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: Eaton 201
3:30-5:30pm
Title: Two Ways of Inheriting Frege
Abstract: In this paper, I identify two different ways of inheriting Frege. One is a broadly Quinean way, which sees Frege’s logicist project as an exercise in Quinean explication. The other is a broadly Wittgensteinian way, which emphasizes Frege’s conception of logical distinctions as distinctions that are radically different from mere differences in properties. My claim is not that one branch of inheritance is exegetically sounder than the other. Rather, my view is that the possibility of both branches of inheritance is indicative of certain important tensions in Frege’s work. I focus on one central moment in Frege’s thought, namely the notorious so-called Julius Caesar problem as it is discussed in Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Frege’s way of dealing with this problem – indeed, his sense that it constitutes a genuine problem at all encourages the Quinean branch of inheritance. The Wittgensteinians, by contrast, might here see a moment at which Frege’s better ideas should be turned against himself.
November 21, 2025
Shamik Dasgupta
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Berkeley
Location: TBA
3:30-5:30pm
Title: TBA
February 12, 2026
Anncy Thresher
Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Public Policy, Northeastern University
Location: TBA
4:00-6:00pm
Title: "Protecting Squirrels with Telescopes: Environmental Ethics, Physics Infrastructure, and the Importance of Local Expertise"
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