Aberdeen Philosophy

🤖 💭 Check out this workshop on AI Epistemics taking place at the Onassis Library in Athens, co-organised by our Jesper Kallestrup via his Digital Knowledge Project.

DynamiTE Seminar: Eilidh Beaton (University of Aberdeen) - Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas Methodological Nationalism is Not the (best articulation of the) Problem

💬 🇳🇴 Our Eilidh Beaton is in Oslo today giving a talk in the Dynamic Territory seminar series. She'll be presenting her work on methodological nationalism, forthcoming in "Philosophy".

🗓️ Save the date! Our Jesper Kallestrup is hosting a workshop on the Ethics & Epistemology of AI on Friday 27th March. Contact jesper.kallestrup@abdn.ac.uk if you are interested in attending.

🎓 Postgraduate Fair | Tomorrow!
📍 Elphinstone Hall | ⏰ 11am–6pm
We’re looking forward to welcoming prospective and current students and alumni. Didn’t register? No problem — registration is still open, or just come along.
Full itinerary & register: bit.ly/4jRNPD9

📣 Aberdeen Philosophy students: The ABDN Shadowing Scheme is now open for applications. This is an opportunity to engage in one day of work experience in the public sector, law, or real estate. Deadline 19 Feb, more info here: www.abdn.ac.uk/careers/expe...

📖 Check out our Beth Lord's chapter, "Spinoza and the Galenic Idea of the Human Body", in this new OUP edited collection, Spinoza on the Human Perspective.

Know How Research | epistemology KNOW-HOW is a major research project funded by the European Research Council which develops a comprehensive framework for understanding know-how and its place in a wider web of concepts we rely on to…

💭 Our Jesper Kallestrup is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Glasgow this semester. He'll be working in the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre on the ERC-funded KNOW-HOW Project, led by Adam Carter.

More info on the project here:

🗓️ Save the date! Our Aberdeen Philosophy PGRs are hosting a conference on "Imagination, Fiction, and Extended Reality" this time next week in the Duncan Rice Library. Talks are open to all.

Migration and Asylum in Scotland: A Philosophical Perspective The Department of Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen invites submissions for its upcoming workshop, “Migration and Asylum in Scotland: A Philosophical Perspective”. This one-day workshop will…

📣 Call for abstracts! We're seeking one more speaker to complete the lineup for our upcoming workshop "Migration and Asylum in Scotland: A Philosophical Perspective". Further details available on the PhilEvents page below.

Submission deadline: Friday 20th March
Contact: eilidh.beaton@abdn.ac.uk

🎓 Postgraduate Fair | Meet the Academics
📍 Elphinstone Hall
📅 17 Feb | ⏰ 11am–6pm
Discover postgrad pathways, conversion programmes, and online and on-campus study options.
Register: bit.ly/4jRNPD9
#AberdeenPGFair #AberdeenPostgrad #NextStepAberdeen

🎉 Congratulations to our graduate student Dr María Bibiloni, who recently passed their PhD Viva with a thesis entitled "A Decolonial Criticism of Content-Based Theories of Slurs".

📣 From 1 January 2026, our Mike Beaney will be taking up a Visiting Chair Professorship in the Institute of Foreign Philosophy at PKU.

Towards a deep epistemology: knowing in historical and cross-cultural context This article makes the case for a deep epistemology, an epistemology rooted in the epistemic experiences and philosophical debates from across the full range of historical periods and global cultur...

🗞️ Check out this new open-access special issue on historical and cross-cultural "deep epistemology" in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy. Edited by our Mike Beaney, with Karyn Lai.

💬 🇨🇳 Our Mike Beaney has given a series of lectures on analytic Chinese philosophy, cross-cultural epistemology, and Wittgenstein over the past 6 weeks.

Institutions he has presented at include Shanxi, Tsinghua, Wuhan, Hubei, Fudan, and Zhejiang Universities, PKU, SEU, & a Conference in Xiamen.

The Joy of Chinese Philosophy This book introduces some central ideas and themes in ancient Chinese philosophy through a detailed analysis of one famous passage – the happy fish dialogue – in the Zhuangzi , one of the two…

📖 Our Mike Beaney's The Joy of Chinese Philosophy is now out & available open access. It introduces some central ideas & themes in ancient Chinese philosophy through analysis of the happy fish dialogue in the Zhuangzi, one of the two founding texts of Daoism.

AHRC - Research Council Awards | Scholarships | The University of Aberdeen Explore scholarships, bursaries and funding options at Aberdeen for undergraduate, postgraduate and international students to support your studies.

📣 The University of Aberdeen is offering 3 AHRC Doctoral Landscape funding awards for doctoral studentships across the arts and humanities.

Prospective Philosophy applicants can contact eilidh.beaton@abdn.ac.uk. Further info:

The LOE Centenary Project The LOE Centenary Project seeks to re-evaluate Wittgenstein’s 1929 Lecture on Ethics, and to reconsider its place in his thought about ethics, language, and education, its significance for…

💬 Our PhD candidate Frank Burr is giving a talk at the University of Potsdam's graduate conference on Wittgenstein's 1929 Lecture on Ethics this weekend. He'll explore Wittgenstein's use of "the supernatural" in his lecture, as read through a Tolstoyan lens.

4) Knowledge-Qua in Groups (Ergo). In which Jesper develops an account of knowledge-qua occupancy role in a social network, and proposes that this may help deflationists about group knowledge respond to a particular objection to their view.

journals.publishing.umich.edu/ergo/article...

3) When Do Groups Have Evidence? (Inquiry). Existing theories of justified group belief face issues accounting for manipulation of evidence. Jesper proposes a solution to this problem for inflationists.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A Causal Exclusion Problem for Knowledge-First Epistemology According to knowledge-first epistemology, knowledge is irreducible to true belief plus something else, and yet knowledge entails belief. Moreover, knowledge plays an ineliminable role in causal ex...

2) A Causal Exclusion Problem for Knowledge-First Epistemology (International Journal of Philosophical Studies) - in which Jesper defends a new objection against knowledge-first epistemology.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Why Demagogues Lie Big | Episteme | Cambridge Core Why Demagogues Lie Big

1) Why Demagogues Lie Big, with Matteo Michelini (Episteme). Jesper & Matteo argue that big lies may serve 3 purposes, and that public endorsement by the demagogue's supporters, but not necessarily genuine belief, is what's needed to achieve these goals. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

🗞️ Our Jesper Kallestrup has been on a publishing streak! Here's a roundup of some of his latest papers.

🗞️ Check out these two new papers from our Mike Beaney on his translation of Wittgenstein's "Tractatus", in dialogue with Jaap van der Does and Martin Stokhof.

www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/view...

www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/view...

Refugees and Family Unification The topics of refugee protection and family migration have both received significant attention in the philosophical literature. However, until recently, issues at the intersection of these two…

🗞️ How should states respect and protect the family life of refugees? Our Eilidh Beaton and co-author Matt Lister survey several questions and issues worthy of further discussion in their chapter in the newly published Handbook of Migration Ethics.

💬 This time last week, our Mike Beaney gave a talk on "Integrational Creativity and Resonant Witchcraft" at a workshop on "Creative Imagination from Art to Science" at the University of Geneva.

🗓️ Save the date! This upcoming Wednesday, LMU Munich's Michele Giavazzi will deliver the next talk in our colloquium series. He'll argue that existing accounts of voter incompetence betray an unduly apologetic attitude toward democratic citizens.

Events for September 2025 – CEPPA Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs

💬 Today, our Fed Luzzi is giving a talk entitled 'Against Excellence as the Norm of Ambition' at CEPPA, University of St Andrews. He'll argue that we should abandon the norm of excellence in favour of the norm of sufficiency.

Further details:

💬 Today, our Sandro Guli is delivering a talk entitled "Social Roles, Recognition, and Social Nature" at Wuhan University.

Earlier this summer Sandro also presented "Internalism and Externalism in Social Normativity: The Hegelian Model" at the International Social Ontology Conference in Dublin.

Events - Centre for Biomedical Ethics – School of Medicine, National University of Singapore - CBmE Digital duplicates are AI built representations of people, trained on personal texts, images, and choices so they can speak, decide, and create in ways that resemble real persons. The Digital Duplicates...

💬 Today, our @paulasweeney.bsky.social is presenting at the Digital Duplicates workshop in the Centre for Bioethics at the National University of Singapore. The title of her talk is "Avatars and Dementia".

Homepage | JME Practical Bioethics An international open access, peer-reviewed journal, co-owned by the Institute of Medical Ethics and BMJ Group, dedicated to publishing bioethics research and covering urgent global issues such as…

📣 Our @paulasweeney.bsky.social has been appointed Associate Editor of the new open-access journal, JME Practical Bioethics!

The journal welcomes both traditional philosophy papers with clear practical implications & work in translational, applied, and empirically-focused bioethics.