A weekly seminar for Philosophy postgraduates to present their in-progress work, followed by a well-spirited trip to the pub for food and drinks.
Useful Info
The WIP provides a risk-free and supportive space for postgraduates to present their work and receive feedback from other graduates and faculty.
When: Every Thursday (5pm to 6:15pm)
Where: Room S1.50 (Social Sciences Building, First Floor)
What: 30-minute presentation, followed by Q&A.
Attendance optional but highly recommended. All postgraduates are welcome to present or attend -- whether MA, MPhil, PhD, Visitors, etc.
馃搮 Format
Presentation: 30 minutes
Open Discussion / Q&A: 30 minutes
Material: Anything, really -- assessed essay (for MAs), a supervision essay (for MPhils), or a thesis section (for PhDs), ...
Style: Flexible -- slides, handouts, or simply talking.
Audience: No prior reading or background knowledge expected. Visiting PhDs
should
can present.
馃 Should I present? ("I have nothing to present; I hate public speaking; etc.")
Are you a postgraduate? Then yes, you should present.
In other words, all graduates are encouraged to present at least once.
The WIP is a unique opportunity for graduates to develop their public speaking / writing skills, take risks, test out theses, and get constructive feedback from peers.*
Presentations need not (in fact, should not) be watertight or polished pieces at all. You are encouraged to present work at all stages of the writing process -- first drafts, substantial sets of notes, etc.
Simply signing up for a date is a great way to give yourself a deadline to work towards. (This is what most people do.)
Term 1
Wk 1 (09/10) | Tiago Rodrigues (MPhil)"Can you know the value of parenthood before having a child?"Wk 2 (16/10) | David Lopez Baeza (MPhil)"Internalism About Reasons and the Tutelage of Experience"Wk 3 (23/10) | Shaun Clamp (MPhil)"Testing the Limits of Feeling and Form: Reappraising Langer's Aesthetic Theory in Light of the Poetic Sublime"Wk 4 (30/10) | 陌smail Deniz Demirkan (PhD)"Incompleteness of the Philosopher King: G枚del and the Concept of Truth in Politics"Wk 5 (06/11) | Alicia Klemm Silva (MPhil)"Frege on Sense and Reference"Wk 6 (13/11) | n/a
>> NO WIP DUE TO READING WEEK <<
Wk 7 (20/11) | Ben Long (MPhil)"Knowledge Through Alchemy?"Wk 8 (27/11) | Dmitry Sereda (Visiting PhD)"No Surrender? Capital Flight, Tax Competition, and Egalitarian Taxation Reforms"Wk 9 (04/12) | Jos茅 Xarez (Visiting PhD)"Free-Will Scepticism, Desert, and the Justification of Punishment"Wk 10 (11/12) | Emily Boocock (PhD)
** CANCELLED **
Term 2
Wk 1 (15/01) | Juyong Kim (PhD)"Hegel's Intersubjective Logic: Hegel and the Possibility of a New Social Ontology?"Wk 2 (22/01) | Emma Clinton (MPhil)
** CANCELLED **
Wk 3 (29/01) | Harland Cossons (UG)"Gareth Evans on Proper Names: An Interpretation"Wk 4 (05/02) | Emily Boocock (PhD)
"Support and Legitimation of Extremist Acts"
Wk 5 (12/02) | Evgenia Sonnabend (Visiting PhD)"The Relation of Logic to Realphilosophie in G.W.F. Hegel"Wk 6 (19/02) | n/a
>> NO WIP DUE TO READING WEEK <<
Wk 7 (26/02) | Mirko Prokop (Visiting PhD)"Reading Grice with Merleau-Ponty: Intention and the Foundations of Creative Expression"Wk 8 (05/03) | Simon Courtenage (PhD)"How to Make a Self"Wk 9 (12/03) | Lumeng Liu (PhD)
** CANCELLED **
Wk 10 (19/03) | Tiago Rodrigues (MPhil)"Lib Epistemology: Can We Make Coherent Sense of Political Liberals?"
Term 3
Wk 1 (30/04) | Fridolin Neumann (PhD)
Heidegger鈥檚 Realism and His Appropriation of Kant
Wk 2 (07/05) | Ignacio Pe帽a (PhD)
Intentions and Behaviourist Theories of Consent
Wk 3 (14/05) | Alin Simon (MA)
** TBC **
Wk 4 (21/05) | Joe Horspool (MPhil)
** TBC **
Wk 5 (28/05) | Tom Geeson (PhD)
** TBC **
Wk 6 (04/06) | Rozemin Keshvani (PhD)
** TBC **
Wk 7 (11/06) | Leo Deng (MA)
** TBC **
Wk 8 (18/06) | Oscar Jenkinson (MA)
** TBC **
Wk 9 (25/06) | Chris Hall (PhD)
** TBC **
Wk 10 (02/07) | Anpeng Liu (MA)
** TBC **
鉁嶏笍 Guidance for Presenters
What can I present?
Any kind of in-progress work (within reason). E.g. Drafts of assessed essays, thesis sections, writing samples, conference papers, project outline, ...
Recommended Length
Aim for 3,000 to 4,000 words. Anything closer to the 5,000-word mark will be hard to fit in the 30-minute presentation time.
Presentation Structure
Presenters have complete liberty with regards to how to structure their presentation: handout, slideshow, etc.
Worth noting a common pitfall: spending too much time on background/exposition and not having enough time to present your main thesis and argument.
A good rule of thumb: aim for 10 minutes of exposition, and 20 minutes for whatever parts you actually want feedback on.
Submission Deadline
Presenters should email title and abstract to the organisers by the Sunday before their presentation. E.g. If presenting Thurs Week 5, email us by then end of Sunday Week 4.
Title: 'Perceptual Self-Knowledge and Doxastic Self-Determination'
Abstract. According to a widely held view of the nature of belief (which I label the Activity thesis, AT), beliefs belong to the 鈥榓ctive side鈥� of the human mind. In this paper I explore a challenge to AT. I argue that reflection on the distinctive immediacy of perceptual knowledge, as we ordinarily understand it, puts pressure on an assumption informing AT, viz. that reasons for belief can always coherently be treated as a basis for 鈥榤aking up one鈥檚 mind鈥�. Our best reasons for perceptual beliefs, I suggest, manifestly entail that we hold the belief they support, and so imply that our minds are already made up. (For example, one's best reason for believing that p may be 'I can see that p'.) I do not mean to suggest that perceptual beliefs should therefore be classified as belonging to the 'passive side' of the human mind. Rather, I think we should question the exhaustiveness (and perhaps usefulness) of the active vs passive distinction, as it has been employed in the philosophy of mind.
