The recordings from the 2023 Whitehead Lectures by Peter Godfrey-Smith are now available on the department's YouTube channel.

Limits of Sentience, Boundaries of Consideration

April 13-14, 2023

Harvard University

Work in several fields has made it appear likely that sentience, or subjective experience, is present in many more animals than has often been supposed. The first lecture, “...

Trystan Goetze, Postdoctoral Fellow in Embedded EthiCS, attended the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education (ACM SIGCSE) Technical Symposium, where they presented a paper on different approaches to teaching ethics in computing programmes (the paper is published in the proceedings). They also helped deliver a workshop on teaching...

Trystan Goetze, Postdoctoral Fellow in Embedded EthiCS, presented a paper titled “AI Art is Theft” at the Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Society workshop at Stanford University on January 27. This workshop sought to “…bring together philosophers addressing important normative questions about the ongoing impact of artificial intelligence and related applications of digital technologies on society.”

Learn more about the workshop here: https://philevents.org/event/show/105429

Trystan Goetze and William Cochran, both Postdoctoral Fellows, delivered a teaching demo of an Embedded EthiCS module at the Stanford Embedded Ethics Conference: Strategies for Teaching Responsible Computing Within the Computer Science Curriculum on February 28.

Learn more about the conference in this article: https://hai.stanford.edu/news/teaching-responsible-computer-science  

A recording of the entire conference is available; the teaching demo starts at 4:55:50 and runs to 5:25...

Zoë Johnson King, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, gave the annual Clemson / University of South Carolina Joint Philosophy Lecture on March 3rd. She presented her paper "Working on Yourself."

For more information about the talk, see the event page here: https://www.clemson.edu/caah/academics/philosophy-and-religion/index.html

Zoë Johnson King, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, gave the keynote lecture at the 16th Annual Mark L. Shapiro Graduate Conference at Brown University on February 18^th. Professor Johnson King’s talk, “Working on Yourself,” spoke to the conference’s topic of partiality.

For more information on the conference, please see the event page here: https://philevents.org/event/show/105738

Zoë Johnson King, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, will give a colloquium lecture at Stanford University on April 7th. In the talk, titled “Reluctant Heroes,” Professor Johnson King will use essential workers at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a case study to discuss the ethics of praise.

For more information, see Stanford’s event page here: https://philosophy.stanford.edu/events/colloquium-zoe-johnson-king-harvard

Jeff Behrends, Senior Research Scholar and Associate Senior Lecturer on Philosophy, gave one of the keynote lectures at the 2023 Gateway Graduate Conference at the University of Missouri – St. Louis on April 1. Professor Behrends’ talk was titled “Reason, Reasons, and Instrumental Transmission,” and spoke to the conference's topics of metaethics, metaepistemology, and metanormativity.

Zoe Jenkin (Harvard PhD 2020) gave the keynote on March 31.

For more information on the conference, please see their website here:...

Jeff Behrends, Senior Research Scholar and Associate Senior Lecturer on Philosophy, presented at the Global Perspectives on Teaching AI Ethics workshop on "Imagining the future: how should AI ethics be taught?" at the University of Cambridge on March 30. The workshop brought together teachers of AI Ethics at a university level to discuss course topics, pedagogical strategies, assessment, and more.

For more information about the workshop, please see the information page here: ...

Philosopy concentrator Ilana Cohen ('23) will speak about the Fossil Free Research movement on the "Shifting Academic Institutions" panel at the 2023 Philosophers for Sustainability Philosophy & the Climate Conference. The conference will be on held on Zoom on April 29 and aims to "work toward addressing the climate crisis through teaching, curriculum development, event organizing, public philosophy, and institutional advocacy and change."

For more informaiton on the conference and to register, please visit: ...

J. L. A. Donohue, Postdoctoral Fellow in Embedded EthiCS, will be attending the Mentoring Workshop for Early Career Women Faculty in Philosophy at the University of Missouri from Sunday, June 11, to Tuesday June 13.

As its name suggests, the workshop brings together early career women in philosophy with mentors and other early career women to discuss their research as well as strategies for success in the discipline. There is mounting evidence that mentoring is important for success in academia, and the workshop aims to build long-term mentoring relationships between eminent...

Quinn White, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, will sit on a panel to discuss the film After Yang at the Brattle Theater on January 31. Please see below for more information on the event.

The Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative Invites You to Join Us at The...

The Technology Ethics eXchange of the NorthEast (teχnē) invites submissions of extended abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference on research and teaching on the ethics of technology, to be hosted at Harvard on May 18–19, 2023.

Potential topics for submissions include but are not limited to:

• Philosophical research on AI ethics, the ethics of computing, or the ethics of technology generally

• Social research on the impacts of technologies

• Interdisciplinary research in responsible computing and...

Zoë Johnson King, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, will be one of the two keynote speakers at this year's Austin Graduate Ethics and Normativity Talks (AGENT) conference hosted by the University of Texas at Austin’s Philosophy Department on November 11 and 12.

The conference highlights work from graduate students related to ethics, normativity, and value. For more information on the conference see their posting here: https://philevents.org/event/...