Semester 2, 2024-25

For Semester 2, 2024-25, we are pleased to present the following series of lectures as part of the Boole Lectures in Philosophy:

• January 21st 2025, 1300-1500, "Shtepps" (The Hub): Kenneth Shockley (Colorado State): Environmental Harm, What Could it Be?
  • Abstract: Can coral reefs, and not just the polyps or the living things that depend on those reefs, be harmed by climate change? As many of the features of the environment do not have interests or well-being, it does not seem possible to harm them. Appeals to environmental harm are often taken to be mistaken, or to involve an illicit form of projection or moralizing. In this paper I suggest that the attitude toward the object harmed is part of the very nature of environmental harm. I argue that a fitting-attitude approach to harm, according to which harm is appropriately attributed to features in the environment to the extent that it is appropriate to have an attitude of concern for the object harmed, provides a sound foundation for environmental harm.
• February 26th 2025, 1500-1700, CACSSS Seminar Room: Cian Dorr (New York University): The Multiplicity of Meaning
  • Abstract: : In this talk I will defend the view that almost invariably, when one asserts something, one simultaneously asserts enormously many very similar things.  More generally, a wide range of familiar "intentional" relations - including asserting, meaning, believing, knowing, expressing, and referring to - work in a similarly pluralistic way: almost always, anything that stands in one of these relations to an item of the appropriate sort stands in the same relation to enormously many items very similar to that one.  I will argue for this thesis by sketching how the pluralist view solves several otherwise intractable problems, including the Liar Paradox as well as some less familiar puzzles about variation of meaning across nearby possible worlds. 
• March 26th, 2025, 1500-1700, CACSSS Seminar Room: Lukas Meyer (University of Graz): Intergenerational Justice. Needs-based Sufficientarianism in the Context of Climate and Historical Justice.
  • Abstract: I will defend the idea of intergenerational justice in a programmatic way. In doing so I identify some elements of a plausible conception of intergenerational justice. The possibility of future non-contemporaries having claim rights vis-a-vis currently living people can be justified against major objections on the basis of the interest theory of moral rights. In response to the non-identity problem, the threshold notion of harm can serve as a central element in understanding what people currently living owe to both future people and victims of historical injustice. Not only can future people, who do not yet exist, have claim rights vis-à-vis people living today, but people can also have historical claims, e.g. for compensation for the harmful consequences of injustice committed against other people who may be dead today. The needs-based sufficiency approach offers a plausible substantive interpretation of the justice claims of future people. Sufficiency can be shown to be a plausible intergenerational justice principle. The ability to meet basic needs is an appropriate intergenerational justice currency that allows the idea of a sufficiency threshold to be defended against key objections. A substantive threshold for harm will also inform what is owed to indirect victims of historical injustice. However, basic needs sufficientarianism only addresses some questions of intergenerational ethics and only minimal demands of intergenerational justice are justified. Additional and other ethical and legal considerations are relevant for understanding many complex issues in both climate and historical justice. These include why we ought to be concerned about there being future people, how to determine the fair distribution of benefits and burdens of transformation to, e.g., climate neutrality among countries and among members of political societies, what is owed in regard to historical injustices as such, independently of their possibly lasting consequences.

All are welcome!

For more details (including abstracts of the talks and other information), please check our Social Media channels: https://linktr.ee/ucc_philosophy