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Lecture Series

"Fantasy, Conceivability, and Ticking Bombs"
5:00pm Thursday, April 5th
213 Bernhard Center

Peter Barry- Saginaw Valley State University

Debates about torture invariably return to the familiar ticking bomb scenario, and this is the case whether philosophers or politicians or pundits are participating in them. And while the rhetorical force of appealing to the ticking bomb is clear enough, the legitimacy of appealing to the ticking bomb is disputed. The problem is not simply that at least many commentators do not find philosophical thought experiments involving ticking bombs to be persuasive. One strategy becoming increasingly popular among opponents of torture, including some of our best ethicists, is to insist that ticking bomb scenarios are not merely rare or improbable but that they are impossible. This is “the fantasy complaint” and its upshot is that torture is almost certainly prohibited absolutely by morality. After all, if torture is not permissible even in the ticking bomb scenario, when could it be?

For all that, I doubt that the fantasy complaint is cogent. I contend that a fair bit of philosophical research into the link between conceivability and possibility suggests that at least some genuine ticking bomb scenarios are at least conceivable, in the relevant sense, and therefore possible such that the fantasy complaint fails. Rather than introduce my own version of a ticking bomb scenario, I contend that a number of arguments for the fantasy complaint fail to demonstrate that such scenarios are not conceivable. Yet while I contend that the fantasy complaint is misguided, not much else follows. I also contend that the bare possibility of ticking bomb scenarios yields little for debates about torture policy and is consistent with some positions about torture that should be attractive to absolutist opponents of torture.

"Teaching as Ethical Quest: Pitfalls and Possibilities"
7:00pm Monday, April 9th
2008 Richmond Center
Reception to Follow

Chris Higgins- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This talk is co-sponsored by the WMU Center for the Humanities, which is hosting an interdisciplinary study group that will discuss Higgins’ book, The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) at 10 a.m. on Feb. 3, Feb. 17, March 16, and April 13 in the Humanities Center in Knauss Hall.

For more information visit: http://www.wmich.edu/humanities/research/interdisciplinary-s12borden.html