Open Minds is a two-day conference which offers graduate students working in all areas of philosophy the chance to present their work and gain feedback in a welcoming and friendly environment. With two parallel workshop streams running throughout the two days – ‘Applied Philosophy’ and ‘Theoretical Philosophy’ - the conference seeks contributions from all areas of philosophy. Our goal is to provide a forum for discussing work in philosophy by aspiring philosophers at both Masters and PhD stages in their careers. From this, we hope that all who attend develop valuable philosophical skills and working relationships with other early stage philosophers. To this end we also run two workshop sessions, one related to career advice and publishing, and the other on tackling challenges of PhD life.
Open Minds XVI is generously funded by the Society for Applied Philosophy, the Aristotelian Society, Analysis Trust, and the University of Manchester Philosophy Department.
LOCATION:
University of Manchester, Humanities Bridgeford Street Building, Rooms G6 & G7, Oxford Road, M13 9PL
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Dr Lucy McDondald, Philosophy at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge
Title: The Intimacy and Abuse
Abstract:
Though there is considerable work on neighbouring phenomena like love and friendship, intimacy itself, especially intimate interaction, has been relatively neglected in analytic philosophy. This is lamentable, given intimacy’s moral, political, and legal significance. In this talk, I take on two tasks. First, I offer an account of intimate interaction, arguing that in an intimate interaction we believe we are seeing another person’s ‘backstage’ self, and/or that they are seeing ours. Second, I suggest that a better understanding of intimacy will, perhaps surprisingly, help us better understand certain forms of wrongdoing, most notably sexual violence. Sexual violence is wrong for several familiar reasons: it is a violation of the victim’s autonomy, it causes considerable physical and emotional harm, and it often serves to reinforce oppressive social structures. Yet it is also, I will argue, a distinctively intimate kind of wrongdoing, which strikes at the victim’s very sense of self.
Dr Mohammad Saleh Zarepour, Department of Philosophy, University of Manchester
Title: Intentionality Reconsidered
Abstract:
I develop and defend an account of mental intentionality—aboutness or directedness—on which all of the following theses are true: (1) Primitivism: Intentionality is a primitive concept, unanalysable to more basic concepts. Intentionality is a conceptually primitive property of our mental states/acts. (2) Relationalism: Intentionality is a relation. To be in an intentional state is to bear a specific relation to something (i.e., the state's object). So, if a mental state has no existing object, it is not intentional. (3) Anti-Disjunctivism (or the Common Factor View): Empty and non-empty states of the mind share some common elements.
PROGRAMME:
For a full programme please follow this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19jZNL1VDUY2yx6Ia6YJvFvHGhqnebwNA/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115585117650478922023&rtpof=true&sd=true
REGISTRATION:
Attendance is free. To register please follow the Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-minds-xvi-tickets-159846841205
ABOUT KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Dr Lucy McDonald is a Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. Dr. McDonald works mainly on philosophy of language, ethics, and feminist philosophy – in particular on responsibility, blame, theory of speech acts. She has published in various important journals on these subjects. She also engages with many contemporary issues which demand philosophical investigations. Over the last few years, Manchester has become progressively interested in issues relating to the history of political, especially in feminist philosophy. Her presence will be welcomed by current postgraduate students. Interestingly, she has herself been a postgraduate presenter in the Open Minds in the year 2016.
Dr. Mohammad Saleh Zarepour is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. He is an associate member of the Global Philosophy of Religion Project at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Birmingham, where he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. He is also on the editorial boards of Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science (a Springer book series), and Religious Studies (a CUP journal). He works primarily in medieval Islamic philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of logic. He has recently published the book Necessary Existence and Monotheism: An Avicennian Account of the Islamic Conception of Divine Unity (CUP, 2022). Dr. Zarepour is an engaging speaker whom we believe will deliver a fascinating and entertaining keynote lecture. We are also keen to support him as an early career researcher and a new member of the department at Manchester.
ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION:
Physical Access: the venue for the event (Humanities Bridgeford Street) is accessible, but please contact the organisers if you have any specific questions or needs relating to access. We are happy to provide detailed routes and photos of the venue in advance to help with planning your trip, and will do what we can to facilitate specific access requests advised in advance. For more information on venue accessibility more generally, including parking information for blue badge holders, please visit the UoM website: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/connect/jobs/disabled-applicants/travel-and-accessibility/.
General: the organising committee are committed to providing a supportive and welcoming environment at this and each future workshop. Anyone is free to leave the conference room at any time for any reason, and a quiet room will be available during the event. If you have any other access requirements, in terms of equipment, reading materials, or any other aspect that will help facilitate your attendance and / or ability to present, please let us know either on your cover note, or when accepting an offer to present / registering to attend.
POLICY:
Philosophy at the University of Manchester subscribes to the British Philosophical Association (BPA) / Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) Good Practice Scheme, and we also have a policy covering conduct at all of our events, which our conference will adhere to: http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/philosophy/connect/events/events-policy/.
Before the conference, all the organisers will be briefed on the BPA / SWIP Guidelines for Accessible Conferences and BPA / SWIP Seminar Chairing Suggestions. In addition to this, at the beginning of each session, all conference attendees will be reminded of our seminar conduct policy.
