Buffalo, New York, October 11, 2011

Louise Antony to deliver 2011 Paul Kurtz Lecture

Louise Antony  will be delivering the 2011 Paul Kurtz Lecture on Thursday, October 20. Her talk is entitled "Materialism, Naturalism, and Nihilism." Although Professor Antony is an academic philosopher at UMass Amherst and has been invited here by UB Philosophy Department, her address is intended for the broader academic community. She will deliver her paper on October 20 at 4 pm in Clemens 120.  The talk is open to the public and will be followed by a question and answer period in which the audience can engage the speaker.

Professor Antony’s talk is the second of the annual lectures in a series endowed by Paul Kurtz, UB emeritus professor of Philosophy, author and editor of over 50 books, founder of Prometheus Books and the Center for Inquiry.

Antony has had a huge impact across the philosophical landscape, in part because she brings research in one field to bear on others. She has repeatedly reinvigorated epistemology and philosophy of mind with insights drawing upon feminist philosophy. One of her better known papers: “Quine as a Feminist – The Radical import of Naturalist Epistemology” has been cited nearly a 100 times.  Her current research is in perception and intentionality, autonomy, of psychology, Issues in feminist epistemology, and Human Nature.

Antony is a co-editor and contributor of some highly and controversial anthologies: A Mind of One’s Own: Issues in Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity  in 1993, 2002, and Philosophers without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and Social Life in 2007.

Philosophers without God sought to contribute to a fuller understanding of those who have rejected religious belief. It collects original essays by twenty leading philosophers from Great Britain and the United States, all of whom are secular. The first section, “Journeys,” includes many very autobiographical pieces, and reveals how the authors came to develop their own positions on issues like the existence of God and the basis of moral value. Authors in the second section, “Reflections,” discuss in a more general way philosophical questions that arise in connection with religion and theology: Is religious faith really a form of belief?  Can an atheist affirm the meaningfulness of human existence?  Without God, is anything sacred? The most prestigious source of philosophical reviews, The Notre Dame Philosophical Review , lauded it as “an excellent source of how comprehensive philosophical writing can be at its best.”

A Mind of One’s Own is a collection of essays by women who are prominent in philosophy who address some recent feminist criticisms of philosophy. They ask: Are we right to feel, as we do, that reason and objectivity, the traditional “tools of our trade” have important contributions to make to the lives of women who seek full equality? Martha Nussbaum, in her New York Review of Books  piece claimed “The collection is important because women in philosophy have too long been silent about the question it poses, embarrassed by the shortcomings of some feminist philosophical work but reluctant to criticize people with whose politics they have much sympathy. The book is also distinguished by the quality of its contributors. On no previous occasion have so many of the most interesting female thinkers in philosophy contributed to a single book dealing with feminist issues.”

Committed to transforming the role of women in academia, Antony began the Mentoring Project for pre-tenure women in philosophy in 2011. The program involved a three day workshop and the formation of networking groups.

Professor Anthony’s articles and lectures are  known  not just for the philosophical  insights of her work and her  commitment to social justice, but her style and wit, that latter which is even evident in such titles as “Back to Androgyny: What Bathrooms can tell us about Equality”, Equal Rights for Swamp People,” “Empty Heads,”“Whose Afraid of Disjunctive Properties,”  and “Atheism as Perfect Piety.”

Before joining the UMass Amherst philosophy department in  2006, Antony taught at Ohio State University from 2000-2006 and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1993-2000. She received her Ph.D in philosophy from Harvard in 1981.