Talking philosophy

Philosopher Collin Rice will give a talk, "The Magic of Falsehoods: Highly Idealized Models and Scientific Realism" this Thursday, April 9, at 4 pm in Bloomsburg University's Bakeless Center for the Humanties, room 202. An assistant professor in the Philosophy Department at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Rice will be a Visiting Scholar in the University of California, Irvine's Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science this June. His areas research are the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology, and the philosophy of mind (especially cognitive science and concepts).

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Next Tuesday, April 14, philosopher Jack Call will give a talk "Thinking About Immortality" at 4 pm in BU's  Centennial Hall, room 218. The author of Dreams And Resurrection: On Immortal Selves, Psychedelics, and Christianity, Call revisits several historical arguments aimed at supporting and rejecting the notion of immortality and employs the analogy of dreaming and waking as a way of conceiving a relation between everyday life and what historically has been called an “afterlife.” A short Q&A period will follow the talk. The talk is sponsored by the Philosophy Department and the College of Liberal Arts, in support of BU’s course in Philosophy of Religion (now in progress).

The parrot may be dead. This talk won't be.

BU philosophy professor Gary Hardcastle helped write a book about Monty Python, Monty Python and Philosophy: Nudge Nudge, Think Think!

Hardcastle will share his Python prowess in a free talk, "The Philosophical Importance of Monty Python," on Thursday, April 18, at 7 pm in McCormick Center, room 2303.

Speaking ahem ... figuratively. Are you an A** ... ?

There are words that aren’t spoken in polite company, but still are part of the common vocabulary. Philosopher Aaron James will speak about one of those terms and the traits it identifies in a free lecture Thursday, April 11, at 7:30 pm in BU’s McCormick Center, room 2303.

James said in a Huffington Post blog that the term relates to “a person who systematically allows himself special advantages in cooperative life out of an entrenched sense of entitlement that immunizes him against the complaints of other people.” His lecture, “Are You an A**hole?” builds on his book with a similar title, which offers a philosophical analysis of the term and the people to whom it applies.

James is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California at Irvine. He earned a doctoral degree from Harvard University and recently was an American Council of Learned Societies Burkhardt Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

The idea for his latest book came from a 2008 encounter with a fellow surfer who, he said, “was blatantly breaking the rules of right-of-way.”

I designed the poster for this lecture and it was one of those projects that I could picture immediately. A blast to do. In print versions around campus, the center of the "O" is reflective, like a mirror. —EGF.