Anbar Lectures
2027
Ángel Pinillos
Title TBD
Friday April 9th, 2027, 3pm to 5pm
2026
Jennifer Morton
“The Scaffolds of Agency: Precarity, Security and the Social Contract”
Friday April 3rd, 3pm to 5pm in Eggers 010
Abstract: This lecture offers a Hobbes-inspired rethinking of the social contract. I argue that the fundamental task of political institutions is not solely redistribution but addressing precarity—understood as encompassing both insecurity and instability. Precarity undermines our capacity to prioritize our future-directed goals, both as individuals and collectively. And when people cannot reliably pursue valuable, future-directed individual and collective ends, the very foundations of the state are eroded. I distinguish between objective precarity, actual exposure to instability and insecurity, and subjective precarity, the subjective feeling of insecurity and instability. Both matter politically. Widespread feelings of precarity, even when they outstrip objective conditions, can destabilize our political community. I argue that a political theory focused narrowly on distributive inequality misses something fundamental. Addressing precarity requires that we move beyond a narrow concern with inequality and revisit the fundamental Hobbesian insight that security and stability are the precondition for the pursuit of our other political values.
2025
Derrick Darby
“Bayard Rustin and the Responsibilities of Political Organizing”
Friday April 11th, 3pm to 5pm in HB Crouse, Gifford Auditorium
Abstract: When building democratic political movements to address problems such as climate change, immigration, discrimination, gun violence, and war, we cannot ignore intra-and-intergroup identity differences. As a skilled political organizer, Bayard Rustin also learned that when our collective identities are scripted too tightly, which can happen by specifying their meaning in overly restrictive ways, we can become boxed in. My lecture examines how being boxed in can undermine the cooperation needed to address intractable social problems. It draws lessons from Rustin’s approach to political organizing to argue for a civic responsibility to search for heterogeneity among potential coalition partners as a component of breaking free. This lecture draws from my recent book with Eduardo J. Martinez, Boxed In: Making Identities Safe for Democracy.
2024
Kristie Dotson
“Dear Toni Morrison: Notes Towards a Sustainable, Black Sovereignty”
Friday April 5th (moved to zoom)
Abstract: My current book project is a collection of philosophical love letters to notable, infamous and/or unknown Black women in the United States. Tentatively entitled, Love Politic, it is a Black feminist world building project. Each letter in this volume tackles some topic that emerges periodically as part of existing as a Black woman in the United States of America. The letter I will present for this lecture is to Toni Morrison. In it, I ask and explore the question, “What does a sustainable, Black sovereignty look like here?” This is a question Morrison devoted a great deal of her work to exploring. In this letter, I sketch an intergenerational “dream session” between Morrison and myself about questions concerning a Black sovereignty on this land.
2023
Seyla Benhabib
"Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered"
Friday, March 31st
3pm, HL 500
Abstract:
The intense interest in cosmopolitanism in the social and political sciences, cultural and legal studies dates back to the last two decades of the 20th century. By the beginning of the new century, cosmopolitanism had fallen on hard times. Not only political developments but philosophical critiques as well have cast doubt upon cosmopolitanism. Martha Nussbaum’s recent book, The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, heralds a retreat back from cosmopolitan universalism to liberal nationalism. Post-colonial critiques also reject cosmopolitanism for being complicit in European imperialism. In Sylvia Wynter’s words, how can we unsettle the coloniality of being and power, truth and freedom? I will argue that it is possible to defend a ‘cosmopolitanism from below’ that is sensitive to post-colonial critiques without falling back to liberal nationalism.
2021
John Corvino
"Punching the Nazi: On Civility and Its Limits"
Friday, April 16, 2021
4:00 pm via Zoom
Abstract:
Civility is normally understood to be a virtue. Punching someone is a paradigmatically uncivil act. Yet most people agree that Nazis should be punched. (Here, you may take “punching the Nazi” as a metaphor for any ostensibly uncivil act toward someone who ostensibly deserves it.)
Should we conclude, therefore, that some virtues are optional when dealing with Nazis? Or should we rethink civility, either by denying that it is a virtue or by denying that punching Nazis is uncivil? What is civility for, and what are its limits?
In this talk I propose some tentative answers to these questions by examining civility’s relationship to both moral virtue and community standards.
John Corvino is Dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College and Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University. He is the author or co-author of several books, including most recently Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (with Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis; Oxford University Press, 2017). An active "public philosopher," he has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, and other popular venues, and his YouTube videos have received nearly three million views.
2019
Anita L. Allen
Privacy and Ethics in the Digital Age
Friday, March 29, 2019, 4:00 pm, 500 Hall of Languages
Abstract: Digital ethics is emerging as a field of practical or applied philosophy. Digital ethics are an occasion for exploring how, in relation to digital technology, the lives, interests and welfare of others make claims on us. The Digital Society is remaking the fields of commerce, education, public health, and everything else.What should be our goals be in relation to technology and innovation? How should we live our lives in the world shaped by social media, the internet of things, and AI?While big data analytics, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things produce ample benefits, they also raise threats of surveillance, discrimination and profiling. These forces potentially erode human dignity, autonomy, privacy, equality and freedom. Who is responsible for protecting these essential values?
2018
S. Matthew Liao
The Moral Status and Rights of Artificial Intelligence
Friday, May 4, 2018, 4:00 pm, 500 Hall of Languages
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more capable. In 2016, Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo played five games of Go against the 18-time world champion Lee Sedol, and AlphaGo won four out of five games, marking the first time a machine had defeated the world’s best player at this ancient game. More recently, a more sophisticated version of AlphaGo, which learned Go by playing against itself, beat AlphaGo 100 games to 0, after only four hours of training, demonstrating that AIs can learn at a rapid speed, unsupervised. As AIs acquire greater capacities, the issue of whether AIs would acquire greater moral status becomes salient. In particular, could AIs achieve human-level moral status and be rightholders? If AIs could be rightholders, what rights would they have? Could AIs have greater than human-level moral status? The goal of this talk is to provide a theoretical framework for thinking about these questions.
2017
Adina Roskies
Free Will in the Age of Neuroscience
Friday, January 20, 2017, 4:00 pm, 500 Hall of Languages
Abstract: Philosophers have long struggled with the problem of free will; more recently neuroscientists have claimed to be able to speak to this longstanding problem. I review some of the recent work in neuroscience that purports to bear on the problem of free will, and argue that although neuroscience can contribute to our understanding, it cannot resolve the problem of free will without recourse to philosophy.
2014
The Best Things in Life
Sunday, October 26, 2014, 7:00 pm, Temple Adath Yeshurun, 450 Kimber Road, Dewitt, New York
This presentation asks what aspects of our lives are good in themselves, or by themselves make life worth living. Against those philosophers who've argued that there's just one ultimate good, often pleasure or knowledge, it argues that there are many, including pleasure, knowledge, achievement, virtue, and love. It also discusses what each good involves and what makes it valuable.
'More Seriously Wrong'
Monday, October 27, 2014, 1:00 pm, 304 Tolley Building, Syracuse University (reception to follow)
Common-sense morality thinks that among acts that are wrong some are more seriously wrong than others; thus murder is more seriously wrong than breaking a trivial promise. This paper examines what makes an act more seriously wrong and argues that the answer is different for different types of wrong act. It also asks whether there's a parallel concept of more important rightness.
2013
Does Neuroscience Undermine Moral Responsibility?
Sunday September 29, 2013, 7:00 pm, Temple Adath Yeshurun, 450 Kimber Road, Dewitt, New York
Many religions claim that humans at least sometimes have free will and are morally responsible. Neuroscience is often seen as challenging these assumptions. However, when free will and responsbility are properly understood, neuroscience does not really undermine free will or responsibility in general. Instead, what neuroscience challenges is only responsibility in particular cases, which are fascinating and important but do not generalize to all human action.
Are Psychopaths Morally Responsible?
Monday September 30, 2013, 4:00 pm, 500 Hall of Languages, Syracuse University
Psychopaths are less than 1% of the general population but commit over 30% of violent crime in the United States. In addition to these practical problems, psychopaths also raise fascinating theoretical issues about the limits of human nature and morality. In particular, we need to determine whether psychopaths are morally responsible, which depends in part on whether they appreciate the moral wrongfulness of what they do. Recent scientific research has revealed surprising facts about psychopaths and their moral judgments, and these discoveries point to new ways to handle and treat psychopaths.
Both events are free and open to the public, and are presented in conjunction with SU’s Department of Philosophy and College of Arts and Sciences.
Contact Roberta Hennigan, rhenniga@syr.edu, 315-443-4501 for further information.