April 20, 2024 | 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM

UCLA, Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158)

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Join us for the 2024 USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy happening on April 20, 2024 at UCLA Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158)!

The USC-UCLA Graduate Student Conference began in 2006. Each year, the graduate students of the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles solicit high-quality papers in all areas of philosophy from graduate students studying at other departments to be presented at the annual conference. For more information, please visit the Conference Home Page.

This year, the keynote speaker is Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University). Her talk is titled, “Stories and Selves.” See below for the abstract.

RSVP HERE to let us know you’re coming!

Conference Program

Saturday, April 20th

10:00 – 10:50 AM: Breakfast

10:50 – 11:50 AM: Anni Sun: “Better Than the Best? Supererogation in Deontic Modality”

12:00 – 1:00 PM: Caitlin Mace: “On a New Content Indeterminacy Problem in Neuroscience”

1:00 – 2:00 PM: Lunch

2:00 – 3:00 PM: Danielle Ravitzki: “Form, Function, and Self-Identification in the Definition of the Family”

3:10 – 4:10 PM: Richard Roth: “No Epistemic Discounts”

4:10 – 4:30 PM: Afternoon Refreshments

4:30 – 6:00 PM: Keynote Talk: Elisabeth Camp: “Stories and Selves”

Keynote Abstract: I argue that stories are “equipment for living” in two senses: retrospectively, they provide synoptic “configurational comprehension” of a temporal sequence of events; and prospectively, they offer principles for guiding action. Narrative conceptions of selfhood appear poised to explain these functional roles in terms of who an agent is. However, the “retrospective necessity” of narrative structure entails that the narrative conception holds selves hostage, epistemically, normatively and practically, to the ends of their lives. I offer some alternative species of frames that also provide configurational comprehension without shackling selves to their autobiography’s endings.

RSVP HERE to let us know you’re coming!

For any questions, please contact the conference organizers at <uscucla.conference@gmail.com>