Ongoing (and past) Reading and Work-Groups

Metaphyiscs and Epistemology Reading Group

The department of philosophy has a growing M&E Reading Group, whose activities will be announced on this page. Anyone interested in Metaphysics and Epistemology and prepared to do the reading for this group is welcome to contact Sanford Goldberg for details about how to participate.

Summer 2008

Material:

Over the summer, there will be a group reading Quassim Cassam's THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWLEDGE.

Time:

TBA

Location: TBA.

 

Law, Philosophy, and Religion Working Group

The philosophy department participates in the working group on law, religion, and philosophy, which will meet quarterly for lunch at the Allen Center. The group is jointly funded by the provost's office and the law school. Its purpose is to bring together people from different disciplines with a common interest in the normative issues raised by law.

The working group is set up because there is a set of concerns about law, justice, and the aspirations of collective life in the modern state that lie at the intersection of moral philosophy, religious ethics, literary theory, political science, law, economics, history, philosophy, and medicine, to take only the most obviously relevant disciplines. Scholars in these disparate fields are often working on a single set of problems. Our hope is to enhance their inquiry by broadening the conversation. The working group intends to create the opportunity for our faculty from diverse disciplines to influence, and to help, one another.
 
The group is set to meet for lunch once a quarter, and to discuss a single paper written by a member of the Northwestern faculty.

Fall 2007

The first meeting will take place

on Friday, Oct. 12, 2007, at 1200noon, at the Allen Center.

The paper will be “Does Obscenity Cause Moral Harm?”, by Prof. Andrew Koppelman of the Law School . It is available at http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/fulltime/koppelman/moralharm.pdf .

Future papers, we hope, will be the work of Northwestern faculty who are working on issues that they think will be of interest to an interdisciplinary group such as this. If anything you have been working on fits that description, please let us know, since we do not yet have anything slated for the winter and spring quarters. If you are interested in attending, rsvp to Jane Brock at janebrock@law.northwestern.edu . For further information, contact Andrew Koppelman at akoppelman@northwestern.edu , Richard Kraut at rkraut1@northwestern.edu , or Cristina Traina at c-traina@northwestern.edu .