8/7/2018: Joint Session Podcast - Symposium V on Benevolence, featuring Nomy Arpaly and Erasmus Mayr

The 92nd Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association was held at the University of Oxford from 6 to 8 July 2018. The Joint Session is a three-day conference in philosophy that is held annually during the summer by the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association. It has taken place at nearly every major university across the United Kingdom and in Ireland. Since 1910, the Joint Session has grown to become the largest gathering of philosophers in the country, attracting prestigious UK and international speakers working in a broad range of philosophical areas. Inaugurated by the incoming President of the Mind Association, the Joint Session includes symposia, open and postgraduate sessions, and a range of satellite conferences.

This podcast is a recording of the fifth symposium at the Joint Session - "Benevolence" - which featured Nomy Arpaly (Brown) and Erasmus Mayr (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg).

Nomy Arpaly is a professor of philosophy at Brown University. She is the author of three books (one of which is co-authored with Timothy Schroeder) and various articles, all concerning what she still insists on calling "moral psychology”, though the students coming to her seminars are often disappointed to learn that the there will be no discussion of trolley cases, FMRI machines, or people asked about trolley cases while hooked to FMRI machines. She has written about rationality, akrasia, desire, reasons, virtue, deliberation, moral worth, moral responsibility, and the relationship between being a good person and having accurate moral beliefs. She is currently working on a new project in normative ethics.

Erasmus Mayr is Professor of Philosophy at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg. His main research interests lie in philosophy of action and ethics; his publications include Understanding Human Agency (OUP 2011). Before coming to Erlangen, he studied philosophy and law at the LMU Munich, and spent some time at Oxford University and the Humboldt University in Berlin.