May
6
Farewell & Kierkegaard reading group
May 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Dear friends of UPA, On behalf of Kyle and myself, I want to thank all of you so much for making this a wonderful year. David Sosa, who is the chair of the philosophy department, has expressed that in his opinion it was the best year for the undergraduate program ever, and that UPA was [...]
Apr
25
Non-Western Perspectives panel is here!
April 25, 2012 | 1 Comment
Today is the big day!! We really, really hope you all can make it out today. Drag all your friends, family, significant other(s), pets, etc. out to this event: we need all the support we can get!
Apr
10
UPA’s First Annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
April 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Philosophy majors and student body at large, The Undergraduate Philosophy Association would like to cordially invite you the first annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, this Friday at 3:00 PM in Waggener 302. Seven of our best thinkers will have the opportunity to present their research to an audience of like-minded peers like you, who are encouraged [...]
Mar
28
Kant on Political Liberty and the Categorical Imperative
March 28, 2012 | 2 Comments
Hey guys, I’m happy to announce that this week we will get to mix things up a bit. Erik Dempsey, a post-doctorate fellow with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas here at UT, will deliver a talk over Kant’s political philosophy. For most of us, our study of Kant [...]
Mar
22
Mysticism and Metaphor
March 22, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Hello again, philosophers! I hope you all had a good Spring break, got to catch some SXSW action, and hopefully rested up a little bit. This Friday we conclude our unit on philosophy of religion with a paper by UT’s very own Stephen Phillips entitled Mysticism and Metaphor. In it, he considers whether the non-mystic [...]
Feb
15
“The Desert in the Desert”
February 15, 2012 | 1 Comment
Hey UPA’ers, Though I (Armando) was not able to attend last Friday’s meeting, I understand that it went very well! I want to thank those of you who showed up. If you enjoyed that paper, you ought to keep your eyes peeled in the coming days for some exciting news. Until then, we open up [...]
Feb
1
The Problem of Science in Nietzsche and Heidegger
February 1, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Hello, fellow philosophers! First things first: I wanted to thank you all for a wonderful inaugural meeting last week. Kyle and I greatly appreciated the turnout and the willingness to discuss. Also – and this is extremely important – our meeting place for this semester will not be GAR 0.120 like last semester. We will [...]
Nov
10
Memory and Knowledge: The Epistemological Significance of Biology
November 10, 2011 | 421 Comments
Good afternoon, philosophers! What is memory? Is it just drawing on a cache of retained knowledge? Or, as Plato had it, is it the vehicle by which we gain knowledge? These are the questions that D.M. Johnson focuses on “Memory and Knowledge: The Epistemological Significance of Biology”, which we will be covering this week. Johnson [...]
Oct
27
Kierkegaard, ethics, and acosmism
October 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Good afternoon, UPA’ers. As some of you might already know, Kierkegaard holds a special place in my heart, so this week I decided to treat myself to a little philosophical self-indulgence by choosing Louis Mackey’s paper “The Loss of the World in Kierkegaard’s Ethics”. Mackey, a former professor here at UT and recipient of the [...]
Oct
20
Guest lecturer: Anthony Norton on Leiter’s “The Demarcation Problem in Jurisprudence”
October 20, 2011 | 9 Comments
Good afternoon, UPA’ers! I’m very glad to announce that we will be having a guest lecturer this Friday. Some of you might remember Anthony Norton’s presentation on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in Nietzsche at the end of last year, and I’m happy to have him back again this Friday to talk about Brian [...]