Upcoming Events
Summer 2026
Previous Events
Visiting Speaker: Matyáš Moravec (Queen's University Belfast)
Title: James, Bergson, Mrs Piper, and the Ghost of Richard Hodgson.
Bio: Matyáš Moravec is a lecturer in philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. His current work investigates the historical influence of psychical research and parapsychology on late 19th and early 20th-century philosophy in Britain.
3-4.30pm, Thursday 16 October, D520 School of Philosophy, Newman Building, UCD
Title: James, Bergson, Mrs Piper, and the Ghost of Richard Hodgson.
Bio: Matyáš Moravec is a lecturer in philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. His current work investigates the historical influence of psychical research and parapsychology on late 19th and early 20th-century philosophy in Britain.
3-4.30pm, Thursday 16 October, D520 School of Philosophy, Newman Building, UCD
Abstract: William James was widely known for his interest in “psychical research,” the study of “psychic phenomena” including telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, or communication with spirits of the dead. For over a decade, James, together with his colleague Richard Hodgson, studied the Boston trance medium Mrs Piper, publishing hundreds of pages of records regarding her ability to access information about séance-sitters seemingly via supernatural means. James and Hodgson were both particularly interested in the question of spirit survival, since Mrs. Piper, when in trance, claimed to be possessed by various spirits of the dead communicating all this information to her. When Hodgson died in 1905, he joined the ranks of these spirits - seemingly getting in touch with his (ex)colleague James from the beyond in séances with Mrs. Piper. James scholars have systematically studied James’ interest in psychical research and the way in which it shaped his views in psychology. However, the suggested links between psychical research and his philosophy remain rather tenuous. My paper, appealing to recent archival research, will suggest intricate links between James’s work on Mrs. Piper (and the purported spirit of Richard Hodgson) and his doctrine of radical empiricism. I will do so by looking at two areas. First, I will argue that James’s emphasis on “pure experience” in the Essays on Radical Empiricism is closely linked to his struggle between the refusal to postulate an independently existing soul on the one hand, and the evidence for the presence of the Hodgson-spirit in the séances with Mrs Piper on the other hand. Second, I will demonstrate a new route through which James’ philosophy was influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, also involved in psychical research. A curious letter from Bergson suggests that whatever was happening in the séances with Mrs Piper was a hidden vector behind James and Bergson’s discussions about consciousness and its relation to the brain.
International Spring Workshop 2024
Time: 10am-12pm, Tuesday 23rd April 2024.
Location: Agnes Cuming Seminar Room, John Henry Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Speakers:
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin): 'Two Projects on the Direction of Time'.
Oliver Pooley (Oriel College, Oxford): 'Nomic presentism and Relativity'.
Organisers: Daniel Esmonde Deasy (University College Dublin), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin).
Acknowledgements: This event is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to UCD School of Philosophy and TCD Department of Philosophy for support.
Time: 10am-12pm, Tuesday 23rd April 2024.
Location: Agnes Cuming Seminar Room, John Henry Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland.
Speakers:
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin): 'Two Projects on the Direction of Time'.
Oliver Pooley (Oriel College, Oxford): 'Nomic presentism and Relativity'.
Organisers: Daniel Esmonde Deasy (University College Dublin), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin).
Acknowledgements: This event is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to UCD School of Philosophy and TCD Department of Philosophy for support.
International Workshop: The Direction of Time
Time: 9am-6pm, Tuesday 8th August 2023.
Location: Rose Room, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland), St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Speakers:
Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin).
Patrick Dawson (University College Dublin).
Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin).
Matt Farr (University of Cambridge).
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin).
Rachel Russell University College Dublin).
Programme: Please click here.
Video: Please click here.
Organiser: Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin).
Acknowledgements: This event is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to the Irish Research Council, UCD School of Philosophy, and TCD Department of Philosophy for support for this event.
Time: 9am-6pm, Tuesday 8th August 2023.
Location: Rose Room, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland), St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland.
Speakers:
Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin).
Patrick Dawson (University College Dublin).
Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin).
Matt Farr (University of Cambridge).
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College, Dublin).
Rachel Russell University College Dublin).
Programme: Please click here.
Video: Please click here.
Organiser: Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin).
Acknowledgements: This event is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to the Irish Research Council, UCD School of Philosophy, and TCD Department of Philosophy for support for this event.
International Conference: God & Time IV
Time: Monday 29th August (9am-6pm) and Tuesday 30th August (9am-1pm) 2022
Location: Old Physics Theatre, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland), Dublin 2, Ireland (and online)
Speakers:
Fatema Amijee (University of British Columbia)
Aaron Cotnoir (University of St. Andrews)
Joseph Cohen (University College Dublin)
Jessica Frazier (University of Oxford)
Asha Lancaster-Thomas (Atlanta Classical Academy)
Brian Leftow (Rutgers University)
Ryan Mullins (University of Lucerne)
Martin Pickup (University of Birmingham)
Abstract: God and Time IV is the fourth in a series of international philosophy conferences focussed on philosophical questions concerning the nature of divine temporality in different religious traditions. The conference features research presentations by leading international philosophers of religion and of time. All welcome.
Programme: Please click here
Organisers: Daniel Esmonde Deasy (University College Dublin); Florian Fischer (Siegen); and Martin Pickup (Birmingham)
Acknowledgements: The conference is organised by the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions; the Society for Philosophy of Time; and the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions for supporting this event and to the Museum of Literature Ireland for hosting it.
Time: Monday 29th August (9am-6pm) and Tuesday 30th August (9am-1pm) 2022
Location: Old Physics Theatre, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland), Dublin 2, Ireland (and online)
Speakers:
Fatema Amijee (University of British Columbia)
Aaron Cotnoir (University of St. Andrews)
Joseph Cohen (University College Dublin)
Jessica Frazier (University of Oxford)
Asha Lancaster-Thomas (Atlanta Classical Academy)
Brian Leftow (Rutgers University)
Ryan Mullins (University of Lucerne)
Martin Pickup (University of Birmingham)
Abstract: God and Time IV is the fourth in a series of international philosophy conferences focussed on philosophical questions concerning the nature of divine temporality in different religious traditions. The conference features research presentations by leading international philosophers of religion and of time. All welcome.
Programme: Please click here
Organisers: Daniel Esmonde Deasy (University College Dublin); Florian Fischer (Siegen); and Martin Pickup (Birmingham)
Acknowledgements: The conference is organised by the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions; the Society for Philosophy of Time; and the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. We are grateful to the UCD Newman Centre for the Study of Religions for supporting this event and to the Museum of Literature Ireland for hosting it.
International Conference: Physics, Time and Agency
Dates: 28th−29th June 2022
Location: Dublin, Ireland: TRISS Seminar Room, Trinity College Dublin and Old Physics Theatre, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland) and online
Speakers: David Albert (Columbia), Craig Callender (UCSD), Natalja Deng (Yonsei), Hugh Desmond (Antwerp, CNRS/Paris I), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Lucy James (Geneva), David Papineau (KCL), Huw Price (Cambridge), Stephanie Rennick (Glasgow)
See the conference website for full details.
This conference will debate the role of agency in physical accounts of time, and will use this debate as a basis to explore the role of agency in accounts of scientific relations more broadly: including causation, laws and chances. Physics tells us much about the nature of time, but it doesn’t explain why time seems to have a direction or why time seems to ‘flow’. In response, researchers have paid increasing attention to how we are situated in time. For example, Ismael and Callender argue that the reason we think of the future as a realm of possibilities is because of how we model time in deliberation and in action. ‘Agent-based’ (Price, Fernandes) and ‘physics-based’ (Albert) accounts of causation use features of how we deliberate to explain why causal relations are directed towards the future. But there is no consensus on the role agency should play in these explanations, or on the upshots for our broader understanding of time. For example, if agency is used to explain causal asymmetry, does this imply that causal asymmetry is objective (Albert, Papineau), or a matter of our perspective (Price)? The conference aims to elucidate the role of agency in physical accounts of time and temporal asymmetries, on the way to understanding the role of agency more broadly in a naturalistic philosophy of science.
Organisers: Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin), under the auspices of the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time.
Acknowledgments: The conference is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. The organisers gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Irish Research Council New Foundations Grant, the Mind Association, the British Society for Philosophy of Science, the Department of Philosophy (Trinity College Dublin), the Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund (Trinity College Dublin), the Events Fund (Trinity College Dublin) and the School of Philosophy (University College Dublin).
Dates: 28th−29th June 2022
Location: Dublin, Ireland: TRISS Seminar Room, Trinity College Dublin and Old Physics Theatre, UCD Newman House (Museum of Literature Ireland) and online
Speakers: David Albert (Columbia), Craig Callender (UCSD), Natalja Deng (Yonsei), Hugh Desmond (Antwerp, CNRS/Paris I), Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Lucy James (Geneva), David Papineau (KCL), Huw Price (Cambridge), Stephanie Rennick (Glasgow)
See the conference website for full details.
This conference will debate the role of agency in physical accounts of time, and will use this debate as a basis to explore the role of agency in accounts of scientific relations more broadly: including causation, laws and chances. Physics tells us much about the nature of time, but it doesn’t explain why time seems to have a direction or why time seems to ‘flow’. In response, researchers have paid increasing attention to how we are situated in time. For example, Ismael and Callender argue that the reason we think of the future as a realm of possibilities is because of how we model time in deliberation and in action. ‘Agent-based’ (Price, Fernandes) and ‘physics-based’ (Albert) accounts of causation use features of how we deliberate to explain why causal relations are directed towards the future. But there is no consensus on the role agency should play in these explanations, or on the upshots for our broader understanding of time. For example, if agency is used to explain causal asymmetry, does this imply that causal asymmetry is objective (Albert, Papineau), or a matter of our perspective (Price)? The conference aims to elucidate the role of agency in physical accounts of time and temporal asymmetries, on the way to understanding the role of agency more broadly in a naturalistic philosophy of science.
Organisers: Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin), Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin), under the auspices of the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time.
Acknowledgments: The conference is organised by the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time. The organisers gratefully acknowledge funding support from the Irish Research Council New Foundations Grant, the Mind Association, the British Society for Philosophy of Science, the Department of Philosophy (Trinity College Dublin), the Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund (Trinity College Dublin), the Events Fund (Trinity College Dublin) and the School of Philosophy (University College Dublin).
Visiting Lecture: The Problem of the Direction of Time
Monday 23 September 2019
7 – 9pm, Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Speaker: David Albert, Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University will deliver a public lecture on the philosophy and physics of time.
Our everyday experience of being in the world is swarming with vivid and obvious and innumerable distinctions between the past and the future. Paper burns but never un-burns, sugar dissolves in coffee but never spontaneously separates out of it, we have memories and records of the past but not of the future, we are convinced that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past, and so on. But there seems to be no trace of such a distinction anywhere in the fundamental microscopic laws of nature. And the tension between these two facts has been sitting at the heart of our scientific picture of the world for more than a century now. And the question of what to make of that tension, and what to do with that tension, has come to be called the problem of the direction of time. That problem, and various attempts at solving it, will be the topic of this talk.
Organisation
A. Fernandes, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Kindly supported by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
Monday 23 September 2019
7 – 9pm, Neill Lecture Theatre, Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Speaker: David Albert, Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University will deliver a public lecture on the philosophy and physics of time.
Our everyday experience of being in the world is swarming with vivid and obvious and innumerable distinctions between the past and the future. Paper burns but never un-burns, sugar dissolves in coffee but never spontaneously separates out of it, we have memories and records of the past but not of the future, we are convinced that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past, and so on. But there seems to be no trace of such a distinction anywhere in the fundamental microscopic laws of nature. And the tension between these two facts has been sitting at the heart of our scientific picture of the world for more than a century now. And the question of what to make of that tension, and what to do with that tension, has come to be called the problem of the direction of time. That problem, and various attempts at solving it, will be the topic of this talk.
Organisation
A. Fernandes, Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin
Kindly supported by the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College Dublin and the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute.
International Workshop: It's a Matter of Time
Friday 10 May – Saturday 11 May 2019
Friday venue: National University of Ireland (49 Merrion Square East)
Saturday venue: Room 5012, Arts Building, College Green, Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin) - Humeanism and the Open Future
Cord Friebe (University of Siegen) - Future's Becoming Possible
Florian Fischer (University of Siegen) - Persistence and the Interesting Kind of Stability
Martin Pickup (University of Oxford) - Change and Reality's Fragmentation
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin) - Why Do We Deliberate on the Future?
Luca Banfi (University College Dublin) - What's Wrong with the Presentism/Eternalism Debate?
Bahadir Eker (University of Tübingen) - Temporal Ontology vs. Temporal Ontogeny: Putting A-Theories into Perspective
Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin) - A-Theories, Post-Prior
This workshop is organized by the ISPT (Irish Society for Philosophy of Time) in collaboration with SPoT (Society for Philosophy of Time), with additional support from the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and the Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin.
Organisation
D. Deasy (UCD); A. Fernandes (TCD); F. Fischer (U. of Siegen)
Friday 10 May – Saturday 11 May 2019
Friday venue: National University of Ireland (49 Merrion Square East)
Saturday venue: Room 5012, Arts Building, College Green, Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
Naomi Corlett (University College Dublin) - Humeanism and the Open Future
Cord Friebe (University of Siegen) - Future's Becoming Possible
Florian Fischer (University of Siegen) - Persistence and the Interesting Kind of Stability
Martin Pickup (University of Oxford) - Change and Reality's Fragmentation
Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin) - Why Do We Deliberate on the Future?
Luca Banfi (University College Dublin) - What's Wrong with the Presentism/Eternalism Debate?
Bahadir Eker (University of Tübingen) - Temporal Ontology vs. Temporal Ontogeny: Putting A-Theories into Perspective
Daniel Deasy (University College Dublin) - A-Theories, Post-Prior
This workshop is organized by the ISPT (Irish Society for Philosophy of Time) in collaboration with SPoT (Society for Philosophy of Time), with additional support from the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and the Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin.
Organisation
D. Deasy (UCD); A. Fernandes (TCD); F. Fischer (U. of Siegen)
International Workshop: Time in Mind
Monday 28 January 2019
10 am—12:45pm, Boardroom, National University of Ireland (49 Merrion Square East) Dublin, Ireland
To celebrate the visit of Kristie Miller and David Braddon-Mitchell to Ireland, the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time is hosting a morning workshop in Dublin. Topics of the workshop include time; mind; temporal asymmetries; preferences for hedonic goods; mental content; and qualia.
Kristie Miller (University of Sydney) - Hedonic and Non-Hedonic Bias Toward the Future
David Braddon-Mitchell (University of Sydney) - Qualia and Causal Conditionalism
Organisation
D. Deasy (UCD); A. Fernandes (TCD)
Kindly supported by the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and the Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin.
Monday 28 January 2019
10 am—12:45pm, Boardroom, National University of Ireland (49 Merrion Square East) Dublin, Ireland
To celebrate the visit of Kristie Miller and David Braddon-Mitchell to Ireland, the Irish Society for the Philosophy of Time is hosting a morning workshop in Dublin. Topics of the workshop include time; mind; temporal asymmetries; preferences for hedonic goods; mental content; and qualia.
Kristie Miller (University of Sydney) - Hedonic and Non-Hedonic Bias Toward the Future
David Braddon-Mitchell (University of Sydney) - Qualia and Causal Conditionalism
Organisation
D. Deasy (UCD); A. Fernandes (TCD)
Kindly supported by the School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, and the Philosophy Department, Trinity College Dublin.
