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Conferences
The department typically hosts a conference, on a particular theme, every year.
Every other year (typically in even-numbered years), the department hosts a major conference at which speakers and commentators from other colleges and universities present their research to an audience of W&M faculty, students, and scholars from other institutions. The conference is organized around a particular theme, and presented papers are sometimes revised and published in an edited volume. The department also regularly hosts smaller conference and workshops.
The 2026 conference, the W&M Moral Luck Workshop, will take place October 15-17. The conference schedule is below.
Thursday, October 15th
Thursday talk in Blow Hall (Blow 201)
7:30 p.m.
Speaker: Justin Capes (Flagler College), "Dissolving the Problem of Moral Luck"
Friday, October 16th
All Friday Talks in the Sadler Center (James Room)
9:30-10:45 a.m.
Speaker: Andrew Khoury (Arizona State University), "We Need to Talk About Scope: Moral Responsibility for ____, Conceptual Obscurity, and Chasing Wild Geese"
11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Speakers: Taylor Cyr (Samford University) and Robert Hartman (Ohio Northern University), "Plausibly, Moral Responsibility for Character Increases Moral Responsibility for Action Only if Resultant Moral Luck Exists"
12:30-2:30 p.m.
Lunch (and optional walk through Colonial Williamsburg)
2:30-3:45 p.m.
Speaker: Huzeyfe Demirtas (Harvard University), "Responsibility for Character"
4:15-5:30 p.m.
Speaker: Jada Twedt Strabbing (Wayne State University)
Saturday, October 17th
All Saturday Talks in Blow Hall (Blow 201)
9:30-10:45 a.m.
Speaker: Patrick Todd (University of Edinburgh), ""Innocent Incompatibilism and Substantive Responsibility"
11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Speaker: Carolina Sartorio (Rutgers University), "Indeterministic Causation and Luck"
12:30-2:30 p.m.
Lunch (and optional walk around campus)
2:30-3:45 p.m.
Speaker: Olle Blomberg (University of Gothenburg), "Resultant Moral Luck and Subsequent Blameworthiness"
4:15-5:30 p.m.
Speaker: Johann Frick (UC Berkeley), "Luck and the Two Faces of Morality"
The Department of Philosophy is grateful to the Rachel and E.W. Thompson Philosophy Endowment and Foradas Philosophy Department Speaker's Series Endowment for supporting our conferences and colloquia.
Past Conferences
Ninth Theistic Ethics Workshop (2025)
Dimensions of Normative Strength (2024)
Reading Hume Today: A Conference in Honor of Elizabeth Radcliffe (Emerita, W&M) (2023)
Ethics and Theism (2022) [Postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic]
Workshop on the Intersection of Ethics & Metaphysics (2020)
Applied Neo-pragmatism (2018)
5th Annual Early Career Metaphysics Workshop (2018)
3rd Annual Theistic Ethics Workshop (2017)
Epistemology and Cognition (2016)
The Authority of Tradition (2014)
Responsibility & Relationships: 50 Years of Strawson's 'Freedom and Resentment' (2012)
Study of the Human Self (2008)
The Future of Democracy (2006)