Changing Understandings of Body Image

This post is by Heather Widdows, who reports on the first workshop of the BeautyDemands network. 

The workshop took place earlier this month at Warwick University. It considered changing body image and looked at how ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘perfect’ function as concepts in the beauty debate. For instance, how they function as people perceive themselves and others in terms of what is normal and beautiful, and in terms of what women and girls (and to a lesser extent men) feel is expected of them. 

The papers given covered a wide range of topics, including, on choice, on revenge porn, on ‘tanorexia’, on skin-lightening, on feminism and beauty, on cosmetic surgery scandals, and from very different perfectives including, law, psychology, sociology, philosophy and critical theory. 

These were the types of issues which were discussed were:

• Whether and how choice or consent is relevant in the debate, for instance, can one ‘freely’ consent to cosmetic procedures or does social construction reduce the very possibility of choice. 
• The extent to which such ‘requirements’ are more demanding than in previous generations and over time. 
• The connection between these debates and previous feminist debates and the need to return to older discussions. 
• The relationship between the philosophical debate and the law and policy debates and how to create not only dialogue between but to use the different debates in ways which might be useful to inform policy and practice intervention. 
• Possible pathways to regulation in areas which are little regulated. 
• The relationship between health, beauty, sexual attractiveness and identity. 

Mini Workshop on 30th March

Hartry Field

On 30th March we will host a mini-workshop featuring Hartry Field and Ofra Magidor. 

Hartry’s paper is entitled “Caie’s paradox of credence”, and Ofra’s paper is entitled “Conditional Acceptance”. Their talks will be from 2-4pm and 4-6pm respectively, in the large lecture hall on the ground floor of the ERI building. 

All welcome. Email Scott Sturgeon for further information.

Edward Cadbury Lectures 2015 by William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig

Professor Craig, Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University, will deliver a series of five lectures between Monday 16 and Friday 20 March on the theme of ‘God All Over’. He will also give an additional public lecture on the Kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God on Saturday 21 March.

The Edward Cadbury Lectures come from an endowment from the Cadbury family to the University of Birmingham for an annual series of lectures open to the public on the history, theology and culture of Christianity. The first Cadbury Lectures were delivered in 1948 by the historian Arnold Toynbee, who has been followed by a succession of eminent scholars from around the world.

To register please e-mail us specifying which lectures you would like to attend.

Was Aristotle a Cognitivist about the Emotions?

Logo of the EPSSE

Our PhD student Isaura Peddis had her paper on Aristotle and the emotions accepted for presentation at a conference in Edinburgh in July 2015, organised by the European Philosophical Society for the Study of the Emotions. 

The paper is entitled: "Aristotle and his archetypal classical cognitive theory of emotions: a philosophical myth".