Dr Thomas Forster

Philosophy News

Vol. 4 Issue 3June 2011

From the hoD...

Visiting Lecturer

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Thomas Forster is delighted to return to the scene of his first proper job.

He was a junior lecturer in this department in 1971 and 1972. Although his main interests are in Logic, set theory and philosophy of mathematics he is also a qualified EEG technician. (In the 1960’s `EEG’ was a shorthand for the reductionist claims about the nature of mind, and when he was offered the opportunity to train in EEGs he took it). His Ph.D. (on Quine’s set theory NF - on which bizarre backwater he remains one of the small handful of world experts) was from the University of Cambridge. Although now semi-retired he continues to be based part-time in Cambridge and his home page there - www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~tf - contains a wealth of information about him (and some odd photos, too).

In semester two, 2011, Thomas will be teaching PHIL 101 Introduction to Logic with Jeremy Seligman and PHIL 737 Logic 2.

Dear All,

Welcome to the start of the new semester. We have a number of new faces around the department.

Four new PhD students join us in the second semester, our own Daniel Wilson, and Justin Horn, Marco Grix, and Chung Chen Soon. The three ‘imports’ are profiled below: the interesting facts about them are, well, interesting.

We have a couple of academic visitors with us for all of part of the semester. Thomas Forster is back to teach an upper level logic course and help out in the big first year logic class, and Richard Hamilton is visiting from Notre Dame, Perth, while working on a defense of naturalistic virtue ethics.

Priscilla Lobo has started in the office, and she will be joined for at least a while by Rashalat Saheed, a temp who will fill in until we can replace Anna Ma (who is going onto higher things, both professionally and spatially: she’s going upstairs to a Department Coordinator’s position in School of Asian Studies).

The newest face of all, however, is obviously Joseph Tucker, a month old as I write. Congratulations to Chris and Jenny.

The semester has started with a bang, launched by Chris’ two conferences, followed up by two public lectures – one the Solomon lecture by Mark Murphy on Thursday July 21 – and one by John Hare on Friday July 29. Recipients of this newsletter may regard themselves as having received a personal invitation to the public lectures.

A number of staff are on leave this semester, working on a range of engaging projects at universities around the world, from the US, to China, Italy, Spain and Germany in Europe, and, even, Australia.

The Department had its normal high success rate in the Faculty Research Development Fund: five staff members received $57k.

I hope everyone has a productive and enjoyable semester.

Best, Tim

Dr Matheson Russell

Dr Richard Hamilton

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Winner oF earLy career research

exceLLence aWarDs

Lecturer Dr Matheson Russell from the Department of Philosophy has been publicly recognised by the University for his conspicuous research promise.

Early Career Research Excellence Awards each worth $25,000 were presented to Matheson and five

other University staff at the Celebrating Research Excellence event held last evening.

Matheson was acknowledged for his study on the condition of plurality — the condition of being one among many, and the agency and vulnerability we experience in the social world by virtue of our embodiment.

The awards recognise and promote excellence and research leadership potential among emerging researchers. Targeted at those who completed their PhD not more than eight years ago, they enable these outstanding young researchers to further their current research, establish stronger links with the international research community, or embark upon new fields of research.

The awards are selected by a highly competitive process, and provide up to $25,000 to support each recipient’s research programme.

The University usually makes five of these awards each year. “Due to the high standard in 2011, we have decided to make six awards,” said the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Jane Harding. Congratulations to Matheson on his hard work. We look forward to seeing his research, and his career, flourish in the future.

Visiting Lecturer

Richard Hamilton is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics at the University of Notre Dame Australia, in Fremantle, Western Australia. He is visiting Auckland as part of his research leave and will be here until 16th August. He is currently writing a book defending a distinctively naturalistic form of virtue ethics against various criticisms levelled by philosophers of biology and suggesting ways in which research into the evolution of morality might be enhanced by encompassing a virtue perspective. He is also interested more broadly in the ‘developmentalist turn’ in recent biology and philosophy of biology, in the philosophy of the emotions, philosophy of medicine and psychotherapy, and Hellenistic ethics. He is hoping to run a Stoicism reading and/ or meditation group while in Auckland and is happy to talk to anyone on virtually any philosophical topic while in town.

Alexander Maar

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PhD ProFiLes: aLexanDer maar

Alexander Maar is a PhD student. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, but lived most of his life

in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, where he did his Bachelor’s in History and his Master’s in Philosophy. On 2010 Alexander was granted a scholarship from the Capes Foundation, Brazilian Ministry of Education, and came to New Zealand to work under the supervision of Robert Nola on his PhD project “Historical Causal Explanations - a critical review on causes, laws, intentions and counterfactuals”. Alexander’s areas of interest are Philosophy of History, Causation and Causal Explanation.

As a historian Alexander has a perception that the analytic notion of cause has been virtually withdrawn from many works in history, and that many historians prefer to talk of reasons instead of causes, and understanding instead of explaining. He believes

that in most cases this is a consequence of a common mistake among non-philosophers: that a causal explanation has to refer to regularities and, to some degree, to the covering laws model.

His initial attempt is to rehabilitate the notion of cause in history under a different perspective: David Lewis’ analysis of causation as counterfactual dependence, or as patterns of influence. Alexander believes that Lewis’ analysis is the best alternative to the Hempelian model, and that counterfactuals provide a more accurate view of how historians should think about causation. Alexander will also analyse Lewis’ definition of causal explanation as giving “information” about the causal history of an event, followed by an analysis of Peter Menzies’ “context-sensitive” causation, as a way to deal with the problem of “spurious causation”.

His next step is to assess if “virtual history” has a proper theoretical background in terms of defining causation as counterfactual dependence or influence, and if virtual historians like Niall Fergusson have found an innovative form of causal explanation or not. Alexander observed that some case studies face certain epistemological objections, and his suspicions are that to some extent counterfactual history reflects the way historians talk about and attribute causes, but many explanations in virtual history require large departures from actuality, or far-fetched alternatives, and therefore are not informative.

conFerences

As we write, two conferences organised by Dr Chris Tucher, are in full swing: Naturalisms in Ethics, July 14-15 and the 2011 Australasian Philosophy of Religion Conference, July 16-17. They have attracted a range of international speakers and appear to be generating a lot of vigorous discussion. There will a fuller report in the next newsletter.

Thu 21 July, 6.30pm at Library Theatre B15: Robert Solomon Philosophy Lecture.

Fri 29 July, 6.30pm at Library Theatre B15: John Hare Philosophy Lecture.

tWo PubLic Lectures

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our neW PhD stuDents

Welcome to our new PhD students! Joining us from semester 2, 2011, are: Justin Horn, Marco Grix and Soong Chung-Chen. We hope to have detailed profiles from each of them in future issues:

Justin Horn

Justin Horn is from Moscow, Idaho. His research focus is on connections between the philosophy

of music on the one hand, and metaphysics and the philosophy of language on the other.

Interesting Facts:

Justin is also a composer, arranger, playwright, and jazz singer. He has also spent time working as an award-winning historical tour guide in Sitka, Alaska, and was formerly a two-time National Spelling Bee finalist.

Marco Grix

Marco Grix is originally from Germany but lived in NZ and the UK for the last eight years. He has

studied Philosophy at Otago, Auckland, and Oxford Universities. He is particularly interested in Moral and Political Philosophy as well as issues surrounding death.

Interesting facts:

Marco originally studied Business and worked in Management Consulting before discovered his interest in Philosophy.

Love the NZ outdoors, particularly the Southern Alps.

SOONG Chung-Chen

Chung-Chen is from Taipei, Taiwan. He obtained his BA and MA in the Department of Philosophy

in National Taiwan University. His main interests are normative ethics and the philosophy of art. At the moment, he is working on issues concerning our emotional responses to fiction. Interesting facts:1. Chung-Chen was once a member of Star Trek

club in National Taiwan University.2. He was interested in ESP (Extra-sensory

perception), and took related courses in National Taiwan University. (Yes! We offered ESP classes.)

3. Currently, he enjoys Isaac Asimov’s science fiction collections.

Chris and Joe “the JET” Tucker

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aWay in semester tWo

The following academic staff will be away in semester two, 2011: Gillian Brock, Stephen

Davies, Ptrick Girard, Fred Kroon, Chris Martin and Rod Girle.

When Stephen is on leave he will be based at the University of California - Santa Barbara. Stephen has several writing projects but the main one is to complete a book on aesthetics, art, and evolution. He will be presenting at two conferences: “Unsettled Boundaries” at Martquette University and the American Society for Aesthetics annual meeting which will take place at Tampa.

neWs in the DePartment

CONGRATULATION to the new DAD!!!

Chris Tucker became a Dad when Joseph Ezra Tucker was born on June 14th at 10:18pm. He weighed 4.265kg and measured 54cm long. The best thing about Joe’s name is that his initials provide a convenient nickname when he plays sports: Joe “the JET” Tucker. Besides eating, baby Joe’s favourite hobby is dreaming about epistemology.

Chris obviously hasn’t let becoming a father get in the way of the important things in life.

Stephen Davies has completed his term as Deputy HOD and from 1st of July Bob Wicks will be

taking on this role. Thanks Stephen!

Fred Kroon will be visiting the University of Melbourne at the end of July, presenting a paper on logical problems in Meinongianism at a memorial conference on Richard Sylvan, a celebrated New Zealand-born logician and philosopher who died 15 years ago. Later he will attend a conference on fiction and fictionalism at the University of Barcelona before spending two weeks at the University of Turin where he will work on the philosophy of fiction, especially the problem of our emotional responses to fiction. Some of this work is part of a collaborative project on fiction involving Alberto Voltolini, a past visitor to the Auckland Department, the most recent outcome of which is the entry on fictional entities for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Patrick will be spending most of his time in Beijing at Tsinghua University, where he will be working with his former classmate, Fenrong Liu, on an ongoing project they have with Jeremy Seligman on “Logic in the Community”. Then he will go visit the new Vienna circle in Munich, directed by Hannes Leitgib. Finally, he will go to Sweden (“Finally, I’ve always wanted to go there!”) for a workshop on Ceteris Paribus Laws, one of the main topics Patrick has been working on over the years. “I’ll miss you all and will see you next year. Love Pat xox”

(Note from HOD: I’m please to let you know that Patrick was granted continuation, i.e. his appointment was made permanent, in June.)

Priscilla with her family

Anna next to the chairlift in La Parva skifield,in Valle Nevado, Santiago, Chile.

Contributions to the Philosophy News can be sent to Philosophy Department

at philosophy@auckland.ac.nz. The News is published quarterly.

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neWs in the DePartment

WELCOME Priscilla!!

Priscilla joined the Philosophy Department on 6th June 2011. Prior to this she worked in different faculties in the University. Priscilla enjoys interacting with people and takes pride in the work she does. She strives to complete a job on time and do it well. She loves to come up with new ways of doing routine jobs to make it more efficient and to save time.

Priscilla is married and has 2 children, a boy and a girl. She is a family oriented person and spends all her time with them. She likes to do gardening in my spare time though she doesn’t have green fingers. She also likes to watch movies and listen to music.

FAREWELL Anna!!

After joining the Department of Philosophy from the first day of a busy but fun semester one, earlier this year, she is leaving us in semester two to move upstairs in more ways than one: she has been appointed the Departmental Coordinator for School of Asian Studies, where she will face new challenges. Congratulations to Anna for her new role! We certainly will see her marching up and down the stairs.

Welcome Rishalat Saheed.

Rishalat Saheed from Theology will be joining Philosophy Department part-time from 14 July for a while. Rishalat started at Theology to cover Melissa Rodger while Mel is on maternal leave.

We highly appreciate her agreeing to help the department during the transition time.