Date: Monday 17 March 2025 - Tuesday 25 March 2025
Time: 15:00/18:00 - 17:00/19:30
Venue: Multiple locations (see below)
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Quassim Cassam, Alison Fernandes and Jesper Kallestrup

British Philosophy Fortnight is a new annual initiative to celebrate, promote and champion philosophy. We will raise awareness of what philosophy is and why it matters. Philosophy matters intrinsically, as a vibrant intellectual discipline, and extrinsically, providing crucial skills for living in complex worlds and for responding to pressing global challenges, from pandemics to climate change.

Lecture 1 – On March 17, from 18:00 to 19:30, professor Quassim Cassam delivers the Dudley Knowles lecture (Sir Charles Wilson Building) on Defining terrorism: from Emily Davison to Axel Rudakubana

Abstract: Recent events in Southport have focused public attention on the definition of terrorism. Some critics see the Southport murders as false negatives for the official definition of terrorism in the UK. On this view, this definition failed to classify as terrorism acts of violence that should have been so classified. The definition also generates potential false positives: acts that it mistakenly classifies as terrorism. However, before amending the definition, account needs to be taken of insights from the philosophy of definition. If, as some philosophers argue, few words have watertight definitions, terrorism is unlikely to be one of them. The appropriate response is to embrace a pragmatic theory of definition. On this account, defining terrorism is not an abstract intellectual exercise but rather an exercise in ‘pragmatic problem solving in the face of a threat’(Lord Carlile). Proposals for amending the definition of terrorism need to be assessed in terms of their practical consequences and resource implications. The philosophical game of generating counterexamples to proposed definitions is of little value in this context, as in many others.

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Lecture 2 – On March 18, from 15:00-17:00, Alison Fernandes deliver the second public lecture in our series in Adam Smith 282 on Chance as a guide to life.

Abstract: Chance claims are ubiquitous in science and everyday life. We might speak of the chance of your team winning the match or the chance of a radioactive sample decaying within a time. More worryingly, we might speak of the chance of an epidemic or of catastrophic climate change. It seems like chance claims like these should be taken seriously—they should, at the very least, guide what we think will happen. But there’s a puzzle about how such guidance works. Most philosophers take chances to be objective ‘worldly’ probabilities, perhaps similar in status to scientific laws. Chance claims are the kind of claims we might be right or wrong about and that their rightness or wrongness is due to how the natural world is. But if chance claims aren’t strictly about what we believe, how do they guide our beliefs? In this talk, I’ll consider the most prominent account of how chances guide belief, due to David Lewis. I’ll then propose a neater, more general alternative. This alternative principle gives us direct guidance from chance, even concerning past events and even if the fundamental laws turn out to be ‘deterministic’. If this principle is right, there are many more chances than we typically imagine and multiple ways that chances can guide us.

Please sign up here for tickets and see here for zoom link.

Lecture 3 – On March 25, from 15:00-17:00, Jesper Kallestrup will deliver the second lecture in our series in Clarice Pears 102, on Why demagogues lie big

The best strategy for getting away with lying is normally to lie small by only deviating from the truth as much as is necessary to achieve the intended deception. Why then do some demagogues lie big? One answer is to take the demagogue literally: the only difference between small and big lies concerns the size of their contents. The purpose of big lies is to induce false beliefs in their literal contents via conspiracy theories, repetition effects, or because they are too big to be false. Another answer is to take the demagogue seriously but not literally: what matters isn’t so much that supporters believe the lie but that they openly say they do. Big lies may serve the purposes of reinforcing supporters' deeply held beliefs, sowing doubt, testing the loyalty of the inner circle, or publicly demonstrating the demagogue’s power. 

Please sign up here for tickets and see here for zoom link.