News | Philosophy

Applying to Philosophy Grad School Workshop - Thursday, Oct. 22nd - 5:00-6:00pm

Considering grad school in Philosophy at UofT? If so, join us on Thursday, Oct. 22nd from 5:00-6:00pm for our annual Applying to Grad School workshop. Our panelists for this event are:

Prof. Amy Mullin, Director of Graduate Studies
Prof. Peter King, Director of Undergraduate Studies
Andriy Bilenkyy, PhD Student
Jashan Mavi, MA Student

Please RSVP to eric.correia@utoronto.ca by Wednesday, Oct. 21st.

A Zoom link for the event will be sent to all student who RSVP.

Noesis Call for Submissions - deadline Nov. 29th

Noesis, the University of Toronto's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy, is delighted to extend a call for submissions, for the 22nd volume of the journal, for publication in the spring of 2021. Papers selected for publication in Noesis will demonstrate exceptional undergraduate scholarship in both their precision and originality. Submissions in all areas of philosophy are welcome. Especially insightful exegetical works and cross-disciplinary papers are welcome so long as the philosophical content included in the paper is substantial.

Papers submitted for consideration must:

Have received an A-range grade (although it is strongly recommended that even such papers be revised and expanded prior to submission).
Be no more than 5,000 words in length.
Be prepared for blind review (i.e., no author-identifying information or notes in the body of the paper - visit our website for further instruction on how to prepare for blind review).
Be submitted as a .pdf, .doc, or .docx file.
Be written in or translated to English.

In addition, please include the following information on a separate cover page:

The author's full name
The title of the submitted paper
The word count of the paper
The author's academic institution, program, and year of study
The author's email address

Successful applicants will work with two Noesis senior editors over the course of three months to make changes, revisions, and additions to their paper, prior to publication. Papers should be submitted at www.noesisjournal.com or by email to eic.noesis@gmail.com by Sunday, November 29th, 2020 at 11:59 PM, EDT.

Christian Pfeiffer among Recipients of 2020 Connaught New Researcher Award (September 2020)

Congratulations to assistant professor Christian Pfeiffer (UTSC) for ranking among the 56 U of T scholars awarded a 2020 Connaught New Researcher Award. The award recognizes junior professors within the first five years of a tenure-stream academic appointment and aims to help recipients establish a strong research program and increase their competitiveness for external funding. It forms part of U of T’s commitment to fostering excellence in research and innovation by supporting faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers.

Pfeiffer’s project, Aristotle’s Metaphysics H, seeks to provide an original and more accurate interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of hylomorphic substances in Metaphysics H. Pfeiffer will here establish that book H contains the authoritative Aristotelian account of hylomorphic substances, which is based on Aristotle’s theory of scientific definitions. Pfeiffer’s work will also seek to clarify whether these considerations imply that Aristotle proposed two different models of hylomorphism.

The funding for the Connaught New Researcher Award comes from U of T’s Connaught Fund, founded in 1972 when the university sold the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories for $29 million. This year, the Connaught New Researchers program has awarded funding to 14 researchers in the humanities, 9 in life sciences, 8 in physical sciences and engineering, and 25 in social sciences.

2019-2020 UTSC Undergraduate Philosophy Conference - Biomedical Ethics (March 7)

Presented by the Association of Philosophy Students

Keynote Speaker - Phoebe Friesen (McGill University) - Medical Aid in Dying and Suicide: How are they different and how are they similar?
Student Speaker - Abbey Horner (University of Western Ontario) - A Realistic Analysis of rCRISPR: The Inevitability and Necessity of Research on and Regulation of Reproductive CRISPR
Student Speaker - Kate Tsiandoulas (University of Toronto: St. George) - Arguments against Bonnie Burstow's Anti-Psychiatry Movement
Student Speaker - Soaad Hossain (University of Toronto: Scarborough Campus) - Approaching patient-clinician relationship issues involving artificial intelligence using ethics of care and nursing ethics

Special Feature: Panel discussion on Graduate Studies in Philosophy with Tania Sleman (New York University), Sydney Campbell (University of Toronto) and Adrian Ma (University of Toronto)

Download the conference poster here.

Congratulations to Kristina Dukoski - UTSC Undergraduate Award Winner!

We are proud to announce UTSC student Kristina Dukoski as the winner of the APA Undergrad Public Philosophy Contest for her piece "Why We Ought Not to Fear Regret". Visit the APA website to learn more.

Welcome to Assistant Professor Christian Pfeiffer!

Christian Pfeiffer will join the department of philosophy at in January 2019 from his assistant professor position at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. His research focuses on ancient philosophy, in particular Aristotle. His book, Aristotle’s Theory of Bodies is coming out with Oxford University Press in August 2018. Current research projects include a monograph on Aristotle’s Metaphysics H as well as series of articles connected to topics in Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics.

Christian received his Ph.D. from the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 2012. He studied philosophy and ancient Greek at the Humboldt Universität, the Freie Universität in Berlin, the University of Edinburgh and Princeton University.

Welcome back to Assistant Professor Joshua Brandt!

Joshua Brandt will return to UTSC to continue leading our program in biomedical ethics. Joshua received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2017. His research offers an original approach to the issue of negative partiality in ethics, and in biomedical ethics he is developing a research project that critiques existing justifications of randomization in clinical trials and proposes a new alternative justification.

Welcome to Mark Fortney!

Mark Fortney is joining us to teach courses in philosophy of mind and philosophy of sexuality. Mark received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 2017 in the philosophy of mind. Most of Mark’s research so far has been about the nature of attention and the relationship between ordinary and scientific talk about attention. He’s also recently started to work on accessibility and the scientific study of romantic love. He’s previously taught advanced courses about consciousness and objectivity, and introductory courses about the mind, sexuality, and ethics.