Digest Week 4 Michaelmas Term 2026
MT26, Week 4 (1 November - 7 November)
If you have entries for the weekly Digest, please send information to admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk by midday, Tuesday the week before the event.
For events occurring at the Institute for Ethics in AI, see here.
Notices
Other Philosophy events, including those taking place elsewhere in the university and beyond
Enlarging Reason Seminar Series
Moral Perception and Moral Reasoning
Date: Monday, 2 November, 4–5:30pm
Venue: Large Seminar Room, St Cross College
Speaker: Michael Wee
For more information on the workshop series and details of each talk, please check the website. Registration is recommended to help with event-planning.
Please feel free to contact the organisers at jana.sedlakova@ethox.ox.ac.uk or michael.wee@ethox.ox.ac.uk in case of any queries.
Avicenna Reading Group
Convenor: Ibrahim Safri
Date: Tuesday, 3 November, 2–3:30pm
Venue: Magdalen College, McFarlane Library
The theory of time remains one of the most complex and significant subjects of inquiry, central to both philosophical and physical discourse globally. Throughout the history of world philosophy, this concept has been continually refined, spanning Late Antiquity and Neoplatonism through to Islamic, Medieval, and Early Modern philosophical traditions. Within the global corpus of Arabic philosophy, diverse interpretations of time have emerged, shaped by three primary perspectives that influenced Islamic medieval conceptions of this theory. This reading class will focus on Avicenna’s The Physics of The Healing, in which he presents various notions of time before establishing his own account.
This MT26, and following a comprehensive introduction to the concept of time in global Arabic philosophy, we will continue with Chapter 11, on the Essence of Time.
Text: Avicenna, The Physics of The Healing; a Parallel English-Arabic Text. Translated by: Jon McGinnis. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2009.
Finnegans Wake Seminar
"Laden with the Loot of Learning”: The Wake and Learned Wit
Speaker: Steven Connor (King's College London)
Date: Tuesday, 3 November, 5:30pm-6.45pm
Venue: Lecture Room 2, Christ Church
The talk will consider the epistemopathy, or feelings about knowledge, of Joyce’s Wake, relating it to the tradition, extending from Aristophanes onward, of the learned mockery of learning.
Further information can be found here
Ethox Seminar Series
Paternalism and Oppression
Speakers: Daniel Groll (Carleton) Jonathan Parry (LSE)
Date: Wednesday, 4 November, 2-3:30pm
Venue: Seminar Room 0, Big Data Institute, Oxford
This paper explores how the quality of the relationship between a would-be paternalist and their target bears on the ethics of paternalism. Beginning with Tommie Shelby’s suggestion in Dark Ghettos that the US government lacks the standing to paternalise poor, urban African Americans due to the latter’s oppression at the hands of the former, we develop the idea that the anti-paternalist constraint is rendered more stringent when the paternalist and the paternalisee share a bad relationship. This does not mean that such paternalism is always impermissible in this context. But it does typically mean that the intervener is required to achieve more good and/or to make greater efforts to avoid paternalism than they would be in the absence of the bad relationship. We conclude by reflecting on how bad relationships can be repaired and the heightened constraint on paternalism thereby ameliorated.
Register here
In person and on Zoom
Space Settlements and Future Generations
Space Ethics Seminar #3
Convenor: Koji Tachibana (Chiba University)
Speakers: Oskari Sivuka (University of Helsinki) and Gary David O'Brien (Lingnan University)
Date: Thursday, 5 November, 12:45–1:45pm
Venue: Suite 1 (1st floor), Uehiro Oxford Institute, 16-17 Saint Ebbe's St, Oxford OX1 1PT
Abstract: Before too long, humans may establish permanent settlements on other planets and moons, and this may entail procreation off-Earth. This raises serious ethical issues explored in this talk. Given the harsh conditions and lower prospects for wellbeing faced by people born in space settlements, we must ask whether it is permissible to reproduce in such circumstances. Against the sceptical position common in the literature, we argue that procreation off-Earth may be permissible if certain conditions are met. We argue that a plausible threshold for permissible procreation can be grounded in needs-based sufficientarianism, according to which future people should have the basic needs essential for autonomous pursuit of a good life. Whether this threshold can be met will depend on the specific conditions of the settlement. Because space habitats require extensive life-support systems, procreation is not merely a private matter. It has a distinctly political dimension: procreation in such contexts presupposes reliable systems and institutions capable of maintaining a sufficiently good life. If these cannot be provided, then space settlements should not be based on reproduction.
In-person at UOI. Lunch is provided from 12:00. Please register and indicate any dietary requirements: Space Ethics Seminar #3 – Fill in form