- university home
- a-z index
- help
- terms and conditions
- privacy and cookie policy
- © 2002-2012 University of Bristol
Professor James Ladyman, Head of Department of Philosophy, will be speaking at HowTheLightGetsIn, the world's largest philosophy and arts festival. The event is run by the Institute for Art and Ideas and takes place 1-10 June 2012 in Hay-on-Wye, with a theme this year of 'Uncharted Territories: Progress for a new era'. As well as philosophers, the line up also includes musicians, politicians, poets and more, across 410 events. James will be speaking about 'The Ultimate Map of Reality' on Saturday 2 June, along with Adrian Moore, Giles Fraser, and Hilary Lawson. Click here for the full programme.
Geoff Blumenthal, an MPhil student, has had an article, 'Kuhn and the Chemical Revolution: a Re-assessment' published in Foundations of Chemistry. He has also had an article, 'On Lavoisier's Achievement in Chemistry', accepted for publication in Centaurus.
Milena Ivanova and Matt Farr, both current PhD students, have been confirmed as guest editors of Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics for the publication of the proceedings of a conference held in Bristol last August. The conference, 'Conventional Principles in Science', was principally organised by Milena and co-organised by Matt, and hosted renowned international speakers including Michael Friedman. The two-day conference focused on questions surrounding conventions in physics, mainly spacetime theories and quantum mechanics, in relation to the notion of 'relativized a priori'. Click here for the full conference line-up.
Chris Gifford, a current PhD student, has had a paper accepted for publication in a top international journal, Erkenntnis. The paper is entitled 'Against the Modal Argument'.
Megan Blomfield, an M.Litt student in only her second year of graduate work, has had her paper 'Global Common Resources and the Just Distribution of Emission Shares' accepted by The Journal of Political Philosophy, a top-ranked international journal. Professor Chris Bertram said of the news, "It really is a great achievement for Megan to get published in such a place at such an early stage and, I think, reflects very well on Bristol as a place to do postgraduate work in philosophy, though the credit is all hers."
Dr Richard Pettigrew, British Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, is co-author of an article that has been chosen by the Philosopher’s Annual as one of the ten best articles published in philosophy in 2010.
The article, entitled ‘An Objective Justification of Bayesianism II: The Consequences of Minimizing Inacurracy', was written with Hannes Leitgeb and appeared in Philosophy of Science, vol. 77, no. 2, in April 2010.
Dr Pettigrew explained the thinking behind the article: "Suppose that I know that a die will be rolled; and suppose that I believe that it will land on three more strongly than I believe that it will land on an odd number. We would say that I am irrational. But why? In this article, we sought to answer this and other questions about how our degrees of beliefs ought to relate to one another. We argued that people whose degrees of beliefs do not relate to one another in the prescribed ways can expect themselves to have less accurate beliefs than those whose degrees of beliefs do".
The Philosopher’s Annual aims to select the ten best articles published in philosophy each year (something it acknowledges is "as simple to state as it is admittedly impossible to fulfil"), and is available online.
Professor James Ladyman, Head of the Department of Philosophy, said: "The Philosopher’s Annual is compiled by an international panel of editors of the very best philosophy journals. Articles in all areas of philosophy are considered and only ten are chosen. It is an exceptional achievement for a young philosopher to have a paper appear in this compilation".