Membership Events

On Wednesday, 3 June, Annie Mukherjee gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Pluralistic Folk Psychology and the Theory-Simulation Debate: Mapping the Conceptual Landscape’. The abstract is below:  The Theory of Mind debate in philosophy of mind examines how we understand and predict others’  mental states. Traditionally, this debate has been framed by the distinction between theory theory  (TT), which...

On Tuesday, 26 May, Professor Edward Harcourt gave a talk to membership titled ‘’Remembering and Forgetting' Season Review’. The abstract is as follows: In this talk, Edward Harcourt will look back at the 2024-25 lecture series - elaborating which ideas stood out to him the most, discussing the thought behind the selection of speakers and topics, and offering his own thoughts on Remembering a...

On Wednesday, 6 May, Agnes Kosek gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Who gets to name the pain? Misrecognition, misrepresentation and the self: going beyond epistemological domination in educational spaces’. In How to Do Things with Words, John Langshaw Austin (1962) observed that ‘for too long it was assumed by philosophers that the business of a “statement” can only be to “describe” some state of...

On Thursday, 30 April, Isobel Standen gave a PhD lunchtime talk titled ‘Illusions of Understanding: Artificial Intelligence and the Common Sense Gap’. With the rapid rise of tools such as ChatGPT, systems equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming progressively more integrated into our daily lives. Increasingly, we may find ourselves relying on these systems to perform tasks that were...

On Tuesday, 14 April, Professor Jonathan Wolff gave a talk to membership titled 'Punishment, Mercy and Forgiveness'. The abstract is as follows: 'Within the centenary selection of 100 papers a surprisingly high number are on topics related to the moral response to wrongdoing: punishment, mercy and forgiveness, including some of the most cited papers in the journal. These include the...

Andrew Oyedola, Naturalising Epistemology: Wittgenstein and the African Model, from 25th March This work argues that African methods of knowing are just as valid as Western scientific approaches.  The thesis critiques a common Western view called 'naturalism'—especially the part that tries to understand the world relying solely on 'hard science'—for being too narrow and ignorin...

On Tuesday, 17 March, Dr Alex Fisher gave the first in our new series of Lunchtime Talks.  The social media site X faced international outcry in January when its AI tool Grok was used to generate “undressed” images of women without their consent. Predictably, many online responses minimised this, claiming the images were “fictional”, “realistic art at most” and “no more real than a Tom & Jerry...

On Tuesday, 3 March Professor Maria Alvarez gave a talk to membership. In it, she discussed the topics of blameworthiness and time, relating them to some of the ‘100 Papers That Shaped Our Thinking’ - a collection of the most influential contributions published in our journals, selected by TRIP’s current President, Professor Jo Wolff to celebrate our Centenary. About the Speaker: Professor Alvarez...

On Tuesday, 20 January, Professor C. Thi Nguyen gave an online talk to TRIP members, offering a timely guide to the joy of games and the danger of metrics, and how to rewrite the rules in order to build more creative and joyful lives. In his new book The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game (Allen Lane, 13 January 2026), Nguyen shows us how our newly gamified world has fundamentally capt...

On Tuesday, 9 December, Professor Jo Wolff, President of the Royal Institute, gave a talk on Philosophy’s 100 Papers That Shaped Our Thinking in honor of the Institute’s centenary. He discussed how the papers were chosen and provided in depth analysis and contextualization of several of them.

On Wednesday, November 12, Professor Stephen Law, editor of Think, gave a talk entitled "God, Evil, and the Rationality of Theism: An Atheist Perspective." He overviewed and critiqued the Evil God argument, and answered audience questions. About the Speaker: A former postman who entered University as a mature student age 24, Dr Law is known for his popular introductory books on philosoph...

On 7th October at 6pm, Chair of The Royal Institute of Philosophy and Richard Wollheim Professor of Philosophy at UCL, Lucy O'Brien, gave an exclusive online talk to members, on "Autonomy and control over one's social self-consciousness." The abstract for Professor O'Brien's talk is as follows: Other people can make us feel self-conscious, embarrassed, ashamed, and pr...

On Wednesday 4th June, our Academic Director Professor Edward Harcourt reflected on the 2023-2024 London Lecture series, ‘Madness & Mental Health’ at a members-only event, answering questions from the online audience and bringing members together to engage in philosophy. Topics included how we should talk about mental illness and the agency that patients should have in their own treatment.