Philosophy News & Events

(To view Guest Lecturers, please go to the Colloquium Series site)

Fall 2012 - Spring 2013

• Sam Shook, graduating this year with a double major in Philosophy and History, has won the College of Arts & Sciences Board of Visitors Scholarship in recognition for outstanding voluntarism. Congratulations Sam!
• Dr. Susanna Goodin has received the P.I.E. award for a 2nd year in a row. P.I.E. stands for Promoting Intellectual Engagement and honors instructors who inspire excitement, inquiry and autonomy in first-year courses, nominated by sophomore students. Congratulations!
• The Philosophy Department would like to congratulate alumnus and occasional UW adjunct professor of Philosophy William Devlin (M.A., 2001) on successfully earning tenure at Bridgewater State University. Way to go Bill! Students interested in taking one of Bill's summer courses, PHIL 3000.05 "Existential Cinema" or PHIL 3320.01 "Asian Philosophy," should sign up now!
• Franz-Peter Griesmaier presented his paper "Lucky Justification" at the Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland).
• Visiting Lecturer Joseph Ulatowski presented his paper "Discovering Commonsense Truth via Uncommon Methods: Experimental Philosophy in Tarski and Naess" at the Institute of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland).
• The Psychology Progress team has selected Visiting Lecturer Joseph Ulatowski's recently published article "Act Individuation: an Experimental Approach" as a Key Research Article for 2012 and as being of special interest to progress in Psychology and Philosophy. Psychology Progress alerts the scientific community to breaking journal articles considered to represent the best in fields of research associated with the study of cognition.

• Congratulations! to Dr. Rob Colter who has received the prestigious "Extraordinary Merit in Teaching Award for 2012" in the College of Arts and Sciences.

• Visiting Lecturer, Joseph Ulatowski and Jeff Lockwood have published a WyoFile.com commentary, "Conduct Unbecoming: Cowboy Ethics and Falcon Morality," arguing that Wyoming Football coach Dave Christensen imprudent behavior following the Air Force Academy game has distracted many commentators away from a more serious ethical problem that arose during the game.

• Visiting Lecturer Joseph Ulatowski was a critic in the Society for Realist/Antirealist Author meets Critic session at the 2012 American Philosophical Association - Eastern Division meeting in Atlanta, GA for Douglas Patterson's new book Alfred Tarski: Philosophy of Language and Logic (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

• Visiting Lecturer Joseph Ulatowski, has been busy preparing articles and presenting papers.
  
  • He has three forthcoming articles:
    • "On the Expertise Defense of Armchair Philosophy," Southwest Philosophical Studies (forthcoming): 1-12.
    • "On `Drowning Man' and the Role of Motivation in the Moral Assessment of Action" Southwest Philosophy Review (forthcoming): 1-5.
    • "Act Individuation: An Experimental Approach," Review of Philosophy and Psychology (2012) 3.2: 249-262.
  • On Thursday, 11 October 2012, he gave a colloquium lecture entitled, "The Fragmentation of Truth: Gender Variation in the Ordinary Conception," at Weber State University in Ogden, UT. This lecture has been extracted from his ongoing collaborative research projects with Robert Barnard (Mississippi) on the ordinary conception of truth and its role in the nature of truth debate. 
  • On Friday, 9 November 2012, Joe Ulatowski presented his paper "The Role of Statistics in Experimental Philosophy" to the University of Wyoming Department of Statistics.

• Adjunct faculty member, Robin Hill, is teaching a new course in the Fall of 2012, in a new field.  "Introduction to the Philosophy of Computer Science" is a junior-level special topics course, cross-listed in both Philosophy and Computer Science.  Dr. Hill considered several themes that might be suitable for the exploration of the confluence of the two fields, and chose "The Ontology of Algorithms."  She is also maintaining a blog about the new class at "teachingphilofcs.blogspot.com."  The students are eliciting the nature and properties of the algorithm, a concept essential to computing, by learning and expressing classical algorithms, and by exploring what distinguishes algorithms from other abstract structures and what distinguishes one algorithm from another.

• Dr. Jeff Lockwood and Dr. Robert Colter provided commentary in an article released to Wyoming Public Schools on the teaching of ethics. Feel free to read and discuss at:http://wyofile.com/2012/10/ethics-101-more-Wyoming-schools-take-on-morals-ethics-programs/

• Dr. Jeff Lockwood has been invited to be the writer-in-residence this October at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, and to present a paper at an international conference on Literature and the Environment hosted by the University.  The writing program and conference organizers saw his essay on WyoFile (http://wyofile.com/2012/07/behind-the-carbon-curtain-art-and-freedom-in-Wyoming/) and decided that his work on arts, energy, and censorship aligned well with their interests in how writing can be a tool of positive social change.  He will also give a lecture on his work on environmental ethics and aesthetics to the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research & Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism.

• Dr. Carlos Mellizo's Spanish edition of Mill's Three Essays on Religion has been published in Madrid Spain.