The (Vexed & Contentious) History of Autonomy

Here is the announcement for our first big EAP conference in September. I am hugely excited about it given the topic and the awesome list of speakers.

The Essex Autonomy Project is pleased to announce its first major international conference, ‘The (Vexed & Contentious) History of Autonomy,’ taking place at The Institute of Philosophy, London, 4-5th September 2010. This event is part of a series interrogating the ideal of self-determination in human affairs. The conference will investigate the turbulent history of the notion of autonomy, from the Greeks to modernity.

The line-up of speakers is as follows:

Katerina Deligiorgi (University of Sussex)

Axel Honneth (University of Frankfurt)

Terence Irwin (University of Oxford)

David McNeill (University of Essex)

Frederick Neuhouser (Columbia University)

Thomas Pink (King’s College London)

Robert Pippin (University of Chicago)

John Skorupski (University of St Andrews)

Further information and a full programme will be available shortly at http://www.essex.ac.uk/autonomy/events.htm

Attendance is free but places are strictly limited and advanced registration is required. To register, please send an e-mail to Helen Cook at autonomy@essex.ac.uk

The Essex Autonomy Project is based in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Essex. For more information on its work and for announcements of future events, see its webpages at http://www.essex.ac.uk/autonomy

Workshop on Autonomous Judgement

Details of the inaugural workshop for the Essex Autonomy Project (on which I am the postdoctoral research officer) below.

The Essex Autonomy Project is pleased to announce the opening event in its three-year research initiative, ‘Deciding for Oneself: Autonomous Judgement in History, Theory and Practice’. The aim of the research is to advance theoretical understanding of the capacity for autonomous judgement and to provide orientation to those who must navigate its complexities in social, medical and legal practice.

AUTONOMOUS JUDGEMENT
Challenges and Strategies

The Essex Autonomy Project
Inaugural Workshop (21-22 May, 2010)

Participation is free but seating is limited; advanced registration is required. To register, send an email to autonomy@essex.ac.uk . Full details of the event can be found at: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~autonomy/events.html

Programme:

Day One : Friday, 21 May, 2010
Location: Senate Room (4.722, off Square 1), University of Essex Campus

11:00-11:30: Welcome and Overview of the Research Project Prof. Wayne Martin (Principal Investigator; Dept. of Philosophy, University of Essex)

11:30-13:00: Philosophical Models of Autonomy: An Overview Dr. Joel Anderson (Dept. of Philosophy, Utrecht University)

13:00-14:30: Lunch. Network Centre Foyer, 1N1.3.3.

14:30 – 15:45: The Mental Capacity Act and the Mental Health Act Prof. Genevra Richardson (School of Law, King’s College London)

15:45-17:00: The Law of Consent
Dr. Sabine Michalowski (School of Law, Essex University)

17:00-17:15: Coffee

17:15 – 18:30: The Clinical Assessment of Capacity.
Prof. Matthew Hotopf (Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry)

Day Two : Saturday, 22 May, 2010
Location: Wivenhoe Sailing Club

9:30-10:00 Coffee

10:00 – 11:15: Assessment of Capacity in Social Welfare Contexts Graham Sharp (Welfare Rights Officer, Suffolk County Council)

11:15-12:30: What Can We Learn About Autonomy From the Case of Anorexia Nervosa?
Dr. Jacinta Tan (Centre for Philosophy, Law and Humanities in Health Care, Swansea University)

12:30-14:00 Lunch

Warwick Transcendental Realism Workshop

Apologies for it being so quiet around here recently: I’m in the process of finishing my thesis, starting my new job at the University of Essex, and getting ready to move house. I thought I’d post this announcement for a workshop that I’ll be speaking at next month alongside Pete Wolfendale (Deontologisitcs) Nick Srnicek (Speculative Heresy / The Accursed Share), Reid Kotlas (Planomenology) and James Trafford. Ray Brassier will be headlining, giving a longer paper to the Warwick Colloquium in European Philosophy. Hopefully, I’ll be able to develop some of the sketchy thoughts about realism and correlationism which I posted on here last year, especially in relation to Meillassoux. Drop Pete an e-mail if you’d like to come along.

Warwick Transcendental Realism Workshop

Time: Tuesday 11th of May, 12:00pm (registration) – 7:00pm

Location: University of Warwick, LIB2 and S0.11

Organised by Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, in conjunction with the Research Group in Post-Kantian European Philosophy

The purpose of the workshop is to examine the arguments underlying the increasing push towards realism in parts of modern continental philosophy, along with approaches that bridge the analytic/continental divide, and to assess the possibility of transcendental approaches to realism within this context. Particular themes that we be focused upon include:-

– The arguments of Quentin Meillassoux, and the possibility of transcendental responses to the problems he raises.

– The relation between epistemology and ontology.

– The relation between philosophy and the natural sciences.

The event will be split into two parts. The first part will take place in LIB2 (in the university library building) from 12:30pm to 5:00pm, which will consist in five papers presented by graduate students on matters relevant to the topic, along with discussion. The second part will be the headline talk, given by Ray Brassier, which will take place in S0.11 (in the social studies building) from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, under the auspices of the department’s regular Colloquium in European Philosophy.

Speakers

Ray Brassier (Philosophy, American University of Beirut) – ‘Kant and Sellars: Nominalism, Realism, Naturalism’

James Trafford (Philosophy, Unaffiliated) – ‘Follow the Evidence: Realism, Epistemology, Semantics’

Reid Kotlas (Philosophy Grad Student, Dundee) – ‘From Transcendental to Abstract Realism: Epistemology after Marx’

Nick Srnicek (International Relations PhD Student, LSE) – ‘Extending Cognition: Bridging the Gap between Actor-Network Theory and Scientific Realism’

Tom O’Shea (Philosophy PhD Student, Sheffield) – ‘On the Very Idea of Correlationism’

Pete Wolfendale (Philosophy PhD Student, Warwick) – ‘Objectivity, Reality, and the In-Itself: From Deflationary to Transcendental Realism’

The workshop is free to attend, but please email pete.wolfendale ‘at’ gmail.com to register in advance, or to request any further information.

The New World

Philosophy Department at NYU.

At the end of the month, I will be travelling to New York and New England for a few weeks. Whilst there, I would like to fit in at least some philosophy — not least because the hard-boiled temperaments of American grad students have made me curious about the intellectual climate there. I’ll be travelling with my housemate (a non-philosopher), and our rough schedule is as follows: NYC 26-28th Oct; The Adirondacks 29th Oct-3rd Nov; Boston 4th-7th Nov; NYC 8th-13th Nov. I know there’s various things happening in the area around then (only some of it I can catch):

Charles Larmore seminar, NYC, 5th Nov
Jonathan Lear, Tanner Lectures, Cambridge, MA, 4th-6th Nov
The Foundations of Morality Conference, NYC, 6-7th Nov

If there’s any other philosophy events which you think I might be interested in, then it would be great if you could let me know. And anything else besides too (post-punk gigs, riot grrrl nights, modernist art exhibitions…) would be helpful, though I don’t imagine being at a loss for things to do.

Inside/Outside Conference

I’m a little behind the curve with this announcement; nevertheless, Martin Shuster, a grad student from Johns Hopkins, has asked me to let you all know about the following conference:

Inside/Outside

an interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference
hosted by the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University

April 2nd and 3rd, 2009

Keynote Speakers: Espen Hammer (University of Oslo/Essex) and Terry Pinkard (Georgetown University)

Foregrounding the relationship inside/outside, this conference seeks to consider the effects of this pervasive structuring relation across philosophy, literature, the human sciences, politics, and the arts. What work does this distinction do? How do we understand its ubiquity? Furthermore, what is our contemporary relation to this (perceived?) opposition: do we overcome, dissolve, ignore, work through, maintain, or dialectically negotiate this relationship? Papers exploring these and related questions are welcome.

Some suggestions: scheme and content, content and form, mind and world, interiority and exteriority, self and other, inclusion and exclusion, human and inhuman, literary, aesthetic, and political strategies and figures, historical investigations and genealogies, theological figurations and disfigurations, contemporary philosophical approaches (“continental” and “analytic”) to this question, etc.

Please send full papers (for a 45 minute presentation), abstract (300 words max.), and contact information (including institutional affiliation) to insideoutsideconference@gmail.com

Deadline for all submissions is January 15th, 2009.

www.insideoutsideconference.com