Call for Papers: Philosophy of Education Conference
George Brown College invites faculty to attend and/or present at their upcoming second annual Philosophy of Education Conference to be held May 28th, 2015 at their waterfront campus. The conference invites faculty, staff and administrators to submit proposals for a 20-minute talk, or an hour panel discussion, discussing the various aspects of post-secondary education, as it relates to one’s philosophy.
Extended Deadline on Call for Papers: March 13th, 2015. Please submit proposals to PoE@georgebrown.ca.
Last year’s conference was a great success – George Brown hosted 120 participants from 10 institutions across Canada and the U.S. and is looking forward to another year of expanded success.
The keynote speaker for the event is Dr. Ann Chinnery, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Programs in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She will be presenting her recent research focusing on moral and social responsibility entitled “The Role of Luck in the Kind of People We Become: A Challenge to Educators.”
ABSTRACT: In this paper, I discuss the concept of moral luck and its role in a human life. Put briefly, moral luck is at play when we are appropriately praised or blamed for our moral actions despite the fact that at least some aspects of what we are being judged for lie beyond our control. In contrast to the Kantian idea that we should be held morally accountable only for those things over which we have control, Bernard Williams, Thomas Nagel, and Susan Wolf (among others) have argued that luck plays a significant and inescapable role in the moral life. The topic of moral luck has been largely neglected by philosophers of education, but I want to suggest that education has an important role to play in mitigating the morally limiting effects of ‘constitutive bad luck’ in particular—that is, bad luck of the kind that affects our capacities, inclinations, and temperament.
