An expanded presence for philosophy

Following on the success of its first such event, the department of philosophy is holding the Second Annual Lehigh Philosophy Conference this week in Linderman Library.

Louise Antony, a renowned researcher in the areas of epistemology, feminism, philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion, will be the keynote speaker at the event, which will take place Thursday and Friday, Oct. 23-24.

Because the “Great Books” form the basis of much of the department’s curriculum, said department chair Robin Dillon, the theme of last year’s conference was “Last Chapter,” while the theme this year is “Philosophy Unbound.”

The speakers at this year’s conference will address that theme by challenging, redrawing or even erasing traditional divisions within philosophy or between philosophy and other disciplines, said Dillon.

Among the papers to be presented are those focusing on philosophy and autism, music, literature, film, economics, media, critical theory, theology, feminist theory and psychology.

Other papers address issues of methodology, the idea of philosophical progress, metaphysical grounding and conceptual change, and philosophy’s relation to its audiences. Others challenge traditional historical divisions within philosophy and traditional divisions between ethics and epistemology, naturalism and anti-naturalism, and analytic and continental approaches to philosophy.

The thinkers, writers, poets and activists who will be discussed include Immanuel Kant, Stanley Cavell, Jacques Derrida, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Michel Foucault, Samuel Beckett, Martin Heidegger, Andrea Dworkin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Fernando Pessoa and Edmund Husserl.

Like last year’s gathering, this year’s conference is organized in two concurrent sessions and is attracting philosophers from around the United States and from Europe.

“Last year’s conference was fabulously successful,” said Dillon, the William Wilson Selfridge Professor of Philosophy. “It generated a tremendous amount of energy and philosophical conversation.

“Students and people from the community attended the conference, and faculty members from outside our department and from other colleges in the Lehigh Valley chaired sessions. People from far-flung corners of the world wrote us to say that they had heard that good philosophy was being done at Lehigh.

“We think the first conference accomplished the two things we wanted it to do. First, it put Lehigh on the national and international philosophy map. Second, it put philosophy on the map at Lehigh. We expect the second conference to reinforce this presence and make it clear that Lehigh is a place where exceptional philosophy is done.”

The “openness of illusions”

Antony, a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will deliver her address, titled “Openness of ‘Illusions,’” which discusses visual illusions and draws on vision science, at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday in Room 200 of Linderman Library.

Antony’s main areas of research are feminism, epistemology, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. She is the author of numerous articles and the editor or co-editor of three volumes of essays, most recently Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life (Oxford University Press).

Currently, Antony is writing a monograph exploring the prospects for a naturalistic account of epistemic and practical justification.

“Louise is a wonderful speaker and an outstanding philosopher,” said Dillon. “Much of her work is at the intersection of philosophy and psychology or the natural sciences, which fits in with our conference theme.”

The conference’s sessions are titled Autism, Music and Literature, Feminism and Experience, Methods and Philosophical Progress, Literature and Philosophy, Trespass and Demarcation, Economics Media Critical Theory, Film Philosophy—Philosophy Film, Philosophical Territories, Metaphysics, Investigating Joints, Naturalism and Anti-naturalism, Living with Philosophy, and Analytic/Continental.

A total of 28 scholars will give presentations. Papers submitted to the conference were read and reviewed by three faculty members—Gordon Bearn, professor of philosophy; Roslyn Weiss, the Clara H. Stewardson Professor of Philosophy; and Steven Goldman, the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor in the Humanities.

Also assisting with the conference are students from the recently founded Lehigh chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the undergraduate philosophy honorary society.

The conference is supported by a gift from an anonymous donor.


Story by Kurt Pfitzer