The third annual Workshop for Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy, which was hosted at Syracuse University this weekend, attracted large crowds of students, faculty and philosophers from around the world.

The most crowded day for the conference was Friday, with professors from many different departments, in addition to philosophy, in attendance. The conference, one of the most well-known political philosophy conferences in the world, featured keynote lectures by a UCLA professor and a University of Michigan professor.

Martha Garcia-Murillo, a professor in the School of Information Studies, was interested in how the conference related to her field of study.

“I can apply what I have learned about the ideas of inequality and how it has changed over time to my understanding of technology and its effect on inequality,” she said.

 

A major theme at the conference was the idea of justice.

George Sher, a professor at Rice University who spoke on Sunday, focused on the idea that it is implausible to take justice to be a matter of desert, or the condition of being deserving — whether it be good or bad.

Seth Lazar, a professor at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and Laura Valentini, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, also talked about the idea of justice, but in the context of war.

Lazar and Valentini spoke about their paper, “Proxy Battle in the Ethics of War,” which discusses the just war debate between the orthodox and revisionist theories of justice.

The pair said the revisionists criticize the orthodox principles of war, which are combatant equality and noncombatant immunity. Lazar and Valentini argue that the specific focus on first-order moral disputes led revisionists and orthodox into this battle. However, deeper second-order disagreements of nature and purpose of political theory are also traceable.

“We’re not talking about whether or not to stop at a traffic lights, but whether or not to kill an innocent person,” Lazar said.

David Sobel, one of the conference organizers and a philosophy professor at SU, said the use of commentators was a new and “successful” addition to the conference this year.

“It provoked even more talk and constructive criticism,” Sobel said.

Sobel said the tone of the conference also improved, as the conversations were more polite, constructive and cooperative than in past years.

“The quality of the conference was exceptionally high this year,” said Sher, who also attended the conference last year at the University of Missouri.

Sher said he also appreciated the new structure of the conference, as the speakers were limited and stretched over the course of three days rather than many speakers being compacted into two days. He added that it was easier to stay focused and engaged on the speakers when there were fewer of them.

Renee Bolinger, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, said she loved the conference because she got to interact with internationally-renowned philosophers with “cutting edge ideas.”

Many conference attendees enjoyed Elizabeth Anderson’s keynote speech on Saturday on “The Problem of Equality from a Political Economy Perspective,” giving her the biggest turnout of the three-day event.

Nicole Dular, a graduate student studying philosophy at SU, said she was impressed with Anderson’s viewpoints and ability to “keep in mind what was important.”

“I love philosophy because it’s just like a puzzle,” Dular said. “It makes me a better person because I have the ability to critically evaluate myself and everything around me.”

Published on September 20, 2015 at 10:27 pm

Contact Genna: grschind@syr.edu