The Philosophy Department will hold its 7th Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference at 7 pm on April 20, 2012 at the UAA Library 307. 

The keynote speaker is Prof. Dale Jamieson, Director of Environmental Studies at New York University.  He is the author of Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction; and Morality's Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
"Climate Change and the Frontiers of Ethics"

ABSTRACT
Climate change presents us with problems of utmost complexity.  In particular, climate change poses the largest-scale and most difficult collective action problem that humanity has ever faced.  Considerations ranging from our biological nature to facts about our political institutions all bear on the explanation of why we have failed to act.  In the face of such problems, two broad families of considerations are sometimes effective in motivating action.  Economics can sometimes succeed in showing that particular solutions appeal to our interests.  Ethics can sometimes show that particular responses accord with our moral ideals.  Economics is severely limited in demonstrating that aggressive responses to climate change are in our interests because it is permeated with ethical considerations.  Our hope for motivating action on climate change must therefore to a great extent turn on ethical concerns.  In this lecture II explain why this hope largely has been disappointed.  Just as the problems of climate change overwhelm our cognitive and affective systems, and our ability to do reliable economic calculations, so they also swamp the machinery of morality, at least as it currently manifests in our moral consciousness.  The choice we face is whether to remain complacent in the face climate change, or undertake the challenge of revising our morality.

SCHEDULE OF STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
APRIL 21, 2012
Administration Bldg. 204

09:00 - 09:40  Richard Teel
                       “Propagations and Pragmatism: Investigation into Language and Belief”

                      
09:40 - 10:20  Crystal Tingook
                       "Exploration of Materialistic Imagination"

10:30 - 12:00  PANEL ON ETHICS AND ECONOMICS
                       Louis Velasco 
                       “Ethical Consumerism”
                       
                       Drew Cason
                       “Ethics and Economics”

12:00 - 01:30  Lunch

01:30 - 02:15  Kate Stephens
                       “Problems with Time”

02:20 - 03:05  Luke Lusardi
                       “Opening Salvo of Ontological Arguments and Their Problems”