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The Morris Colloquium -- an annual conference in memory of Bertram Morris (Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado at Boulder) -- is organized by the  of the University of Colorado at Boulder and supported by the generous contributions of the Bertram Morris Fund.

Bertram Morris

Bertram Morris (1908-1981) was born in Denver.  Educated at Princeton and Cornell, he taught at the University of Colorado from 1947 until his retirement in 1977.  He published books including The Aesthetic Process, Philosophical Aspects of Culture, and Institutions of Intelligence.

Bertram Morris is remembered as much for his committed involvement in the social issues of his community as for his scholarly work.  In 1953, he began an outreach program at Manual High School in Denver that still continues.  In 1975, he was given a special award by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado for his efforts on behalf of academic freedom and his work to improve conditions at the Boulder County Jail.

As an expression of admiration and gratitude, the Philosophy Department established this Colloquium when Bertram Morris retired in 1977.

2024 Morris Colloquium: Value in Question — a conference in honor of Graham Oddie on his retirement

August 7, 2024, University of Colorado, Boulder
Eaton Humanities 135

Download the conference program here.

Holes in Oddie's realism.  A friendly examination.
Folke Tersman, Uppsala University
10:00 - 11:20

Abstract:  Can kinds be more or less real? In Value, Reality and Desire, Graham Oddie offers a graded notion of realism, according to which some forms of realism are stronger or involve deeper commitments to realism than others. He then goes on to argue that the strongest form of realism holds for value properties. I shall not directly concern myself with that argumentation but shall instead examine his account of what makes one form of realism stronger than another, partly by considering how useful it is when applied to domains other than metaethics.

A Value Pump for Moral Uncertainty without Intertheoretic Comparisons of Value
Johan Gustafsson, University of Texas Austin
11:40 - 1:00

Intertheoretic comparisons of value are notoriously hard to make (or even make sense of). I present a value pump for approaches to moral uncertainty that do not rely on such comparisons. More precisely, it presents a value pump for all approaches that satisfy two principles, which look plausible given a lack of intertheoretic comparisons of value. The first is Unanimity: if all moral theories in which the agent has some credence says that a certain option ought to be chosen, then that option is the only morally conscientious choice. The second is Credential Dominance: if the agent only has credence in two moral theories (but more credence in one of them) and these theories make conflicting prescriptions in a choice between two options, then the options prescribed by the theory in which the agent has more credence is the only morally conscientious choice.

Transitional attitudes and the cognitive value of learning
Richard Pettigrew, Bristol University
2:00 - 3:20

Abstract: In a series of recent papers and in her forthcoming book, Julia Staffel presents a theory of transitional attitudes and the norms that govern them. Drawing on Graham Oddie's purely epistemic (or cognitive) version of the Value of Information Theorem, as well as the pragmatic original due to Janina Hosiasson, David Blackwell, and Leonard Savage, I will construct an argument that there can be no such attitudes. In the end, the argument doesn't work, but what we learn from its flaws raises interesting questions about what transitional attitudes might be and when they arise.

Person-Affecting Restriction and Incommensurable Lives
Wlodek Rabinowizc, Lund University
3:40 - 5:00

Abstract:  Nebel (2020) argues that, in the presence of incommensurabilities between lives, welfarists should give up the Person-Affecting Restriction (PAR): they should give up the claim that an outcome cannot be better than another outcome unless it is better for someone. Indeed, if lives can be incommensurable, PAR may be violated even if the compared outcomes have the same population. That PAR is problematic if the population may vary is well-known. But that it is problematic even if the population is held fixed is a novel and striking observation. Nebel's argument takes its departure from a problem posed by Hare (2010). I call it a problem of crosswise sweetening. Hare originally posed it as a quandary for rational choice, for agents with incomplete preferences. Nebel finds another application for crosswise sweetening - in population axiology. Nebel's argument against PAR is, I think, basically correct, but it is not fully compelling as it stands: It requires support. This is what I will attempt to do in my talk. I will present a more elaborate argument against PAR, relying on the fitting-attitudes account of value relations. I am going to make use of the ideas similar to the ones I have already presented in Rabinowicz ( 2021). In that paper, I considered yet another axiological application of the crosswise sweetening, one that is closer to Hare's original problem.

Reflections and responses
Graham Oddie, University of Colorado: 5:10-6:00

Value in Question is sponsored by:
the Morris Fund,
the Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science,
the Center for Humanities and the Arts,
the Arts and Sciences Dean's Fund for Excellence.

2023 Morris Colloquium: The Extended Mind at Twenty-Five

August 24 - 26, 2023, University of Colorado, Boulder 

Keynote Speakers: David Chalmers and Andy Clark

The 38^th Annual Boulder Conference on the History and Philosophy of Science is ‘TXM@25 - The Extended Mind at Twenty-Five’. It will be held on campus at UC-Boulder, August 24–26, 2023. This event celebrates the 25th anniversary of the publication of Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s enormously influential paper “The Extended Mind” and features keynote lectures by Clark and Chalmers, as well as sixteen other talks. The purpose of the event is to evaluate and build upon extended and situated approaches to mind and cognition.

‘TXM@25’ simultaneously serves as this year’s Morris Colloquium on Philosophy. It is made possible by financial support from UC-Boulder’s Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science, UC-Boulder’s Morris Fund, UC-Boulder’s Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Volkswagen Foundation. It is co-organized by Tobias Schlicht (Ruhr University, Bochum) and Rob Rupert (UC-Boulder). For more information, contact the organizers, at tobias.schlicht@rub.de or robert.rupert@colorado.edu . There is no registration fee for attendance, and all are welcome, but we ask those who plan to attend to register in advance by contacting Firuze Mullaoglu Firuze.Mullaoglu@ruhr-uni-bochum.de .

2020 Morris Colloquium: Logic, Language and Metaphysics, March 6-7, 2020

The Spring 2020 Morris Colloquium
to mark the occasion of the retirement of Professor Graeme Forbes
"Logic, Language and Metaphysics"
Friday March 6th and Saturday March 7th

Friday March 6th (Hellems 252)

• 2.30 p.m. - 4.00 p.m.: Mark Richard (Harvard): “Superman and Clark Walk Into a Bar”
• 4.15 p.m. - 5.45 p.m.: Ede Zimmerman (Frankfurt): “Propositionalisms”

Saturday, March 7th (Hellems 269)

• 11.00 a.m. - 12.30 p.m.: Mark Sainsbury (Austin): “Fregean Attributions of Attitudes”
• 2.00 p.m. - 3.30 p.m.: Anne Hunt (Medici): “Frege’s Puzzle in Industrial Applications”
• 3.45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.: Graeme Forbes (Boulder): “Two New Solutions to Chisholm’s Paradox”

Topic: Medieval Philosophy, April 5-7 2018

On April 5-7, Boulder will be the home to the largest conference in medieval philosophy that has recently taken place in North America.  There are 63 talks scheduled, and over 70 scholars coming into town for the event.

Topic: The Self and Its Realizations, June 16-18 2018

Invitees will interpret the theme broadly, so as to include a wide range of topics, from the psychology of the self to the nature of the neural mechanisms that implement the processes that realize the self to a discussion of the realization-relation itself. Expect a lot of philosophy of psychology/psychiatry, philosophy of science (especially about mechanisms and interlevel relations), and even some abstract metaphysics.

Rob Cummins will open the Morris with a keynote lecture on the evening of June 16. This will be followed by two full days of talks. Other confirmed speakers are

• Fred Adams (U. of Delaware)
• Ken Aizawa (Rutgers U., Newark)
• Heather Demarest (��������Ƶ-Boulder)
• Zoe Drayson (UC-Davis)
• Carrie Figdor (U. of Iowa)
• Lena Kastner (Ruhr U., Bochum)
• Beate Krickel (Ruhr U., Bochum)
• Tom Polger (U. of Cincinnati)
• Sarah Robins (U. of Kansas)
• Elizabeth Schechter (Washington U. of St. Louis)
• Larry Shapiro (U. Wisconsin-Madison)
• Shannon Spaulding (Oklahoma State U.)

Click here for the official schedule.

Topic: Cultural Property and the Ethics of War

April 27-28, 2017

Topic: Metaphysics and Its History

March 11-12, 2016

The topic of this year's colloquium is metaphysics and its history. It will be a crossover workshop bringing together contemporary metaphysicians working on issues with a rich history and historians of metaphysics working on issues of great contemporary significance, aiming to encourage a dialogue between what are arguably continuous lines of inquiry. To that end, historians will comment on non-historians and non-historians on historians.

More information can be found at .

You can also contact the conference organizers, Robert Pasnau and Raul Saucedo.

Topic:  Cognitive Values

March 6th - March 7th, 2015

• Richard Pettigrew (University of Bristol)
• Julia Staffel (Washington University St Louis)    
• Luc Bovens (London School of Economics)
• Matt Kopec (Northwestern University)
• Miriam Schoenfield  (University of Texas at Austin)
• Brian Talbot (Washington University St Louis)    
• David Etlin (Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich )
• Branden Fitelson (Rutgers University)
• Ted Shear (University of California, Davis)

More information can be found .   (i.e. link to )