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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Congratulations to Professor Slater and his students, Emily Scholfield ’22 and Conor Moore ’21 on their recent publication in Frontiers in Communication, “Reporting on Science as an Ongoing Process (or Not)”. The paper is published open access; you can read it here. Here’s the abstract: Efforts to cultivate scientific literacy in the public are often aimed at enabling people to make more informed decisions — both in their own lives (e.g., personal health, sustainable practices, &c.) and in the public sphere. Implicit in such efforts is the cultivation of some measure of trust of science. To what extent does science reporting in […]

Congratulations to Professor Katherine Ward who recently published “Breaking down experience—Heidegger’s methodological use of breakdown in Being and Time” in the European Journal of Philosophy. Here’s the abstract: Phenomenologists draw on descriptions of experience to uncover the conditions that enable experience. However, a second‐order or distanced view of experience can distort it. In his analysis of the ready‐to‐hand, Heidegger utilizes experiences of breakdown to avoid this problem, but he does not provide a detailed account of why this methodology is effective. I use Heidegger’s analysis of interpretation to reconstruct a detailed account of the breakdown methodology and show why it […]

Philosophy students know the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) as an indispensable, open access resource for students, faculty, and anyone else interested in philosophy. When I first came to Bucknell in 2009, I noticed that the entry on Race was written by a professor in the Political Science Department (now Associate Dean for the Faculty of Social Sciences), Michael James. “Wow, this guy is a serious philosopher!” I thought. (It’s always nice to find philosophers in other departments. . . .) The SEP requests that authors do what they can to keep their entries up to date with often rapidly […]

Professor Leddington was one of three winners of the inaugural Peter Kivy Prize, awarded by the American Society for Aesthetics, for his essay “Sonic Pictures” (featuring arguments concerning, among other things, beatboxing and cover songs). You can read more about the prize in the official announcement here.

Professor Maria Balcells’ chapter in The Illusions of Time: Philosophical and Psychological Essays on Timing and Time Perception has recently been released. Don’t miss the illusion of movement on the cover (click to enlarge).

Please join us on Tuesday, November 5th at 4PM in the Willard Smith Library (Vaughan Literature Building) for a departmental seminar by Visiting Assistant Professor, Robby Finley. A short reception with snacks & refreshments will be available starting at 4PM; the talk will begin around 4:15PM.