The Natural Method

Ethics, Mind & Self
Themes from the Work of Owen Flanagan

September 28-29, 2017

THE NATURAL METHOD

Ethics, Mind & Self: Themes from the Work of Owen Flanagan

Patricia Churchland

"For decades, Patricia Churchland has contributed to the fields of philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy of the mind and neuroethics. Her research has centered on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy with a current focus on the association of morality and the social brain."

Peggy DesAutels

"Peggy DesAutels specializes in ethical theory and moral psychology. She began teaching at the University of Dayton in 2001. Prior to coming to the University of Dayton, she served as assistant director to the Ethics Center and assistant professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida."

Gillian Einstein

"Gillian Einstein, PhD is the Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging at the University of Toronto where she is an Associate Professor of Psychology. She studies how surgeries anywhere on the body affect the entire body via the central nervous system such as in chronic pain due to female genital cutting in Somali-Canadian women and changes in cognition due to ovarian removal and loss of estrogens in women with the breast cancer mutation gene (BRACA1/2). The Einstein Lab studies how the structure and function of the brain is influenced by the context of people’s lives, especially sex and gender. These influences include hormones and genes, as well as culture, social environment and personal life experiences. Gillian designed and taught the senior capstone seminar at Duke University, Mind and Brain, with Owen from 1996-1998."

George Graham

"For the past several years the main focus of George Graham's research has been at the crossroads between philosophy and psychiatry. That crossroads forms a busy intersection where a number of problems in philosophy and psychiatry meet: the problem of the metaphysics of mental illness, the problem of explanatory pluralism versus inter-theoretic reduction, the problem of epistemic self-management, the question of the aim of psychiatric diagnosis, the question of the role of empathetic understanding of illness, and the problem of normative assessment of human conduct. Nor is that a complete list. In one form or another he has had things to say about each of these problems as well as related problems."

P. J. Ivanhoe

"Philip J Ivanhoe has served as Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Stanford University, as Associate Professor of Philosophy and Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, as Austin J. Fagothey, S. J. Distinguished Visiting Professor in Philosophy, Santa Clara University, and as the Findlay Professor of Philosophy at Boston University before moving to City University of Hong Kong in 2007. He specializes in the history of East Asian philosophy and religion and their potential for contemporary ethical, political, and social thought."

Robert N. McCauley

"Robert McCauley is a professor of philosophy, psychology, religion, and anthropology who is a pioneer in the cognitive science of religion. In his view, our minds are better suited to religious belief than to scientific inquiry because the explanations that religion provides make intuitive sense to us and engage our natural cognitive systems, while science involves abstract thinking and forms of reflection that require extraordinary mental work. He is currently examining the relationship between the cognitive and cultural foundations of religion and science."

Robert Van Gulick

"Robert Van Gulick works in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology. His recent work focuses on problems of consciousness, but his resarch also addresses a variety of related topics from a general teleo-pragmatic view of mind: including reduction, emergence, content, externalism, and mental causation. He is the Director of the University's Cognitive Science Program and has been the President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. He has twice received NEH Fellowships and has seved as the William P. Tolley Distingusihed Professor of Teaching in the Humanities. "

David Wong

"David Wong is the Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. His books include Moral Relativity (University of California Press, 1984) and Natural Moralities (Oxford University Press, 2006). A book of critical essays on Natural Moralities is Moral Relativism and Chinese Philosophy: David Wong and his Critics, ed. by Yang Xiao and Yong Huang, SUNY Press, 2014), with responses by Wong to the essays. Wong has co-edited with Kwong-loi Shun Confucian Ethics: a Comparative Study of Self, Autonomy and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2004)."

Eddy Nahmias, Thomas Polger, & Wenqing Zhao

Eddy Nahmias and Tom Polger are former Ph.D. students of Owen Flanagan. Eddy is known for his work on free will and moral psychology; he is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Georgia State University. Tom is known for his work on multiple realization and the mind-brain identity theory; he is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. Wenqing Zhao has been a postdoctoral researcher with Owen at Duke University's Center for Comparative Philosophy, and is about to begein her appointment as Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

SPONSORED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY; TRINITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES; CENTER FOR COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE; CENTER FOR PHILOSOPHY, ARTS AND LITERATURE; CENTER FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY; KENAN INSTITUTE FOR ETHICS; and THE MIT PRESS