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College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

Philosophy Activities and Events

Looking to get involved? We host a number of events throughout the year.

Philosophy Club

The NC State Philosophy Club hosts a variety of activities during the year, including talks by professional philosophers, chats over coffee and occasional social events with departmental faculty. The president of the club is Jaeli Marti; the faculty advisor is Dr. Joe Krylow.

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Lecture and Conference Series

The department organizes and hosts a number of public lectures in philosophy and related fields in the Philosophy Colloquium Series, the Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series and the annual World Philosophy Day Lecture during November. These lectures are sometimes co-hosted by the Philosophy Club.

Every second September, the department’s Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative (LACSI) organizes and hosts a conference on a topic within its areas of interest.

Upcoming lectures and events

Unless otherwise indicated, lectures listed below are free and open to the public.

Recent lectures and events

Unless otherwise indicated, lectures listed below were in the Philosophy Colloquium Series.

2024-25

2023-24

  • Wesley H. Holliday (University of California Berkeley), “A Logician Looks at Voting,” Friday, April 5, 2024, 2:00 p.m., 140 Withers Hall (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University), “Stories and Selves: A Twisted Love Story about the Meaning of Life,” Friday, November 17, 2023
  • Samuel Newlands (University of Notre Dame), “Early Modern Metaphysics of Evil: Pitfalls and Prospects,” September 22, 2023

2022-23

  • Kwame Anthony Appiah (New York University), “Depolarizing Identities,” February 9, 2023 (University Public Lecture)
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Craig Callender, University of California San Diego, “Why Does It Seem Like Time Flows – If It Doesn’t?”, November 18, 2022
  • Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative (LACSI) Conference on Laws of Nature, Explanation, and Understanding, September 16-17, 2022. Speakers: Heather Demarest (University of Colorado, Boulder), Christopher Hitchcock (California Institute of Technology), Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury College), Elizabeth Miller (Brown University), Michael Strevens (New York University). Further details.

2021-22

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no in-person events were held during the year.

  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Virtual Awards Celebration, March 11, 2022

2020-21

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, scheduled in-person events were canceled for the year.

  • Online Social Metaphysics Conference, organized by Kevin Richardson (NC State) and Asya Passinsky (UNC Chapel Hill) and co-hosted with the Philosophy Department at UNC Chapel Hill, June 4-6, 2021
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Virtual Student Awards Celebration, March 12, 2021
  • Online Early Career Social Metaphysics Workshop, organized by Kevin Richardson (NC State) and Asya Passinsky (UNC Chapel Hill) and co-hosted with the Philosophy Department at UNC Chapel Hill, July 24-26, 2020

2019-20

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, scheduled in-person events were canceled after March 5, 2020.

  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, March 4, 2020
  • Anton Ford (University of Chicago), “The Objectification of Agency,” February 27, 2020
  • Stephen Puryear (NC State), “Leibniz on Being, Unity, and the Special Composition Question,” February 13, 2020
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Michael Patrick Lynch (University of Connecticut), “Know-It-All Society: Digital Culture, Political Fragmentation and Democracy,” November 21, 2019 Read more
  • Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative (LACSI) Conference on Grounding and Its Applications, September 27-28, 2019. Speakers: Karen Bennett (Rutgers), Selim Berker (Harvard), Ricki Bliss (Lehigh), Shamik Dasgupta (Berkeley), Kit Fine (NYU), Brad Skow (MIT). For more information, click here.

2018-19

  • Robert B. Pippin (University of Chicago), “Idealism and Anti-Idealism in Modern European Thought,” March 28, 2019
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, March 7, 2019
  • Erin Kelly (Tufts University), “Harm Reduction in Criminal Justice,” February 21, 2019
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Jenann T. Ismael (Columbia University), “Does Determinism Clash With Freedom? A look at human action through the lenses of physics,” November 15, 2018 Read more
  • Inaugural Tom Regan Lecture: Carol J. Adams (author), “Animal Ethics and Contemporary Politics,” September 21, 2018 (Co-sponsored by the NC State Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and the Culture and Animals Foundation, which will organize future lectures in the series at other venues) Read more
  • Josh Armstrong (UCLA), “The Social Origins of the Human Language Faculty,” August 30, 2018 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)

2017-18

  • Frederick Neuhouser (Barnard College, Columbia University), “Rousseau on the Nature of Social Inequality,” April 5, 2018
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, February 28, 2018
  • Gillian Russell (UNC at Chapel Hill), “Speech Acts and Speaking Up,” January 25, 2018 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Dale Jamieson (Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies and Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University), “Loving Nature,” November 16, 2017 Read more
  • Timothy Hinton (NC State), “The Socratic Constraint, Systematic Injustice, and the Return of Callicles,” October 26, 2017
  • Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative Conference on Higher-Order Cognition, September 22-23, 2017. Speakers: Kristin A. Andrews (York University, Toronto), Michael J. Beran (Georgia State University), Peter Carruthers (Maryland), Janet Metcalf (Columbia), Jennifer Nagel (University of Toronto), Eric Schwitzgebel (University of California Riverside). For more information, click here.

2016-17

  • J. David  Velleman (New York University), “The Two Normativities,” March 23, 2017 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • Jc Beall (University of Connecticut), “Logic From a Subclassical Point of View,” March 2, 2017 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, March 1, 2017
  • Agnes Callard (University of Chicago), “Self-Creation,” February 10, 2017
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Michael Strevens (New York University), “The Importance of Irrationality in Science,” November 17, 2016
  • Béatrice Longuenesse (New York University), “Kant’s Multiple Concepts of Person,” October 27, 2016
  • Kevin Richardson (MIT), “Varieties of Grounding,” October 18, 2016
  • Philip Kitcher (Columbia University), “Progress in the Sciences and in the Arts,” October 13, 2016 (Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Lecture)
  • Stephen C. Ferguson II (North Carolina A&T State University), “What’s Epistemology Got To Do With It? The ‘Death of Epistemology’ in African American Studies,“ September 29, 2016
  • John W. Carroll (NC State), “Becoming Humean,” September 1, 2016

2015-16

  • Daniel Nolan (Australian National University and National Humanities Center), “Why is it Bad to Be Ad Hoc?”, April 7, 2016
  • Robert C. Cummins (University of Illinois and Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology), “Neuroscience, Psychology, Reduction and Functional Analysis,” March 3, 2016 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, March 2, 2016
  • World Philosophy Day Lecture: Kenneth A. Taylor (Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University and co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show Philosophy Talk), “Religion and Gay Marriage: Why Democracy is Good for Religion even if Religion is Uncomfortable for Democracy,” November 19, 2015
  • Julia Driver (Washington University in St. Louis), “Undermining Promises,” October 22, 2015
  • Logic and Cognitive Science Initiative Conference on Perception, September 25-26, 2015. Speakers: Berit Brogaard (Miami), Alex Byrne (MIT), Jonathan Cohen (UC San Diego), Mohan Matthen (Toronto), Harold Langsam (Virginia), and Michelle Montague (Texas). For more information, click here.

2014-15

  • Marina F. Bykova (NC State), “Fichte’s Nationalist Rhetoric and the Humanistic Project of Bildung,” March 26, 2015
  • Kevin Richardson (MIT, participant in NC State’s Building Future Faculty Program), “A Pragmatist’s Guide to Grounds,” March 19, 2015
  • Jonathan Schaffer (Rutgers), “The Ground Between the Gaps,” March 5, 2015
  • Philosophy and Religious Studies Student Awards Reception, March 4, 2015
  • Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Philosophical Society, February 27-28, 2015. For more information, click here.
  • David Schmidtz (University of Arizona), “Society is Not a Race,” February 16, 2015 (Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Lecture)
  • Brian McLaughlin (Rutgers), “The Skewed View From Here,” February 5, 2015 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • Alexander Rosenberg (Duke University), “Making Mechanism Interesting,” November 13, 2014 (Logic and Cognitive Science Lecture Series)
  • Bernard Boxill (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “DuBois on Race and Dignity,” November 6, 2014
  • Barbara B. Levenbook (NC State), “Beyond Legislative Intent,” September 4, 2014

For a record of earlier lectures and events, please click here.