September 13, 2024 

“Why Hope? Reflections on Addiction and Psychedelics” 

Sarah Hoffman,Professor, Philosophy

A standard view of hope identifies it as a combination of desiring something and believing it possible but not certain. Adrienne Martin supplements this with the further idea that in hoping we also take ourselves to have sufficient reasons to engage in certain activities and feelings directed towards what we hope for.
In this talk I explore these ideas and implications they have for understanding the role that hope and the capacity to hope seem to play in overcoming addiction. An account of hope like Martin's illuminates this process and, additionally, why psychedelic- assisted therapy seems so promising for addressing substance use disorder.

November 8, 2024

“Existential Therapy and Climate Anxiety” 

Erin Greer, MA Philosophy, MA Counselling Psychology

Existential therapy focuses on internal conflicts that arise from the “givens of existence” (Yalom, 1980). Yalom suggests that there are four ultimate existential concerns that, to varying degrees, many of us fail to notice in our everyday lives, including death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness. These concerns will sound familiar to those who are interested in thinkers like Kierkegaard and Simone de Beauvoir. But how has existentialism informed therapy, and why is it relevant in our current context?

With growing anxiety about climate change, there is an increasing challenge among therapists over how best to address climate anxiety. Climate or eco-anxiety is defined as “heightened emotional, mental or somatic distress in response to dangerous changes in the climate system” (Climate Psychology Alliance, 2020). While climate change is alarming and ought to provoke concern, eco-anxiety can be debilitating and thereby lead to inaction.

In this talk, I will examine existential therapy as a promising approach to confronting climate anxiety. I will explore how eco-anxiety forces us to consider ultimate existential concerns and how challenging climate anxiety is a matter of facing death and meaninglessness on a larger scale, as well as confronting isolation and freedom/responsibility in important ways. 

December 13, 2024

“Care in Buddhism and Neoplatonism” 

Daniel Regnier, Professor, Philosophy

Prominent and compelling ethical theories focus on formal notions like “duties,” “rights” and “obligations”. Others attempt to deal with ethical questions by evaluating as precisely as possible the outcomes of actions.  And, of course, since antiquity it has been common to confront ethics by putting the agent - the “doer” - at the centre of the discussion and asking what kind of character traits this person ought to have.  In recent years, attempts have been made to bring another dimension into the ethical discussion, that is, care.  This notion focuses on particular commitments and on relationships between particular individuals. It engages the emotional self in ways that other approaches to ethics often struggle to account for. In this talk, I look at how the idea of care was developed and functions in two ancient philosophical movements: Buddhism and Neoplatonism. To be sure, these philosophical approaches see the nature of reality in ways which are very different from one another. So, I compare and contrast their approaches to care in the contexts of their respective theories of reality. I look at how in Buddhism care is generally understood as a response to suffering. I consider how in Neoplatonism care is seen as a fundamental constituent of the cosmic order. I ultimately suggest that there is much that we can learn by examining care in Buddhism and Neoplatonism.  

Feb 14, 2025 

 "For the Love of Time: Co-Creating a Living Present through Philosophy and Literature"

 Rachel Loewen-Walker, Professor, Political Studies, WGST

Jeanette Winterson’s novels often feature time-travelling lovers who building worlds and timelines as they go. This talk explores Winterson’s The Stone Gods through the lens of Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the Living Present. Defined as the present of retention and expectation, the living present is never a static ‘now’, but a dynamic interplay between past and future, contracting all past experiences while anticipating those yet to come. By examining the non-linear, open-ended timeline of the living present, as depicted in The Stone Gods and within our contemporary socio-cultural context, I will uncover new possibilities for life, love, and  community. This approach opens up new ways to engage with both documented and assumed histories, and with anticipated and imagined futures.

March 14, 2025

"Numbers: Discovered or Invented?" 

Derek Postnikoff, Professor, Mathematics and Statistics, Philosophy

Our world is saturated with numbers and we live our lives by them, from the time our alarm clock wakes us each day to the sheep we count as we fall asleep. Numbers are so ubiquitous, useful, and reliable that most of us generally take them for granted and rarely pause to reflect on their mysterious nature. Do numbers exist in the natural world, independent of humans, just waiting to be discovered? Or are numbers human creations, invented by clever people? This is a longstanding controversy, and no proposed resolution has yet achieved consensus. In celebration of the International Day of Mathematics, this talk will provide an accessible investigation into the nature of numbers – no advanced mathematical knowledge required!

 April 11, 2025

"The Rule of Law and the Problem of Too Many Laws" 

Ria Jenkins, Professor, Philosophy

The concept and value of the rule of law seems clear, especially in contrast to the rule by those exercising power arbitrarily (often referred to as the “rule by men”).  It seems obvious that Canada is a rule of law jurisdiction, while dictatorships and authoritarian regimes are not.  However, philosophers, in attempting to understand and articulate this idea, encounter all sorts of problems and perplexities.  In this talk, I will introduce some of these philosophical perplexities by focusing on Vincent Chiao’s recent discussion of the problem of “hyperlexis” or too many laws.  It seems that the sheer number and complexity of rules undermine both the rule of law and our confidence in calling Canada a rule of law jurisdiction.  Although Chiao’s own attempt at a solution simply shifts the problem to a different level, he does point to a temporal complexity with the idea of the rule of law that must be addressed in any account of the rule of law.