Previous Colloquia
Below is a partial list of colloquia the Department of Philosophy has hosted here on campus in West Lafayette, IN, dating back to 2005. These colloquia have covered various areas of research, topics, and themes within academic philosophy.
2025
Eric Margolis
University of British Columbia
Title: "The Rationalism-Empiricism Debate in the Twenty-First Century"
November 14th, 2025
Stephen Ogden
Notre Dame University
Title: "Where Are Our Thoughts When We're Not Thinking Them"
October 10th, 2025
Robert Talisse
Vanderbilt University
Title: "The Civic Value of Solitude"
September 26th, 2025
Gonzalo Rodrigues-Pereyra
University of Oxford
Title: "Moderate Truthmaker Non-maximalism Defended"
September 12th, 2025
Mark Moffett
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Title: "Comfort Around Strangers: The rutning point in human prehistory that made huge societies possible"
September 5th, 2025
Alan Hazlett
Washington University, St. Louis
Title: "Testimonial Desire"
April 18th, 2025
Natalia Washington
University of Utah
"Critiquing Values in Psychiatry: Prudential, Moral, and Epistemic"
February 28th, 2025
2024
Jennifer Nado
Universtiy of Hong Kong
Title: "Demarcating Conceptual Engineering from Mere Change in Belief"
December 6th, 2024
Elizabeth Jackson
St. Louis University
Title: "A Defense of Epistemic Ties"
November 8th, 2024
Steven Nadler
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Title: "Spinoza on the Unity of Virtues"
October 4th, 2024
Charlotte Witt
University of New Hampshire
Title: "The Artisanal Model for Social Role Normativity"
April 19th, 2024
Craig Callender
University of California, San Diego
Title: "When Is It Okay to Ban Research (Funding)"
April 12th, 2024
David Weins
University of California, San Diego
Title: "The Modeling Mindset: Why Political Philosophers Should Think More Like Game Theorists "
March 1st, 2024
Jeff Speaks
University of Notre Dame
Title: "Do propositions represent? If so, how?"
January 26th, 2024
2023
ROBERT AUDI
University of Notre Dame
Title: "Is This God's Country? Religion and Democracy in America"
March 23rd, 2023
JESSICA MOSS
New York University
Title: "Aristotle on Degrees of Knowledge, Truth, and Being"
March 31st, 2023
JOSHUA KNOBE
Yale University
Title: "The Psychological Representation of Norms"
April 14th, 2023
LYDIA PATTON
Virginia Tech
Title: "The Dynamics of Scientific Theories: Structural Change and Multimodal Frameworks"
April 28th, 2023
2022
AGNES CALLARD
University of Chicago
Title: "The City of Idiots"
October 14th, 2022
MARCIA BARON
Indiana University
Title: "Recklessness and Negligence in the Criminal Law"
October 21st, 2022
LAUREN OLIN
University of Missiouri
Title: "Housing Mirth"
December 2nd, 2022
2020
LARRY SHAPIROUniversity of Wisconsin
Title: "Rethinking the Unity of Science Hypothesis: Levels, Mechanisms, and Realization"
March 6th, 2020
ELIZABETH ANDERSON
University of Michigan
Title: "The Work Ethic: Its Origins, Legacy, and Future"
February 21st, 2020
KEITH R. KLUENDER
Purdue (Speech, Language, & Hearing Sciences)
Title: "Shannon Information as a Framework for Pragmatic Empiricism"
February 14th, 2020
2019
BERTHA MANNINENArizona State
Title: "A Pro-Choice Response to New York’s Reproductive Health Act"
November 15th, 2019
SHIEVA KLEINSCHMIDT
University of Southern California
Title: "Decompositional Plenitude"
November 8th, 2019
STEPHEN DARWALL
Yale
Title: "Why Obligations Can't be Bipolar (Directed) All the Way Down"
October 11th, 2019
KAREN NG
Vanderbilt
Title: "An Organic Model of Schematism: A Post-Kantian Approach to Kant’s Theory of Judgment"
September 27th, 2019
KEVIN CORCORAN (Calvin College) and JOHN WALDROP (UC-Irvine)
Title: "On The Relation Between The Mental and The Physical"
September 13th, 2019
DISTINGUISHED WOMAN FACULTY VISITOR
MEGHAN SULLIVAN
University of Notre Dame
Title: "The Love Imperative – Ethical and Rational Arguments for Why You Should Love Absolutely Everyone"
April 19th, 2019
ANTON FORD
University of Chicago
Title: "Perception in Action and Practical Reasoning"
April 5th, 2019
DUANE DAVIS
UNC Asheville
Title: "The Art of Revolutionary Praxis: Ghosting a History without Shadows"
March 22nd, 2019
2018
ANNE PETERSON
University of Utah
Title: "Aristotelian Explanation and the Biological Homology Concept"
November 30th, 2018
JEANINE DILLER
University of Toledo
Title: "Being Perfect is Not Necessary for Being God"
November 9th, 2018
DOMENICO BERTOLONI MELI
Indiana University
Title: "Early Modern Mechanisms"
October 26th, 2018
JENANN ISMAEL
Columbia University
Title: "What Does 'It All' Mean? Questions About the Logic, Metaphysics, and Physics of Totality"
October 19th, 2018
JOHN HAWTHORNE
University of Southern California
Title: "The Surprise Exam"
September 28th, 2018
JEFF BELL
Southeastern Louisiana University
Title: “Reading Problems: Literacy and the Dynamics of Thinking”
April 4th, 2018
VANESSA DE HARVEN
University of Massachusetts
Title: “The Distinctness of the Three Distinct Goods in Republic II”
March 23rd, 2018
Distinguished Woman Faculty Visitor
JESSICA WILSONUniversity of Toronto
Title: "On Characterizing the Fundamental"
March 9th, 2018
KEVIN HARRELSON
Ball State University
Title: "Intention and Empathy"
February 16th, 2018
2017
MYRON PENNER, Trinity Western University& AMANDA J. NICHOLS, Oklahoma Christian University
Title: “Resisting the Pessimistic Induction: Selective Scientific Realism and Truth-Transfer in Theories of Molecular Structure”
December 1st, 2017
ELIZABETH HARMAN
Princeton University
Title: “There is No Moral Ought and No Prudential Ought”
November 10th, 2017
CHRISTOPH COX
Hampshire College
Title: "Sound, Time, and Duration"
October 13th, 2017
ROBERT PIPPIN
University of Chicago
Title: “Hegel on Life as a Logical Category”
September 20th, 2017
KEVIN VALLIER
Bowling Green State University
Title: “Second-Personal Political Authority”
April 21st, 2016
Distinguished Woman Faculty Visitor
KAREN BENNETTCornell University
Title: "Part and Whole Revisited”
March 24th, 2016
ANDREW MOON
University of Notre Dame
Title: “Inconsistent Evidentialist Theses”
January 27th, 2016
2016
ERIK WIELENBERGDePauw University
Title: "Plantingian Theism and the Free Will Defense"
November 11th, 2016
ELEONORE STUMP
St. Louis University
Title: "The Openness of God: Eternity and Free Will"
October 14th, 2016
KYLA EBELS-DUGGAN
Northwestern University
Title: "Inarticulacy and Reasonable Commitments"
September 23rd, 2016
CHRISTOPHER SHIELDS
University of Notre Dame
Title: "A Series of Goods"
February 4th, 2016
2015
HELGA VARDENUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Title: "A Kantian Theory of Sexuality"
December 3rd, 2015
PETER CARRUTHERS
University of Maryland
Title: "The Conscious Mind as Marionette"
November 19th, 2015
KYLE STANFORD
University of California Irvine
Title: “Uniformitarianism, The Maddy/Wilson Principle, and a Middle Path Forward in the Scientific Realism Debate”
October 9th, 2015
LENNY CLAPP
Northern Illinois University
Title: "The Semantics and Pragmatics of Faultless Disagreement"
September 24th, 2015
MATHIAS FRISCH
University of Maryland
Title: "Causal Reasoning in Physics"
March 5th, 2015
2014
CARRIE ICHIKAWA JENKINSUniversity of British Columbia
Title: "What is Romantic Love? An Incomplete Map of the Metaphysics"
November 20th, 2014
SUSAN WOLF
University of North Carolina
Title: "Character and Responsibility"
Date: October 10th, 2014
ANDREAS DE BLOCK
University of Leuven
Title: "Homophobia and Essentialism: A Philosophical Evaluation of Recent Psychological Research on Homonegativity"
October 6th, 2014
CHRISTOPHER PINCOCK
The Ohio State University
Title: "Inference to the Best Explanation: A Modest Proposal"
September 11th, 2014
PAUL REDDING
University of Sydney
Title: "A Kantian Account of Modality without the Concept-Intuition Distinction? Problems Facing Brandom's 'Modal Kant-Sellars Thesis'”
April 24th, 2014
JOHN COOPER
Princeton University
Title: "Aristotelian Responsibility"
April 11th, 2014
L.A. PAUL
University of North Carolina
Title: "Transformative Experience"
March 6th, 2014
THOMAS POGGE
Yale University
Title: "Responsibility for Injustice"
February 27th, 2014
JOHN HARE
Yale University
Title: "Three Arguments for the Dependence of Morality upon Religion"
January 31st, 2014
2013
ANDREW GREGORYUniversity College London
Title: “Thomas Kuhn on Ancient Science”
November 7th, 2013
SARAH BUSS
University of Michigan
Title: "Personal Ideals, Rational Agency, and Moral Requirements"
October 17th, 2013
STEPHEN STICH
Rutgers University
Title: "Experimental Philosophy and the Bankruptcy of the Great Tradition"
April 12th, 2013
RACHEL ZUCKERT
Northwestern University
Title: "Kant's Hidden Antinomy of Practical Reason"
February 28th, 2013
RUSSELL JONES
Harvard University
Title: "Akrasia, Stability, and Epistemic Value in Plato?"
February 14th, 2013
ALEX ROSENBERG
Duke University
Title: "From Rational Choice to Reflexivity: Learning from Sen, Keynes, Hayek, Soros, and Most of All, from Darwin"
January 31st, 2013
GEORGE HARVEY
Indiana University Southeast
Title: "Virtue and Pre-Political Life in Plato's Laws III-IV"
January 17th, 2013
2012
RUTH CHANGRutgers University
Title: “Grounding Practical Normativity: Going Hybrid”
December 4th, 2012
CANDACE VOGLER
University of Chicago
Title: "Anscombe's Complaint"
November 1st, 2012
WILLIAM STEPHENS
Creighton University
Title: "Bugbear and Open Door Policy: Epictetus on Why Stoics Don't Fear Death"
October 11th, 2012
TERENCE CUNEO
University of Vermont
Title: "Noncausal Moral Explanations"
October 4th, 2012
JASON HILL
DePaul University
Title: "Towards a Cosmopolitan and Political Conception of Friendship"
September 13th, 2012
STEWART COHEN
University of Arizona
Title: "Self-Undermining Inference Rules"
August 31st, 2012
ROY SORENSEN
Washington University
Title: "Lying with Arguments"
August 30th, 2012
ROBERT KANE
University of Texas at Austin
Title: "Ethics and the Quest for Wisdom"
April 10th, 2012
TOM FLINT
University of Notre Dame
Title: "Freedom, Foreknowledge, and Keeping Dialectically Kosher"
April 5th, 2012
JOHN MARTIN FISCHER
University of California at Riverside
Title: "Responsibility and Autonomy: The Problem of Mission Creep"
March 20th, 2012
ELLIOT SOBER
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Title: "Instrumentalism: Old-School and New-Fangled"
February 24th, 2012
NIKOLAJ NOTTELMANN
University of Southern Denmark
Title: "Disagreement, Belief Revision, and Inference to the Best Explanation"
February 9th, 2012
2011
K. RAMAKRISHNA RAOAndhra University
Title: "The Mahatma: The Man and His Message"
Novermber 29th, 2011
RUSS SHAFER-LANDAU
University of Wisconsin
Title: "Genealogical Critiques of Moral Realism"
November 17th, 2011
PHIL DOWE
University of Queensland
Title: "Time Travel and Free Will"
November 10th, 2011
ELIZABETH FOREMAN
Saint Louis University
Title: "What's Wrong With Speciesism?"
September 8th, 2011
RICHARD GALVIN
Texas Christian University
Title: "The Practical Contradiction Interpretation Reconsidered"
April 21st, 2011
ANDREW CHIGNELL
Cornell University
Title: "Kant on Moral Miracles"
April 14th, 2011
STEVE WYKSTRA
Calvin College
Title: "(Why) Is(n't) Inductive Evidence Insensitive?"
April 7th, 2011
NICK HUGGETT
University of Illinois at Chicago
Title: "Why Do We Only Remember the Past"
March 3th, 2011
SUSAN BROWER-TOLAND
Saint Louis University
Title: "Medieval Theories of Consciousness: Ockham and Chatton on Higher-Order Perception"
January 27th, 2011
2010
PHIL DOWEUniversity of Queensland
Title: "Levels, Causation and Overdetermination
November 4th, 2010
CHRISTOPHER KELP
University of Leuven
Title: "Not Without Justification"
October 7th, 2010
ANDREW KOPPELMAN
Northwestern University
Title: "Religious Neutrality in American Law"
September 23rd, 2010
CAROLINA SARTORIO
University of Arizona
Title: "Forking Paths: Rethinking Dual Control"
April 22nd, 2010
JOHN DORIS
Washington University
Title: "A Natural History of the Self"
April 15th, 2010
MARK MURPHY
Georgetown University
Title: "Moral Law"
March 25th, 2010
DENNIS DES CHENE
Washington University
Title: "Versions of Substance in the Seventeenth Century"
March 4th, 2010
CHIEN-KUO (MICHAEL) MI
Soochow University
Title: "Saving Quine's Truth in His Semantic Ascent"
February 23rd, 2010
2009
ELEONORE STUMPSt. Louis University
Title: "Modes of Knowing: Autism, Fiction, and Second-person Perspectives"
November 12th, 2009
TOM BEAUCHAMP
Title: "From Morality to Common Morality"
Georgetown University
October 29th, 2009
MARILYN FISCHER
University of Dayton
Title: "Interpreting a Murder with Addams and Mead"
September 17th, 2009
VICTOR CASTON
University of Michigan
Title: "The Veil of Perception"
March 26th, 2009
PETER RAILTON
University of Michigan
Title: "Rationality in Belief and Desire"
March 5th, 2009
TIMOTHY O'CONNOR
Indiana University
Title: "Human Freedom and the Emerging Sciences of Brain and Behavior"
February 12th, 2009
2008
CHARLES TALIAFERROSt. Olaf College
Title: "The Virtues of Philosophy of Mind: Revisiting the So-called Naturalistic Fallacy"
November 13th, 2008
ALLEN WOOD
Indiana University
Title: "Kant and the Right to Lie"
October 17th, 2008
IRWIN TESSMAN
Purdue University (Biology Emeritus)
Title: "Evolution of Moral Behavior by Natural Selection"
October 2nd, 2008
JONATHAN LEAR
University of Chicago
Title: "Irony and Ethics"
September 25th, 2008
JOHN GRECO
St. Louis University
Title: "Epistemic Normativity"
September 11th, 2008
BRANDON LOOK
University of Kentucky
Title: "The Possibility of Nothingness: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives"
April 3rd, 2008
JOHN HEIL
Washington University
Title: “Relations"
February 28th, 2008
STEWART COHEN
Arizona State University
Title: "Knowledge Ascriptions and Semantic Blindness"
February 14th, 2008
2007
JOHN MARTIN FISCHERTitle: "Molinism"
TIBERIU POPA
Title: "Aristotle's Mind-Dependence Theory of Time"
ROBERT SINNERBRINK
Title: "Misrecognition as Moral Injury: Remarks on Honneth and Bernstein"
WENDY PARKER
Title: "Ensembles, Robustness and Adequacy: Predicting Future Climate with Collections of Incompatible Models"
PHIL DOWE
Title: "Localism and Possible Causation"
ION COPOERU
Title: "Does Morality Matter in Your Professional Life? Moral Actions and Ethical Reflections in a Post-Totalitarian Society"
JENNIFER LACKEY
Northern Illinois University
Title: "Trust and Testimony"
SAMUEL FLEISCHACKER
Universiy of Illinois at Chicago
Title: "What Exactly is a 'Right' to Welfare?"
2006
DAVID BRADSHAWUniversity of Kentucky
Title: "The Concept of Divine Energies"
PETER VAN INWAGEN
University of Notre Dame
Title: "The End is Nigh: An Adventure in Rational Eschatology"
ANDREW CUTROFELLO
Loyola University
Title: "Kant's Resistance to Sturm und Drang Enthusiasm for Hamlet"
PETER KEMP
Danish Pedagogical University, Coopenhagen
Title: "The Cosmopolitan Foundations of International Law"
BRIAN LEFTOW
University of Oxford (Oriel College)
Title: "God, Vagueness and Logical Truth"
JEAN-LUC
University of Chicago Divinity School
Title: "Saturation and Counter-Experience"
RICHARD SWINBURNE
University of Oxford (Oriel College)
Title: "God and Morality"
2005
SCOTT MACDONALD
Cornell University
Title: "Prudence: Aquinas on the Foundations of Virtue"
HUD HUDSON
Western Washington University
Title: "Extended Simples"
BARBARA HERMAN
University of California at Los Angeles
Title: "Reasoning to Obligation"
RICHARD SHUSTERMAN
Temple University
Title: "In Search of Aesthetic Experience"
MICHAEL MURRAY
Franklin and Marshall College
Title: "Theism and Animal Suffering"
2004
JACQUELINE MARIÑAPurdue University
Title: "The Refutation of Idealism"
ROBERT BRANDOM
University of Pittsburgh
Title: "The Structure of Desire and Recognition: Self-Consciousness and Self-Constitution"
JURGAN HABERMAS
J-W Goethe University
Title: "The Kantian Project of Cosmopolitan Law"
STEPHEN DARWELL
University of Michigan
Title: "Second-Personal Reasons and the Dignity of Persons"
ALVIN PLANTINGA
University of Notre Dame
Title: "Against Materialism"
STEPHEN NEALE
Rutgers University
Title: "Linguistic Pragmatism"
GISELA STRIKER
Harvard University
Title: "Plato and the Ontology of Aristotle's Categories"