Past talks and other activities
Past talks, invited lectures, conferences, and related academic events.
2024
December 2024: University of Macerata conference on the virtues: 'Virtues Biological and Ethical'
March 2024: Annual Aquinas Lecture, University of St Thomas, Houston
March 2024: Wade Memorial Lecture, Biennial Henle Conference, St Louis University, Missouri
2023
August 2023: Society for the Metaphysics of Science conference, Dalhousie University: 'Biological Mistakes and the Question of Function'.
May 2023: Annual E.J. Lowe Lecture, University of Durham: 'Action, Passion, Power'.
2022
November 2022: Public lecture at the University of Reading, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation and the Royal Institute of Philosophy. 'To Err is Not (Only) Human: Mistakes and What they Mean for Biology and Philosophy'; Video of the lecture here.
2021
November 2021, Cardiff University: 'Towards a Civil Jurisprudence of Cooperation', for ACoRN research seminar on conscientious objection in health care.
October 2021, University of Mainz: 'Who's Afraid of Reverse Mereological Essentialism?', for conference 'Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Persistence and De Re Modality'.
June 2021, University of Innsbruck: Online seminar on The Metaphysics of Good and Evil
2020 (last 3D talk pre-COVID)
Feb. 2020, University of Oxford: 'Recovering the Hierarchy of Being'
2019
March 2019, University of Edinburgh: 'How Special is Medical Conscience?'
January 2019, Cambridge University, Serious Metaphysics Group: 'Evil, Negative Being, and Truthmakers'
2018
October 2018, University of Rostock, Germany, conference on formal causality: 'Form as Cause'
May 2018, KU Leuven, Belgium: 'Painful Objections to the Privation Theory'.
2017
July 2017, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology conference, Berkeley, USA: 'Death and Donation'
May 2017, Chabad House, Oxford: 'Conscientious Objection in Health Care'March 2017, University of Zurich: 'The Impossibility of Natural Necessity'.
March, 2017, University of Oxford: debate with Prof. Jeff McMahan on the morality of assisted suicide.
2016
October, 2016, University of Buckingham, 'Freedom of Dissociation?'
June 2016, Senate House, London: 'The Great Unifier: Form and the Unity of the Organism' (conference on Biological Identity). The entire talk is viewable here.
Feb. 2016, University of Mississippi: 'Further Clarity on Cooperation and Morality'
2015
Jan. 2015, University of California, Irvine: 'The Metaphysics of Moral Behaviour'
2014
Dec. 2014, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, conference on continuous creation: 'Divine Premotion'
Nov. 2014, University of Oxford: 'Finality Revived: Powers and Intentionality'
Sept. 2014, National University of Singapore: 'Finality Revived: Powers and Intentionality'
2013
Dec. 2013, University of Cologne: 'The Metaphysics of Privation'
Sept. 2013, SUNY Buffalo: Debate with Patrick Toner on survivalism vs. corruptionism.
Sept. 2013, SUNY Buffalo: George F. Hourani Lectures on Ethics: 'The Metaphysics of Good and Evil'
2012
June, 2012, Heythrop College, University of London: conference, 'Is There Purpose in the Universe?'
March, 2012, Wake Forest University, North Carolina: conference on 'Engineering Human Nature and the Future of Human Values'. Speakers include Robert Audi, Paul Churchland, Patricia Churchland, William Hurlbut.
2011
September 2011, Institut Catholique, Paris: 'Hume, the Occult, and the Substance of the School' (conference on 'The Legacy of David Hume')
June, 2011, Univ. of Hertfordshire: 'Disembodied Communication and Religious Experience: The Online Model'; workshop on 'Personal Identities after the Information Revolution', part of an AHRC-funded project on 'The Construction of Personal Identities Online'.
2010
November 2010, Univ. of Hertfordshire: 'Morality, Religion, and Cosmic Justice'
June-July 2010, Charles University, Prague: 'Essence and Properties'
March 2010, King's College, London: 'Why I am not a Consequentialist'
March 2010, Rewley House, Univ. of Oxford: two lectures on Aquinas
February 2010, Christ Church, Oxford: 'Appearance and Reality: What Plato can Teach Journalists and the Media' (seminar series 'The Public Responsibility of the Media', organized by Reuters Institute of Journalism and McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life)
2009
November 2009, University of Leipzig: on essentialism
May 2009, Butler Society, Oriel College, Oxford: on the First Way (Audio of the talk)
February 2009, Southampton: on Peter Singer's bioethics
2008
October 2008, Oxford: 'The Individuality of the Embryo' (student-sponsored event)
May 2008, University of Exeter: on concepts and dualism
April 2008, King's College, London, workshop on philosophy of religion: on Kenny on the First Way
2007
September 2007, Catholic University of Valencia: lectures on consequentialism and on euthanasia.
October 2007, University of Birmingham conference: Nature and its Classification, 'The Nature and Classification of Life'
August 2007, Princeton: Witherspoon Institute Thomistic Seminar; classes for graduate students on essentialism, teleology, dualism, and natural law
May 2007, University of Lisbon: lectures on consequentialism and euthanasia
April 2007, Georgetown: 'The Structure of Essence'; workshop on double effect
2006
December 2006, Princeton: 'Why Peter Singer is Wrong' (student-sponsored event)
December, 2006, University of Sussex: 'Teleology: Inorganic and Organic'
March, 2006: University of Navarra, Spain: natural law
January, 2006: University of Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar , 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law'
2005
September, 2005: Catholic University of America, Washington, DC: 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Law'
June, 2005: Address to the International Society for Stem Cell Research, San Francisco, on the ethics of human embryonic stem cell research
May, 2005: Public debate with Prof. Julian Savulescu at the National Portrait Gallery, London, sponsored by The Times Higher, on the ethics of cloning; accompanying article in the Higher available below.
April, 2005: State University of Valencia, Spain, and Catholic University of Valencia - papers on dualism and on natural law theory
2004
November, 2004: 'Ordinary and Extraordinary Means', conference on Ethical Issues in Intensive Care, at the University of Reading, in conjunction with the Royal Berkshire Hospital
November, 2004, University of Saarbrücken: 'A Defence of an Aristotelian/Thomistic Account of Personal Identity'
June, 2004: University of Brighton: 'Why You Should be a (Certain Kind of) Dualist'
April, 2004: Bowling Green State University, conference on Personal Identity at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center: 'Hylemorphic Dualism'
2003
June, 2003: Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London: 'Perennial Philosophy's Theory of Art'
July-August, 2003: Visiting Scholar at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, Social Philosophy and Policy Center
2003: Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture Series, Modern Moral Philosophy: 'The Ethics of Co-operation in Wrongdoing'
2001
November, 2001: American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting: on the Kalam Cosmological Argument (in debate with Wes Morriston)
October, 2001: Philosophical Society, Oxford: temporal parts and change