The Philosophy Department recently welcomed Professor Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University to campus to give the 2022 Roy Wood Sellars Lecture. In fact, Professor Stanley was our Sellars Lecturer for 2020, scheduled for March 19th, 2020 — that is, a few days after much of the country shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His lecture, “Free Speech and its Discontents” drew on research he has been pursuing in a book in progress (co-authored with David Beaver) entitled The Politics of Language and philosophically engaged issues that have very much been part of recent public […]

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October 13th at 4:30PM Traditional Reading Room, Bertrand Library (free and open to the public) Sponsored by the Philosophy Department and the Bucknell Humanities Center Knowledge of the external world is a persistent problem for empiricists, because if our ideas all come from experience, there does not seem to be a way to pierce the veil of perception to access anything beyond our sensations. Locke defines knowledge as the agreement of ideas, making it extremely subjective. This definition seems to create a further problem insofar as knowledge of the external world should have some conformity with an objective state of […]

Continue reading Colloquium: Michaela Tiller on “Atypical Perceivers and the Subjectivity of Knowledge in Locke” »

The Philosophy faculty has been busy over the last year or so. A few highlights: Professor Adam Burgos published two essays on the topic of political resistance — an ongoing research project of his: “Legitimacy, Resistance and the Stakes of Politics” in Philosophy & Social Criticism; and “A Dialectical Taxonomy of Resistance” in The Harvard Review of Philosophy. Professor Maria Balcells presented her paper “Moving from A to B: dynamic experience, persistence, and becoming” at the 7th annual meeting of the International Association for the Philosophy of Time in July 2022. Her paper critically examined the claim that the passage […]

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We had a great turnout and a great time at the 2021 celebration of World Philosophy Day. Great to see everyone. Here are some photos.

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Click through for descriptions of the Philosophy courses on offer for the Spring ’22 semester.

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The Philosophy Department (together with the Philosophy Club and Phi Sigma Tau Honors Society) hopes you’ll join us at some upcoming events. If you would like to join our mailing list to stay in the loop on events and department news, please click here to add yourself. Philosophical Film Screening: October Food for Thought Lunch: Monsters! Thursday, October 14th @ 12:10PM (after International Coming Out Day photo)Benches on the Quad above Freas Hall (rain location: Willard-Smith Library) What is a monster? What do we find “monstrous” and why? Philosophical Film Screening: November Thursday, November 4th @ 7PM Campus Theatre (free […]

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Our first Department event of Fall 2021 was a department social and induction of four new members to the Phi Sigma Tau Philosophy National Honors Society. They are:Meagan Hathaway ’22Peyton Kendall ’22Tnsae Mulu ’23Tyler Williams ’22 Congratulations! Some photos from the event. . . .

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Congratulations to Philosophy and Geography double-major Jackson Ingram, who recently (successfully!) defended his honors thesis “Immigration Enforcement and Electronic Monitoring: Reification Within a Racialized State Apparatus”. This culminates four years of interdisciplinary research with his Presidential Fellows Mentor Vanessa Massaro from Geography and work in Philosophy (stemming in particular from Adam Burgos’s Philosophy and Race course).

Click through for the abstract.

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Professor Adam Burgos will be co-presenting the Gonzaga University Philosophy Department Colloquium with his collaborator there, Dr. Alejandro Arango on Thursday March 25th at 7:30PM (eastern time) via Zoom. All are welcome. Abstract: The debate about the definition of Latinidad as a social identity has fluctuated between accounts that put it closer to ethnicity (mainly represented by the work of Jorge J. E. Gracia) or closer to race (mainly represented by the work of Linda Alcoff). We present and defend the claim that the multiplicity of features and experiences of Latinos in the United States is best accounted for by steering away […]

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Thursday, October 29th at 4:30PM (online) What are your fellow students up to? What are they writing on, thinking about in their courses, research projects, and beyond? We hope you’ll join us for an online mini-conference. We have four students giving short (<10 minute) talks on their recent work. A Zoom link will be emailed out to students and posted on the Bucknell Message Center; if you would like to attend and don’t have the link, please look there (or email jkbaker@bucknell.edu). If you have the link and would like to share it with friends and family, please feel free. […]

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