Symposia and Lectures

Fall 2025 Colloquium Series

October 24, 2025

Alison Peterman

Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Rochester

Location: Miner 224
3:30-5:30pm

Title: Cavendishian Acquaintance-First Epistemology

Abstract: Margaret Cavendish was a great 17th century English philosopher who had a strikingly naturalistic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. In the first part of this talk, I introduce my interpretation of Cavendish's system, which centers this naturalism, and runs counter to common interpretations of her as a panpsychist. The panpsychist reading comes in part from Cavendish's claim that every creature, from animals to plants to stones and planets, is knowing. So in the second section of the talk, I develop a Cavendishian account of knowledge on which everything is knowing but panpsychism is not entailed, and I try to motivate this account of knowledge with an eye to contemporary epistemological concerns.

November 07, 2025

Martin Gustafsson

Professor of Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University

Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm

Title: TBA

November 21, 2025

Shamik Dasgupta

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Berkeley

Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm

Title: TBA

Spring 2026 Colloquium Series

March 6, 2026

Chris Smeenk

Professor of Philosophy, Western University

Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm

Title: TBA

March 27, 2026

Wendy Parker

Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Tech

Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm

Title: TBA

April 10, 2026

Katie Creel

Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science, Northeastern University

Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm

Title: TBA