Speakers
Anna Bergqvist, Manchester Metropolitan University
Lawrence Blum, University of Massachusetts Boston
Sophie-Grace Chappell, Open University
Casey Doyle, Oxford University
Niklas Forsberg, Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice
Anil Gomes, Oxford University
Abstracts
Anna Bergqvist
Evaluative Perception, Particularity and the Relational Self: Attunement in the Condition of Moral Realism abstract coming soon |
Niklas Forsberg
Perception and Prejudice Iris Murdoch famously claims that “I can only choose within the world I can see.” (The Sovereignty of Good, p.37) This may seem as a rather straightforward claim: moral choice is subordinate to moral vision; what you have to choose between is result of who (or what) you are; and so on, and so forth. But what does it really mean to “see a world”? What notion of “seeing” are we talking about? What notion of world? In this paper, I will tie these questions to Murdoch’s investigation and elaboration of the concept of metaphysics. Obviously, the concept of metaphysics as used by Murdoch is a complicated one. What makes it so complicated is that what metaphysics means for Murdoch is something very different from how the concept is usually understood in contemporary philosophy. For Murdoch, metaphysics means something like the ground on which we stand, or the Horizon from where we look, or the Zeitgeist that guides us even if we are unaware of it, and probably also even more so in such cases. Learning to see would thus mean something like struggling to lay bare the assumptions on which my judgements rest – to unravel one’s prejudices as it were. Here, I think we need to understand “prejudice” in a rather rich (German) way as a form of Vorurteil – that is, as a form of pre-judgment, and not as a matter of holding the number of hypothesis about what is really real to be true. It is not a matter of belief. In this way, I want to suggest that Murdoch’s examinations about what it is to be guided by metaphysics is tied to her notion of overcoming the ego, which in turn is a clue to how to see the world rightly. To complicate matters further, I also want to say that this is a fruitful entrance into Murdoch’s rather austere conception of realism. Coming to see the foundations on which one's judgments rest is a matter of learning to accept how the world is. We have to yield to the way the world is (a Murdochian variation of Simone Weil’s “obedience”). |
Casey Doyle
Attention as a Process and Love as a Response to Value A natural thought is that love is a response to the valuable, nonrelational properties of the beloved, such things as beauty, humor, and the like. A puzzle arises from the fact that such properties are comparative. The natural thought seems to have the unpalatable consequence that one should “trade up”: just as you ought to prefer the more delicious meal, so too should you swap for the more beautiful, funnier partner. This would be bad news for most of us. In response, some contemporary philosophers think we should ditch the natural thought; they think that love is a response to a peculiar kind of property, such as personhood or one’s relationship. But the natural thought is defensible. Rather than having a peculiar object, love is a peculiar kind of response to ordinary objects and properties. I sketch this alternative view, drawing on Murdoch’s discussion of love as a form of attention. |
Sophie-Grace Chappell
Entzauberung abstract coming soon |
Lawrence Blum
Visual Metaphors and Their Ethical Character in Iris Murdoch’s Moral Philosophy abstract coming soon |
Anil Gomes
How To Be Complacent abstract coming soon |