Each semester, the department offers a series of lectures given by a mix of guest speakers from around the world and UNLV professors, presenting current research on a broad range of philosophical issues. These lectures expand on topics covered in philosophy classes. There is also a course (PHIL 482) centered on the Colloquium Series itself.

Colloquium Series Archive Download the Entire Spring 2024 Schedule

Spring 2024 Colloquia

  • Feb 08: University Forum Lecture Series - Perverse Actions

    Speaker: Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto & Yale University We occasionally act in ways that are wrong—morally or otherwise—at least partially because of the wrongness, as when we break a rule…

  • Feb 09: "Pleasures of Suffering"

    Paul Bloom, Departments of Psychology and Cognitive Science, U Toronto and Yale — People are hedonists, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This view is central to much of psychology and it fits many people’s own sense…

  • Feb 23: “What Eliminative Materialism Isn’t”

    Bill Ramsey, Dept. of Philosophy, UNLV — In this talk, my aim is to get clearer on what eliminative materialism actually does and does not entail. I look closely at one cluster of views that is often described as a form of…

  • Mar 01: “What is at Stake in the Early Modern Debate over Jewish Ceremonial Law? Agency, Reform, and A Defense of Toleration”

    Michael Rosenthal, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Toronto — In this paper I shall discuss a debate that developed among early modern Jewish philosophers (Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn, and Lazarus Bendavid) over whether…

  • Mar 05: "Reasoning, Inference and the Ontology of Reasons"

    Marc Moffett, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Texas, El Paso The question of what kind of things reasons are – the ontology of reasons – is not independent of the question how one thinks actions and beliefs are justified…

  • Mar 22: “Poisoning the Well: Hermeneutical Injustice through Conceptual Engineering”

    Cat Saint-Croix, Department of Philosophy, UMN Twin Cities — To "poison the well" is to pollute a source of life and community—spoiling a safe, essential resource. This talk identifies two ways conceptual engineering can be…

  • Mar 29: “Children, Borders, and ‘Adultification’”

    Amy Reed-Sandoval, Department of Philosophy, UNLV — Many of the world’s borders systematically harm children and adolescents in terrible ways. In particularly violent cases, they are sites where children experience death,…

  • Apr 12: “Happiness and Nothingness”

    Paul Schollmeier, Department of Philosophy, UNLV — Human happiness is a daydream. All our thoughts are daydreams because human knowledge has its limits. Our ideas and impressions cannot grasp reality. Our ideas arise from…

  • Apr 26: “Number-Properties: Existence in a Homogeneous Reality”

    Melisa Vivanco, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley — Although number sentences are ostensibly simple, familiar, and applicable, the justification for our arithmetical beliefs has been…