Category Archives: 2003

David Schmidtz, University of Arizona
October 3rd, 2003, 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Ellis 113

The agenda for current philosophical work on justice was set in the 1970’s by John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Nozick said, “Political philosophers now must either work within Rawls’s theory or explain why not.” There is truth in Nozick’s compliment, yet when it came to explaining why not, no one did more than Nozick. What I’ll stress in this talk is that Nozick agrees with Rawls on the indispensable core of natural rights liberalism: namely, that we are separate persons. However, Rawls and Nozick interpret that idea in different ways—momentously different ways. The tension between their interpretations is among the forces shaping political philosophy to this day.

Elizabeth Willott
University of Arizona
October 2nd, 2003, 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Bentley 227

Elephants: intelligent, self-aware, social, and possessing communication skills that we are just beginning to understand. Using human interactions with elephants as an example, I examine what’s required to view humans as part of an ecosystem. Or–put more plainly–why we can’t just “let nature be.” Given that, what constitutes suitable respect for elephants, for humans, and for the ecosystems we share.

Elizabeth Willott, Ph.D. Biochemistry, did post-doctoral work at Yale, Duke, and Kansas State University before moving to the University of Arizona in 1996. She is an Assistant Professor in the Entomology Department. Her laboratory work addresses insect immune responses and mosquito ecology. She also publishes on environmental ethics, including a book Environmental Ethics: What really matters, What really works, co-edited with David Schmidtz. She enjoys hiking, photography, stimulating conversation, and teaching introductory biology, environmental ethics, and insect physiology. In 1999 and in 2001, she and David Schmidtz went to Africa to study wildlife conservation; another trip is currently being planned for 2005.

Christine Korsgaard
Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
May 15th, 2003, 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Anderson Auditorium Scripps Hall

February 7th, 2003
(submission deadline)
Travel, lodging & registration paid for 5 OU undergrads.

The Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics is offering conference funding for five current Ohio University undergraduates to attend the 2003 Bioethics conference at Texas A&M. All OU undergrads are eligible. Grant recipients will be determined by lottery. Each recipient will be required to submit a report upon returning to OU. Other conditions may apply.

For more information on the conference, please visit bioethics.tamu.edu.

To apply, please send a message expressing your desire to join the lottery to ethics@ohio.edu before February 7, 2003, at 5 p.m.

Steve Scalet
Binghamton University
February 20th, 2003, 4:00 to 5:00 pm
Morton 235

A variety of public goods are fundamental to a healthy civil society but the best way to produce and maintain these goods is a matter of dispute. Casual observations of our economic life suggest that we sometimes voluntarily contribute to public good enterprises even when we recognize the pull to free ride on the contributions of others. But economic theory predicts that agents will not contribute to these projects because of this free-riding problem. Thus, social scientists from a range of academic fields have actively pursued whether the anecdotal observations of economic life withstand carefully controlled replication in a laboratory setting. They do. These experiments, based on a voluntary contributions mechanism, have consistently yielded positive contributions to public goods projects. These results have brought to focus a question, “Why do agents contribute in the voluntary contributions mechanism?” Professor Scalet will examine how experimentalists have answered this question and the significance of these results for the social sciences and humanities.

Steve Scalet
Binghamton University
February 21st, 2003, 1:00 to 3:00 pm
Ellis 024

How should liberals address those who it judges are unreasonable? In this talk Professor Scalet examines John Rawls’s response to this question. Scalet argues that Rawls’s political conception of justice eliminates the possibility of having intellectual exchanges that are the due of at least some unreasonable persons.

2003 April 26th, 8:30 am to April 27th, 12:00 pm
Copeland Hall

Every other year Ohio University hosts an international student conference on applied ethics. These relaxed, intimate conferences are open to both graduate and undergraduate students. Presentations are peer reviewed and are published on this website and on CD. (See the conferences/proceedings page for previous papers.) Here are details on the 2003 conference: