and ideas of contemporary philosophy of science, balanced with a sensitivity to historical context. This gives her research a distinctive reach into both contemporary issues in the philosophy of science and to the history of ideas. Kirsten suggests that, if we want to continue to treat knowledge practices such as Newtonianism as exemplars of modern science, we need to attend to the political, economic and social embeddedness of these practices.
Action at a Distance – Reflections on the History of Women in Science
In her recent monograph, Reading Popular Newtonianism (2018), Laura Miller argues that the image of science as masculine was knowingly constructed by popularisers of Newton’s Principia. Eighteenth-century Newtonianism was presented as something for, rather than by women. That is, women could engage with the most important scientific theories of the day, but only at a safe distance—through popularisations written specifically for them. This attitude towards women’s participation in science is insidious and entrenched, persisting into the present day. Of course, these attitudes were not invented with Newton—the history of Western science is largely a history of exclusion—but, just as Newtonianism played a crucial role in bringing science to the emerging middle classes, it also played a role in reinforcing the exclusion of women from science and medicine. That’s not to say that there haven’t always been women-practitioners of science. But they have often participated at a distance from their colleagues, from society, and even from their resources. In this talk, I highlight four women scientists, Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Emilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749), Laura Bassi (1711-1778) and Mary Anning (1799-1847), suggesting that their participation in science is best characterised in terms of a fittingly-Newtonian metaphor: action at a distance.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Dr. Kirsten Walsh
Dr. John Post, Tradeoffs: A Search for a Common Philosophy in Conservation and Natural Resource Decision Making
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Dr. John Post
Professor of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary
John is a Professor and past Chair of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary where he specializes on fish population dynamics, the management of recreational fisheries and conservation biology. In addition, he is the Chair of the Freshwater Fishes Species Specialist Committee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and advises the Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change on listing of at-risk species under the Species at Risk Act. His research interests include population dynamics, physiological ecology, behaviour and the conservation and management of freshwater fish and fisheries.
Tradeoffs: A Search for a Common Philosophy in Conservation and Natural Resource Decision Making
The concept of trade-offs is central in many fields, and especially so in economics and biology. Conservation and resource management are at the nexus of these fields and often involve difficult policy debates involving costs and benefits and their associated trade-offs. From a research base grounded in fisheries biology, I will review several examples of such trade-offs in commercial and recreational fish harvesting, coal development in the East Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and flood mitigation initiatives - with a focus on Western Canada and Alberta in particular. I'll then discuss challenges in assessing trade-offs as a common philosophy in conservation and natural resource management.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Dr. John Post
View the PowerPoint
Read his unpublished article Covid in Alberta
Ken Nickel, Our Longstanding Debt to the Unthinkable: God, Nothing, Necessity, and other Square Circles
Tuesday, October 19th, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Dr. Ken Nickel
Doctor of Philosophy, Western University
Ken’s eclectic academic background includes undergraduate studies in Kinesiology, a Seminary degree in Religion, a M.Sc., culminating in a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Western University in London, Ontario. Ken is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ambrose University, a Christian liberal arts college here in Calgary since 2003.
Our Longstanding Debt to the Unthinkable: God, Nothing, Necessity, and other Square Circles
Our greatest intellectual accomplishments in mathematics, science, philosophy, and indeed religion, are owing to the human capacity for creative and generative abstract thought. The birth of Philosophy occurred when our capacity for abstraction began attributing a special kind of reality to these seductive ideas unavailable to the senses. The ‘ontological impulse’ encouraged from Parmenides to Derrida tries to get us to believe there’s more to ‘nothing’ than meets the eye. Really? Possibly, there’s less. Is the answer to be found in ‘thinking again’?
Phil Hoffman, Ontology, Epistemology, Objectivity and Truth
Tuesday, October 5th, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Phillip Hoffmann
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Calgary and Apeiron Past President
Phillip Hoffmann holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Calgary and is a past president of the Apeiron Society. He is the author of three books, including Nothing So Absurd: An Invitation to Philosophy(Broadview Press, 2003). His philosophical interests focus primarily on metaphysics, the nature of truth and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. He currently dabbles in online philosophy tutoring and volunteer work for various organizations in Airdrie, Alberta.
Ontology, Epistemology, Objectivity and Truth
The claim I defend in this paper is as follows: a commitment to ontology—and to the pre-eminence of ontology over epistemology as our point of departure when we philosophize—is a necessary and sufficient condition for an objective (or realist) conception of truth to obtain, a conception of truth that I take to be explicitly ontological in nature. However, since the world owes us no favours, unfortunately we cannot assume that objective truth is guaranteed. Most of this paper will unpack my claim and outline arguments in its favour.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Phil Hoffman
Read the transcription of Phil Hoffman, Ontology, Epistemology, Objectivity and Truth
phillip_hoffmann_.pdf
Shelley Alexander, Professor, Department of geography,
U of C
Social Science 1251 University of Calgary
TALK TITLE:
Liminal Beings: Wildlife Ethics
ABSTRACT:
Non-human animals are embedded differentially into human life. The entanglements between humans and those species are fraught with paradoxes: especially for ‘nuisance’ wildlife like coyotes. In my research, I have found that treatment of wildlife is driven more by emotions, beliefs or ideologies than evidence. Here, I explore the nexus of colonial ideology, animal ethics, and law in Canada. I make visible how that intersection normalizes oppression, marginalization and violence towards wildlife in everyday practice, management and science. Using coyotes as my entry point, I highlight animal capacities that could be used to decolonize the margins in which these species live, suggesting pathways to more ethical treatment of wildlife.
BIO - Dr. Shelley M. Alexander
Dr. Shelley Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. She has over 30 years of experience studying human-wildlife conflict. Specializing in wolves and coyotes, she founded the Canid Conservation Science Lab. Her research spans ecology, ethics, ethology, coexistence practice (including aversion conditioning), geospatial analysis and human dimensions. She engages non-invasive methods and the principles of Compassionate
Conservation in research. Shelley has provided expert review and testimony for international communities and developed ethical guidelines for human-coyote coexistence.
March 7th, 7:30pm (hybrid)
Apeiron Society Scrum II
Social Science 1251 University of Calgary
How Theology Pre-Empts Philosophy
The Ontological Argument Revisited
Epicureanism Part I - Mark Migotti
Graduate University of Calgary Philosophy Students
Old Ideas Die Hard: Why Pernicious Ignorance Persists in the Science and Politics of Sexuality
Ahmed AlJuhany
An Exploration of the Ontology of Pregnancy
Chantal Bazinet
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Watch the recording of Graduate University of Calgary Philosophy Students
Passcode: 2Lra0g+S
Anna Folland
Anna Folland is a PhD Student at Uppsala University, Sweden.
The Harm Principle and the Nature of Harm
In this talk I will defend the Harm Principle, commonly attributed to John Stuart Mill, against recent
criticism. Some philosophers think that this principle should be rejected, because of severe difficulties
with finding an account of harm to plug into it. I examine the criticism and find it unforceful. Finally, I
identify a faulty assumption behind this type of criticism, namely that the Harm Principle is plausible
only if there is a full-blown, and problem-free, account of harm, which proponents of the principle can
refer to.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
The member generated, discussion-focussed meeting of November 15th will fall into two parts:
First: Andrew Palicz and Mark Migotti will introduce discussion with remarks on philosophical ramifications of disagreement.
After the break
Stan Hall will introduce the discussion with remarks on philosophical questions raised by CRISPR Gene Substitution.
ANDREW PALICZ: Some Philosophical and Other Benefits of Disagreement
Andrew has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy (1990) from the University of Calgary. He has had a life-long passion for philosophy, attending countless philosophy lectures and conferences. Born in Montreal in 1961, his family moved to Calgary in 1976. He brought with him from Quebec a fluency in French, which has allowed him to have philosophical discussions in that language! He has worked in the security sector for many years.
MARK MIGOTTI: Of Taste There Is No Dispute: Or, What is There to Disagree About? Mark is the President of Apeiron and a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary.
STAN HALL: Pondering ethics – CRISPR Gene Substitution and the Life Sciences Revolution. Stan received his PhD in organic chemistry UBC 1964. Studied and worked U. Liverpool (UK); National Institute Mental Health (USA); U. Calgary, Chemistry then Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Laboratory of Environmental Engineering (Oil-sands); Akrilon Industries (exterior insulation and wall coating systems). Retired 2007. Bookworm, eco- and cultural travels, personal study of other sciences, philosophy, history, chronic health issues and environment.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Jesse Hendrikse
Assistant Professor, Cummings School of Medicine
Jesse Hendrikse is a philosopher of science and primarily teaches undergraduate courses for the Bachelor of Health Science Program at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine. His scholarly and teaching interests converge on how beliefs about the nature of science impact what sorts of inquiry are seen as legitimate.
Closing Ranks: Is Talking About How Science Really Works a Threat to the Academy?
On a radically unfair bifurcation, educated progressive types have well-founded trust in scientific evidence, while uneducated regressive types are irrational because they reject “the evidence.”
Philosophers of science are in the business of understanding whether and how science produces knowledge. We do this by revealing and interrogating science’s assumptions, inference patterns and practices. What emerges from this ongoing project is that science is not successful because it has hit on a distinctive combination of observation and reasoning that gets at truth. It’s not that simple. Science’s success seems instead to be a function of having hit on a distinctive social structure, a structure that supports a variety of assumptions and inferences that can be at odds with one another.
This messy image of science poses a problem for the academy. Particularly during the pandemic, scholars have tended to close ranks, establishing a unified front that masks the heterogeneity that makes science successful. However, climategate, Andrew Wakefield’s now retracted study which concluded the MMR vaccine can cause autism and disagreement among experts about
how to deal with the pandemic have revealed fissures in this unified front.
My sense is that selling a false story of unity has helped drive many people to rationally distrust science, and my goal in this talk is to explore whether the academy can better foster well-founded trust in science by talking openly about how science really works.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Apeiron Scrum 1: Digital Liberty, Rachel Taylor-Fergusson & Maria Genova
The session will feature a debate led by Rachel Taylor-Fergusson and Maria Genova, drawing on two Philosophy Now articles by Nevin Chellappah and Roberta Fischli and Thomas Beschorner as the basis for discussion. Rachel and Maria will each provide a brief summary of the articles, expand upon the arguments, and then provide some counter arguments.
Couldn't make it to the talk?
Sorry, no recording.
Virtual Kananaskis Symposium
Saturday, May 7th, 10 am to 2 pm MDT
Dr. Chris Framarin
Professor of Philosophy and Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary
Chris Framarin is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary. He is the author of Desire and Motivation in Indian Philosophy (Routledge 2009), and Hinduism and Environmental Ethics: Law, Literature, and Philosophy (Routledge 2014). He is currently writing a book on Hindu conceptions of renunciation and their implications for a theory of the good life.
The Superiority of the Householder in the Dharmasūtras
There is an initial puzzle in the Hindu dharmasūtra texts (texts on right conduct) of Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha. Both authors argue that all four modes of life – that of the student, householder, forest dweller, and renunciate – are equally legitimate. Their arguments for the importance of the householder, however, seem to imply that they count the householder as superior to the other three. This apparent contradiction is especially pronounced in Vasiṣṭha, who says explicitly that the householder is “the best of the four modes of life” (8.14) – despite the fact that this contradicts his official thesis (7.1-2). I offer objections to a number of seemingly plausible explanations for this contradiction and defend an original interpretation: Āpastamba and Vasiṣṭha count the householder as equal to the student, forest dweller, and renunciate in his ability to attain the optimal personal prosperity of liberation. They count the householder as superior, however, in virtue of his contributions to the prosperity of others. If this is right, then the reasons in favor of the householder are moral, rather than prudential, and the four modes of life are not equal all things considered.
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Dr. Blair Stonechild
Professor of Indigenous Studies, First Nations University of Canada
Blair Stonechild is a member of the Muscowpetung First Nation and is a survivor of the Qu’Appelle Indian Residential School. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree from McGill, and Master’s and Doctorate degrees from University of Regina. In 1976 Blair joined the First Nations University of Canada as its first faculty member and has been Dean of Academics and Executive Director of Development. Major publications include Loyal Till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion, (1997); The New Buffalo: Aboriginal Post-secondary Policy in Canada (2006); Buffy Sainte-Marie: It’s My Way (2012), The Knowledge Seeker: Embracing Indigenous Spirituality (2016) and Loss of Indigenous Eden and the Fall of Spirituality (2020). Blair is married to Sylvia and has three adult children.
Rediscovering Indigenous Philosophy
Indigenous philosophy has its roots in spiritual protocols, ceremony and inspiration which goes back tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. As the most recent arrival in the earthly community, humans had a sacred responsibility to be humble, grateful and to act as stewards of the natural world. The primary focus of Indigenous culture was not material exploitation, but rather the perfection of spiritual behavior (Seven Virtues) and learning of proper relationships. Spiritual wisdom was valued higher than rational thinking. Such a philosophy created abundant and nurturing life circumstances. In contrast, Euro-American philosophy which has its roots in Abrahamic religious beliefs, Greek philosophy and rationalism has produced a world of human self-centeredness, exploitation of the natural world and ultimately degradation of human well-being.
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Philosophy Honours Students: Alex Duica, Mackenzie Fowler and Eli Noonan
Tuesday, April 5th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Alex Duica “Assessing the Deterministic Horn of the Obligation Dilemma”
Alex examines an interesting dilemma that makes it impossible for us to have moral obligations. Moral obligations are actions that morality requires agents to perform. Alex believes that moral philosophy can improve the choices we make individually and collectively, so her aim is to motivate further philosophical work to solve the dilemma. She hopes that her research will give us insights into the nature of morality and what it means to have an obligation, and how this connects to holding people responsible for their actions.
Alex is a member of the Arts and Science Honours Academy’s cohort 12 and a fourth-year BA (Hons) Philosophy student studying ethics and free will.
Mackenzie Fowler "Will Building: An Exploration of Mental Illness and Moral Responsibility"
Mackenzie’s thesis seeks to defend the notion that individuals with mental illness can be agents, and thus, morally responsible. She draws from Frankfurt's hierarchical account of moral responsibility to determine the requirements of agency and moral responsibility. She then turns to an article by King and May (2018) to provide a "nuanced" account of the symptoms of mental illness as they relate to moral responsibility. She finishes with a case study from Dr. Marsha's autobiography Building a Life Worth Living: A Memoir to demonstrate the theories provided by Frankfurt, King and May can be applied to a living example.
Mackenzie holds a psychology degree with honours from Mount Royal University. Her honours research project at MRU focused on virtual reality and mindfulness, where she had participants rate their mood changes after experiencing a mindfulness exercise. She developed a passion for philosophy during that degree and applied to UofC to continue her studies. She is excited to bring her prior knowledge of psychology together with her passion for philosophy within this thesis.
Eli Noonan “A Defense of Pragmatism about Belief”
Contemporary evidentialism is the view that only evidence can a reason for believing something. It’s opposed to pragmatism, which says that considerations of the costs and benefits of believing can be reasons for believing or disbelieving something. In his thesis, Eli Noonan defends pragmatism against some evidentialist criticisms. In particular, he argues that pragmatic considerations are not just a reason to try to have a belief or to take steps which could lead to belief. Pragmatic considerations can be reasons to believe something in just the same way that pragmatic considerations can be reasons to do something.
Within the ethics of belief, there is a long-running debate surrounding normative reasons for belief. Evidentialists like William Clifford argue that only evidence can serve as a good reason for belief, whereas pragmatists like William James hold the position that, at least in some cases, non-evidential or practical considerations can be normative reasons for belief. I argue for a pragmatist position. After outlining some important features of the debate, I present some cases that I think provide intuitive support to the pragmatist position that non-evidential considerations can be normative reasons for belief. I then examine some evidentialist objections, and finally use the work of pragmatist Susanna Rinard to formulate a defense of pragmatism.
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Mark Migotti and Rod Wade - Apeiron Society Scrum II: Discuss selected Philosophy Now articles
Tuesday, March 15th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Mark and Rod will be discussed Raymond Tallis articles The Riddle of the Sphincter and On Making and Keeping Appointments from Philosophy Now.
Adrian Currie - Metaphors, the Fossil Record, and Lost Worlds
Saturday, February 26th, 2022, at 1:00pm
Science is awash with metaphors that shape how both scientists and laypeople conceive of, investigate, and see value in, the world. One example – that is remarkably ingrained – is the notion of the fossil record. That is, we understand the funny-shaped rocks that paleontologists investigate using a textual metaphor. Fossils constitute a chronology: a deceptive, incomplete and gappy one at that. I’ll consider what happens when we switch metaphors from the fossil record to the idea of a ‘lost world’. Lost worlds are times when things just worked differently to how they do now: populated by different critters and ruled by different dynamics. Seeing palaeontologists as undertaking a science of lost worlds, rather than compiling a gappy record, is revelatory of the nature, purpose and value of both paleontological practice and knowledge of the past. In particular, I’ll suggest that much of the value of historical knowledge lies in how it forces us to think about possibility, open contingencies, and how the present and future are likely unstable and idiosyncratic.
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Stan Hall and Rachel Taylor-Fergusson - Apeiron Society Scrum I - Pros and Cons of Veganism
Tuesday, February 15st, 2022, at 6:00pm
Stan Hall and Rachel Taylor-Fergusson will discuss two Philosophy Now articles by Matthew Chalmers and Chris Belshaw. Rachel and Stan will each provide a brief summary of the articles, expand upon the arguments, and then provide a counterexamples to the opposing argument.
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View the articles here for Matthew Chalmers and Chris Belshaw or accessed on the Philosophy Now website, Issue
146, October/November 2001.
Mark Migotti and Judy Alexander - Stoicism: What it is, What it Was, Why it Matters
Tuesday, January 18th, 2022, at 6:00pm
Mark Migotti and Judy Alexander so-hosted this talk on the origins of stoicism to Roman times to current times.
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View Mark Migotti's presentation notes.
View Judy Alexander's slides and her bibliography.
Watch the recording of the second evening
Luke Neilson M.A. student - Eros, tragedy, and replaceability: a vindication of Diotima’s Scala Amoris
Tuesday, December 7th, 2021, at 6:00pm
Luke Neilson
Luke Neilson is an MA student at the University of Calgary, where he studies under the supervision of Dr. Mark Migotti. He is interested in ancient philosophy and epistemology. He is also interested in historical explanation. When not studying, Luke enjoys piano, hiking with his partner and hound, and diving.
Eros, tragedy, and replaceability: a vindication of Diotima’s Scala Amoris
Any satisfactory account of eros should accommodate both (what I call) the irreplaceability intuition and (what I call) the security desideratum. The former requires that love objects should not be replaceable by any object possessing relevant similar properties. The latter requires that loving, inasmuch as it is essential to human satisfaction, should not be susceptible to frustration. According to Martha Nussbaum (2001), Diotima’s account of eros in the Symposium can accommodate the security desideratum but not the irreplaceability intuition; the Symposium is thereby supposed to have trapped the lover in a tragic choice between loving irreplaceable individuals and loving securely. In this presentation, I argue that Eros assumes a tragic countenance only on the standard interpretation of the Symposium, according to which individuals as love objects are of central concern to Plato. I question this interpretation and argue that, insofar as individual love objects are concerned, the exemplar lover of Diotima’s Scala may regard the beloved as imaginably replaceable, which captures what is central to the irreplaceability intuition.
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Hannah O'Riain Ph.D student - Epistemic trust: warrant and vulnerabilities in the childbearing year
Tuesday, December 7th, 2021, at 6:00pm
Hannah O’Riain
Hannah O’Riain is a PhD student at the University of Calgary studying philosophy of biology and medicine. Their undergraduate degree studied health systems planning, interprofessional collaboration in health care, and the social determinants of health. Their undergraduate thesis studied the history and philosophical underpinnings of midwifery and obstetrics in Canada. After graduating from this health sciences program, Hannah spent 3.5 years in Mount Royal University’s midwifery program, and 1.5 years teaching physiology labs, before returning to U of C to think more about the epistemic and ontological questions they faced as a midwifery student. Current interests include ontological and epistemic questions about physiology, especially ontology of mammalian pregnancy, and risk assessment during the childbearing year. Hannah is interested in socially responsible philosophy, and hopes to organize epistemic collaboration between philosophers and local communities after this PhD.
Epistemic trust: warrant and vulnerabilities in the childbearing year
What makes a medical decision a good one? In recent decades, some researchers and clinicians have sought to improve medical decisions by applying evidence, for example from randomized control trials, to generate standardized protocols. The hope is that applying the best evidence will improve outcomes, by avoiding capricious human errors. These standardized, measurement-focused approaches though, face intense criticism from other clinicians and researchers.
Beyond the clinical literature, these approaches face epistemic challenges to their hope of improving medical decision-making. For example, RCT evidence is about the population of study, rather than any particular patient’s questions about their bodies. When people ask questions like “What will happen to my baby?”, clinicians cannot merely apply an average to produce a satisfying answer (Cartwright, 2016). Additionally, clinical teams sometimes need to make decisions that temporarily worsen outcomes for some patients; for example, see Atul Gawande’s discussion of surgeons learning a new technique in his popular book Complications.
So, if merely applying the best evidence or being measured to produce the best outcomes cannot reliably track good medical decisions, what can? My dissertation will argue for a procedural approach to defining “good medical decisions”. I will argue that good medical decisions are defined by the relationships and procedures that make them. Specifically, good medical decisions secure patient and health care provider confidence and acceptance of possible outcomes. Good medical decisions occur when decision-making provides warrant for patients and healthcare providers to form responsible epistemic trust in each other. I hope to investigate how decision-making teams can best secure this warrant, while navigating the epistemic vulnerabilities and strengths of different participants in medical decision-making.
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Dr. Kirsten Walsh, Action at a Distance – Reflections on the History of Women in Science
Saturday, November 13th, 2021, at 1:00pm
Dr. Kirsten Walsh
Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter
Kirsten Walsh is a Philosophy Lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology (SPA) at the University of Exeter. She completed her PhD in 2015 at the University of Otago in New Zealand, focusing on the scientific methodology of Isaac Newton. Kirsten is interested in Isaac Newton’s methodology in both historical and philosophical contexts. She asks, how ought we understand his scientific achievements and what are the upshots for theoretical accounts of science? Her approach incorporates the tools and ideas of contemporary philosophy of science, balanced with a sensitivity to historical context. This gives her research a distinctive reach into both contemporary issues in the philosophy of science and to the history of ideas. Kirsten suggests that, if we want to continue to treat knowledge practices such as Newtonianism as exemplars of modern science, we need to attend to the political, economic and social embeddedness of these practices.
Action at a Distance – Reflections on the History of Women in Science
In her recent monograph, Reading Popular Newtonianism (2018), Laura Miller argues that the image of science as masculine was knowingly constructed by popularisers of Newton’s Principia. Eighteenth-century Newtonianism was presented as something for, rather than by women. That is, women could engage with the most important scientific theories of the day, but only at a safe distance—through popularisations written specifically for them. This attitude towards women’s participation in science is insidious and entrenched, persisting into the present day. Of course, these attitudes were not invented with Newton—the history of Western science is largely a history of exclusion—but, just as Newtonianism played a crucial role in bringing science to the emerging middle classes, it also played a role in reinforcing the exclusion of women from science and medicine. That’s not to say that there haven’t always been women-practitioners of science. But they have often participated at a distance from their colleagues, from society, and even from their resources. In this talk, I highlight four women scientists, Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Emilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749), Laura Bassi (1711-1778) and Mary Anning (1799-1847), suggesting that their participation in science is best characterised in terms of a fittingly-Newtonian metaphor: action at a distance.
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Dr. John Post, Tradeoffs: A Search for a Common Philosophy in Conservation and Natural Resource Decision Making
Tuesday, November 2nd, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Dr. John Post
Professor of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary
John is a Professor and past Chair of Ecology and Evolution in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary where he specializes on fish population dynamics, the management of recreational fisheries and conservation biology. In addition, he is the Chair of the Freshwater Fishes Species Specialist Committee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and advises the Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change on listing of at-risk species under the Species at Risk Act. His research interests include population dynamics, physiological ecology, behaviour and the conservation and management of freshwater fish and fisheries.
Tradeoffs: A Search for a Common Philosophy in Conservation and Natural Resource Decision Making
The concept of trade-offs is central in many fields, and especially so in economics and biology. Conservation and resource management are at the nexus of these fields and often involve difficult policy debates involving costs and benefits and their associated trade-offs. From a research base grounded in fisheries biology, I will review several examples of such trade-offs in commercial and recreational fish harvesting, coal development in the East Slopes of the Rocky Mountains, and flood mitigation initiatives - with a focus on Western Canada and Alberta in particular. I'll then discuss challenges in assessing trade-offs as a common philosophy in conservation and natural resource management.
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Read his unpublished article Covid in Alberta
Ken Nickel, Our Longstanding Debt to the Unthinkable: God, Nothing, Necessity, and other Square Circles
Tuesday, October 19th, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Dr. Ken Nickel
Doctor of Philosophy, Western University
Ken’s eclectic academic background includes undergraduate studies in Kinesiology, a Seminary degree in Religion, a M.Sc., culminating in a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Western University in London, Ontario. Ken is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ambrose University, a Christian liberal arts college here in Calgary since 2003.
Our Longstanding Debt to the Unthinkable: God, Nothing, Necessity, and other Square Circles
Our greatest intellectual accomplishments in mathematics, science, philosophy, and indeed religion, are owing to the human capacity for creative and generative abstract thought. The birth of Philosophy occurred when our capacity for abstraction began attributing a special kind of reality to these seductive ideas unavailable to the senses. The ‘ontological impulse’ encouraged from Parmenides to Derrida tries to get us to believe there’s more to ‘nothing’ than meets the eye. Really? Possibly, there’s less. Is the answer to be found in ‘thinking again’?
Phil Hoffman, Ontology, Epistemology, Objectivity and Truth
Tuesday, October 5th, 2021, at 6:00 pm
Phillip Hoffmann
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Calgary and Apeiron Past President
Phillip Hoffmann holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Calgary and is a past president of the Apeiron Society. He is the author of three books, including Nothing So Absurd: An Invitation to Philosophy(Broadview Press, 2003). His philosophical interests focus primarily on metaphysics, the nature of truth and the interpretation of quantum mechanics. He currently dabbles in online philosophy tutoring and volunteer work for various organizations in Airdrie, Alberta.
Ontology, Epistemology, Objectivity and Truth
The claim I defend in this paper is as follows: a commitment to ontology—and to the pre-eminence of ontology over epistemology as our point of departure when we philosophize—is a necessary and sufficient condition for an objective (or realist) conception of truth to obtain, a conception of truth that I take to be explicitly ontological in nature. However, since the world owes us no favours, unfortunately we cannot assume that objective truth is guaranteed. Most of this paper will unpack my claim and outline arguments in its favour.
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phillip_hoffmann_.pdf