Endowed Lectures 2025-26

Please visit page for future lecture announcements.

To be added to our events list, please email [email protected].

Visit our Events Calendar for a full list of upcoming events in the Department of Philosophy.

 

2025-26

 

October 9, 2025 - Patrick Suppes Lecture in the Philosophy of Science 
"Computational Complexity and Explanations in Physics" — Scott Aaronson (University of Texas at Austin)
RSVP here by October 2

 

April 9, 2026 - Nagel Lecture in Philosophy
"Biology, Functionalism, and the Mind-Body Problem" — Peter Godfrey Smith (University of Sydney)
RSVP information to come.

Past Lectures

2022

Elizabeth Anderson, "Challenges to the Creation of an Egalitarian Society: Reflections on Moral Psychology from Rousseau to the Present"

2013

Noam Chomsky, "What Kind of Creatures Are We?"

2007

Tyler Burge, "Self and Self-Understanding"

2002

Michael Dummett, "Truth and the Past"

1998

Ronald Dworkin, "Justice for Hedgehogs"

1994

Hilary Putnam, "Sense, Nonsense, and the Senses: An Inquiry into the Powers of the Human Mind"

1989

Donald Davidson, "The Structure and Content of Truth"

1984

Amartya Sen, "Well-being, Agency and Freedom"

1980

John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory"
Previous Dewey Lecturers include Ernest Nagel (1977), Alfred Jules Ayer (1970), and Willard Van Orman Quine (1968).

1977

Ernest Nagel, Teleology Revisited 

1970

Sir Alfred Ayer, Probability and Evidence

1968

Willard Van Orman Quine, Ontological Relativity

2013

Jeremy Butterfield, Cambridge University "Morningside Story: Light, Matter and Ernest Nagel"

2010

Kit Fine, "Counterfactuals with Possible Worlds"

2007

Sol Feferman "Gödel, Nagel, Minds, and Machines"

Anita Feferman, "Uncovering Tarski

2005

Nancy Cartwright, "Where is the Theory in our Theories of Causality?”

2003

Teddy Seidenfeld, Carnegie Mellon University "P’s in a Pod: Some Recipes for Cooking Mendel’s Data"

1999

Thomas Schelling, University of Maryland "Rational Choice and Some of its Alternatives"

1996

Daniel Dennet "Consciousness: More Like Fame than Television"

1991

Francisco Ayala, UC Irvine "Teleological Explanations in Biology"

1988

Patrick Suppes, Stanford "Determinism, Comparison, and Free Will"

 

2019

Sean Carroll, "Finding Yourself in a Large Universe"

2018

Adina L. Roskies,  "What can Neuroimaging do for Psychology?"

2017

Kenny Easwaran, "Unity in Diversity: The city as a collective agent"

2020

John MacFarlane, Indeterminacy as Indecision

2011

Onora O’Neill, Ethics for Communication: Speech Rights and Speech Wrongs

2010

Kit Fine, "Counterfactuals without Possible Worlds"

2007

Robert Brandom, Animating Ideas of Idealism

2005

Nancy Cartwright, "Where is the Theory in our Theories of Causality?"

2003

Teddy Seidenfeld, "P's in a Pod: some recipes for cooking Mendel's data."

2001

Myles Burnyeat, "Three Failures of Philosophy."

1999

Thomas Schelling, "Rational Choice and Some of its Alternatives"

1996

Howard Stein, "How does Physics Bear Upon Metaphysics, and Why Did Plato Hold that Philosophy Cannot be Written Down?"
Previous Nagel Lecturers include Francisco J. Ayala (1991) and Patrick Suppes (1988).

1993

 Bernard Williams, "Virtues of Truth"

1983

Sir Peter Strawson, "Scepticisms"

1978

Noam Chomsky, Rules and Representations

1972

G.H. von Wright, "Causality and Determinism"

1968

Jean Piaget, "l'Epistémologie génétique"

1965

 Sir Isaiah Berlin, "Two Enemies of the Enlightenment"

1961

Herbert W. Schneider, "Ways of Being"

1958

William R. Dennes, "Some Dilemmas of Philosophical Naturalism"

1954

Clarence I. Lewis, "The Ground and Nature of Right"

1952

Harry Todd Costello, "Perceptions, Systems, and Possibilities"

1949

Sterling Power Lamprecht, "Nature and History"

1946

George Plimpton Adams, "Man and Metaphysics"

1943

Wilmon H. Sheldon, Process and Polarity