Philosophical theories of agency and responsibility have focused primarily on actions and activities. But, besides acting, we often omit to do or refrain from doing certain things. Omitting or refraining, like acting, can have consequences, good and bad. And we can be praiseworthy or blameworthy for omitting or refraining. However, omitting and refraining are not simply special cases of action; they require their own distinctive treatment. 

Philosophers defend theories of what well-being is but ignore what psychologists have learned about it, while psychologists learn about well-being but lack a theory of what it is. In The Good Life, Michael Bishop brings together these complementary investigations and proposes a powerful, new theory for understanding well-being. 

December 4th-6th, 2015

Augustus B. Turnbull III Conference Center

555 W. Pensacola St.

See the conference website for more details.

Congratulations to Michael Bishop for being interviewed on FSU Headlines Radio about his new book, The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being.

The Department of Philosophy at Florida State University will host its fourth annual Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Agency Conference from September 18-19, 2015. The conference will feature keynote talks from Derk Pereboom (Cornell) and Angela Smith (Washington and Lee). For more details, see the conference website: http://fsuphilconference.wordpress.com/.

On March 27, 2015, FSU will host the 10th Annual Society for Women's Advancement in Philosophy (S.W.A.P.) Graduate Student Conference, with a keynote address from Charles W. Mills (Northwestern University). The program is here.

Does free will exist? The question has fueled heated debates spanning from philosophy to psychology and religion. The answer has major implications, and the stakes are high. To put it in the simple terms that have come to dominate these debates, if we are free to make our own decisions, we are accountable for what we do, and if we aren't free, we're off the hook.

Congratulations to Michael Ruse, who is the recipient of the 2014 Bertrand Russell Society Award. Further details are available here.

FSU's Department of Philosophy, together with the editors of the Brains blog and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Houston, is proud to sponsor the first annual Minds Online Conference, which will be held at the Brains blog from August 31 - September 25, 2015. The conference is co-organized by Cameron Buckner (UH), Nick Byrd (FSU), and John Schwenkler (FSU). For details and to participate in the conference, see the conference website: http://mindsonline.philosophyofbrains.com/.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, virtue ethics has enriched the range of philosophical approaches to normative ethics, often drawing on the work of the ancient Greeks, who offered accounts of the virtues that have become part of contemporary philosophical ethics. But these virtue ethical theories were situated within a more general picture of human practical rationality, one which maintained that to understand virtue we must appeal to what would make our lives go well. This feature of ethical theorizing has not become part of philosophical ethics, although the virtue theories dependent upon it have.