Conferences and Workshops

Artificial Consciousness Mini-Workshop

This half-day mini-workshop asking should we pursue artificial consciousness?

Bristol Value Theory Workshop 2023

This one-day workshop was an opportunity to hear about and discuss some of the research currently underway in the philosophy department, with a focus on value theory (very broadly construed to include all of ethics, political and social philosophy, aesthetics, epistemology, the histories of these subjects, and more).

Bristol/KCL-Logic Meeting

This one-day workshop aimed to give young logicians from the University of Bristol and King’s College London the opportunity to present and discuss their work.

British Logic Colloquium Annual Meeting

Annual conference of the BLC, which exists to support, promote, and foster the study of logic. This three-day conference was joint hosted by the mathematics department. 

Working with Truth

A workshop following the BLC Annual Meeting, studying recent work on formal theories of truth. 

Grounding and Metaphysical Explanation Workshop

Two day event https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grounding-and-metaphysical-explanation-workshop-2024-tickets-920129601407

The fitness concept in evolutionary biology: philosophical and scientific aspects

A two-day event by the Representing Evolution project studying the concept of fitness in evolutionary biology from philosophical and scientific perspectives

Silence and psychopathology workshop

One-day exploring the different faces of silence in psychopathology.

Theory, Equivalence, and Interpretation in Logic, Mathematics, and Science

This one-day conference brings together scholars focused on formal theories in logic, mathematics and the sciences. 

The Orientation of Reason: Léon Brunschvicg on Philosophy, Mathematics, and the Sciences

This one-day workshop gathers researchers to promote the historical and philosophical research on Brunschvicg’s work, as well as broader investigation into this period of French philosophy and into the French tradition in the philosophy and history of the sciences.

Departmental Research Seminar

The department research seminar is our central weekly event covering topics across the discipline.

• Alex Grzankowski (Birkbeck) - Do Emotions Represent Values and How Can We Tell?
• Alfred Archer (Tilburg) -
• Ali Boyle (LSE) - Comparative Cognition: Unlucky for Some?
• Ana-Maria Cretu (Bristol) - Human Computers as Instruments
• Andreas Mogensen (Oxford) - Welfare and Felt Duration
• Charlotte Unruh (Southampton) - Letting Machines Do Harm
• Chris Scrambler (Oxford) - Modal Logicism
• Daniel Burnston (Tulane) - A reductive approach to decision making
• David Corfield (Kent) - Type-Theoretic Expressivism
• Emanuele Ratti (Bristol) - Science and values: a two-way direction
• Eric Winsberg (Cambridge)
• Ethan Nowak (Cardiff) - Linguistic agency and the poetics of conversation
• George Stamets (Bristol) - Properties and Powers: A Neo-Aristotelian Intervention
• Heather Browning (Southampton) - Conceptual Engineering for Animal Welfare
• Helen Beebee (Leeds) - Does causation come in degrees?
• Helen Steward (Leeds) - Knowing We’re Free
• Isobel Falconer (Edinburgh) -
• Jennifer Corns (Glasgow) - Suffering beyond experience
• Joe Slater (Glasgow) - Lookism, Juries and Deliberation
• Kevin Blackwell (Bristol) - The Two-Envelope Paradox Resolved with Imprecise Probabilities
• Lea Cantor (Oxford) - Uttering the One: A Platonic and Zhuangzian argument against numerical monism
• Martin Sticker (Bristol) - Was the Marking and Assessment Boycott Immoral? (No ... but it's complicated)
• Matthew Ratcliffe (York) - Emotional Experience and Self-Integration
• Michael Plant (Oxford and the Happier Lives Institute) -
• Mike Stuart (York) - How scientists took a page from Virginia Woolf: Philosophy of science meets the epistemology of genre
• Mona Simion (Glasgow) - The Epistemology and Semantics of Ignorance
• Ric Arthur (McMaster) -
• Ross Pain (Bristol) -
• Shuk Ying Chan (UCL) - On Knowledge Appropriation and Intellectual Property
• Stephan Guttinger (Exeter) - Beyond opacity: the challenge of automated research
• Wouter Peeters (Birmingham) - Legitimacy criteria for private voluntary carbon offsetting

Further Research Seminars

The department organises various research seminars on specialised topics. These are open to everyone, but can be more focused than our general departmental research seminar.

• Aidan McGlynn (Glasgow): Hermeneutical Marginalisation and the Possibility of Incidental Hermeneutical Injustice
• Kevin Dorst (MIT) - Clarity and Ambiguity
• Koshka Duff (Nottingham) 'Strip-searching as Abjectification: Racism and Sexual Violence in British Policing'
• Philosophy of Physics Lecture - Nick Huggett
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Antonis Antoniou (Bonn), Making sense of Laws Initial Conditions in Cosmology
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Caspar Jacobs (Leiden)
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Dominic Ryder (LSE), The Idealization Paradox in Hawking Radiation
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Giulia Rubino (Bristol), Indefinite quantum causality: an experimental perspective
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Henrique Gomes (Oxford), The Many-instants interpretation of quantum mechanics
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Jonte Hance (Hiroshima University), Contextuality, Coherences, and Quantum Cheshire Cats
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Lucy Mason (KCL), Emergence in the Information Framework
• Philosophy of Physics Seminar: Nicola Bamonti (Scuola Normale Superiore), What is a reference frame in General Relativity
• Philosophy of Science Seminar: AI and Chemistry, Craig Butts (School of Chemistry, University of Bristol)
• Philosophy of Science Seminar: Sabina Leonelli (ExeterA Reformed Empiricism for 21st Century Research
• Philosophy of Science Seminar: Tushar Menon (Dianoia Institute ACU), The Inferentialist Guide to Scientific Realism.
• Robert Chapman talk on neurodiversity [In-person]
• Roberto Fumagalli - A Defence of Informed Preference Satisfaction Theories of Welfare
• The Problem of Time: from Leibniz to Quantum Gravity
• The Problem of Time: from Leibniz to Quantum Gravity
• The Problem of Time: from Leibniz to Quantum Gravity
• The Problem of Time: from Leibniz to Quantum Gravity

Work in Progress Sessions

Work in progress sessions provide a platform for sharing ongoing research and receiving feedback.

Departmental Work In Progress Seminar

• Ross Pain
• Anthony Everett
• Kevin Blackwell
• Kevin Blackwell
• Max Jones
• Richard Pettigrew
• Guest Tomasz Steifer
• George Boss - Needs as claims
• George Stamets - An argument for substance causation
• James Ladyman - WTF (is empiricism)
• Jason Konek - The Value of Incomparability
• Karim Thebault - Decoherence and Quasi-Probability
• Stephen Mann - Relational explanation in causal models

Postgraduate Work In Progress Seminar

• Fergus Smiles
• Jonathan Fay
• Alex Hepburn
• Dave Barker
• Eoin Perry
• Flavia Pepi
• Fred Mathews
• Fred Matthews
• George Alexandeou
• Giacomo Molinari
• João Pinheiro
• João Pinheiro
• Jonathan Faye
• Oliver Clark
• Oliver Hurcum
• Oliver Hurcum
• Oscar Greaves
• Shaun Stanley
• Shaun Stanley
• Simone Picenni
• Teodor Calinoiu
• Teodor Calinoiu
• Tom Lee
• Tom Lee
• Xianrui Liu
• Spreaker: Calum Sims
• XMas WiP

Draft in Progress

• Draft in Progress session: Dan Degerman

Reading Groups

Reading groups offer an informal setting for participants to discuss literature and research papers in a specific area of interest.

Regular reading groups:

• Empire of normality reading group
• EPIMP Reading Group
• Imagination, Skills and Virtue Reading Group
• Objectivity Reading Group
• Political Philosophy Reading Group
• Representing evolution reading group

Further ad hoc reading sessions:

• Jonas, "The Phenomenon of Life" Reading Group
• Chapman reading group