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Saturday April
21
Please
click HERE to view a precis
of Adrian Heathcote's talk
Saturday May
5
Saturday
May 19
Please
click HERE
to view the
text of Lloyd Reinhardt's talk"Truth and a Good Life"
Saturday June
2
Please
click HERE
to view the text of Max Deutscher's talk (renamed as):
"Some
Friendly Words for the Postmodern"
Saturday June
16
Please
clicke HERE
to access the text, audio and slides of Huw Price's talk
(renamed as): "The
War against Error: the Truth Wars."
Saturday June
30
Please
clicke HERE
to access the text of Justine McGill's talk (renamed as)
"Truth,
truthfulness and internet dating"
Saturday July 14
Saturday July
28
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1. The Dangerousness of Truth
Adrian Heathcote. Senior Lecturer in Philosophy,
University of Sydney
The most dangerous idea in the
modern world is the concept of truth. It is so dangerous
that many have felt the need to deny its existence, wholly
or in part. Going along with this denial is a denial of
the existence of facts, as parts of the world, that we
can dispute about, investigate, know, etc. One might say,
with some justification, that this denial is one of the
greatest pieces of deception—and self-deception—of the
last fifty years. In this talk Adrian Heathcote
will look at some of the arguments used here with an eye
to revealing any specious nonsense.
2. Literature as Experimental Philosophy: George Eliot
on Truth and Realism
Moira Gatens. Professor of Philosophy, University
of Sydney
In our era an idea is abroad that
fiction has little to do with truth, and that novelists
are a species of liar. George Eliot, one of our greatest
19th Century English novelists, considered her work in
fiction to be both realist and truth-seeking. In one letter
she referred to her writings as a set of experiments in
life. Through an examination of some of her novels, this
talk will endeavour to explain what Eliot meant by ‘realism’
and what is involved in her commitment to truth. Speaker
Moira Gatens will argue that Eliot’s worldview
still has much to contribute to moral philosophy today.
3. Truth and a Good Life
Lloyd Reinhardt. Senior Lecturer (retired) in Philosophy,
University of Sydney
Does truth always matter or is
there something in the slogan ’What you don’t know
doesn’t hurt you?’ Some philosophers have held that a
life is liable to judgment as unhappy, or as blighted
by things that happen after death, or by illusion or ignorance
concerning some matters, such as the faithfulness of loved
ones, or by religious belief. Speaker Lloyd Reinhardt
will examine this question: If it would be devastating
to be disillusioned about such matters, might not remaining
in the dark render illusion harmless, or even beneficial?
4. That word again:
Text and Reality: ‘Judgment’ and the ‘Post-Modern’
Max Deutscher. Emeritus (and Foundation) Professor
of Philosophy, Macquarie University
Much as modernists were criticised
for undermining confidence in knowledge and morality,
post-modernists are now attacked for corroding confidence
in truth and objectivity. Max Deutscher will discuss the
relation of text to reality, using ‘post-modernism’ as
a frame of reference. Post-modern writing is attacked
as a new relativism. Max Deutscher will argue,
however, that, using an approach that is friendly to the
post-modern spirit, we can ‘deconstruct’ relativism along
with absolutism. We are then in a better position to recognise
the importance and autonomy of judgment in relation to
thinking, inference and reaching the truth.
5 Words of Mass Destruction: The Truth Wars.
Huw Price. Challis Professor of Philosophy, University
of Sydney, and Director of the Centre For Time.
The Culture Wars have given way
to the Truth Wars, but this is just a new name for an
ancient conflict. From Plato to Nagel, Protagoras to Rorty,
philosophy’s two great families have feuded over the same
muddy patch for a hundred generations. Absolutists vs
relativists, realists vs idealists, platonists vs pragmatists:
their well-entrenched frontlines rarely move. Huw Price
will introduce today the work of Simon Blackburn, whose
new book Truth: A Guide For the Perplexed (Penguin, 2005)
offers an engaging mix of embedded journalism and non-polemical
road-mapping. But Price will argue that Blackburn’s peace
plan has a fatal flaw - shared, ironically, with the view
of Richard Rorty, the protagonist Blackburn is most concerned
to distance himself from. But Price will offer
an alternative, which has the advantage of being sufficiently
even-handed to be rejected by both sides.
6. At the heart of the matter: truth, truthfulness
and modern relationships.
Justine McGill. Lecturer in Philosophy, University
of Sydney
Are we becoming less truthful?
Are the pressures of modern life, the opportunities of
modern technology and the subtleties of postmodern theory
leading us all to tell more porkies? In his last work,
British philosopher Bernard Williams attempts a genealogy
of truthfulness, considering the origins, purpose, and
historical conditions of truthfulness in our culture.
The motivation for this inquiry is Williams’ concern that
a robust practice of truthfulness may be the first casualty
of the cross-fire involved in the so-called “Truth wars.”
But what is it to be a truthful person? Speaker Justine
McGill will follow this question back to the eighteenth
century, and a debate over truth and identity in matters
of the heart…
7. Curious Obsessions in the History of Science and
Spirituality
Rachael Kohn. Author and ABC Radio National presenter
of ‘The Spirit of Things’.
Spiritual and scientific quests
have often overlapped searching for new truths and ways
of charting the outer regions of the known world. In the
Renaissance the most far-reaching scientific minds were
driven by spiritual convictions. More recently, spiritual
movements were inspired by scientific, especially medical,
discoveries. Today the urge to merge science and religion
has never been stronger despite the objections of Dawkins
and others. The results are mixed. From the Lost Race,
the Lost Tribes, Utopia, and the Art of Medicine, the
scientific and spiritual have come together with amazing
consequences.
8. I Swear It Was Just Like That!
On Memory and Truth
John Sutton. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Macquarie
University
Mistakes are made in both personal
and official accounts of past events. Significant moments
are sometimes strangely forgotten; emotions and quirks
of attention both enable and colour our access to past
experiences. Remembering has many functions besides truth-telling,
but autobiographical and social memory alike claim and
require rich fidelity to the past. Yet both psychology
and history demonstrate that information about the past
is unusually vulnerable to suggestion and distortion.
Speaker John Sutton will explore the question:
How then do we retain the values of accuracy and integrity
in memory?
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