The Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy consists of a full spring weekend of symposia at which speakers and commentators from other colleges and universities present new work to an audience of invited philosophers from across the country and abroad. The first Colloquium took place in 1960; it has been a (mostly) biennial event since the 1990's, and now alternates with a speaker series. The proceedings, including both the main papers and the commentaries, are often published; in recent years the venue has been a special issue of Philosophical Studies.
A complete history of the Colloquium programs follows.
1960 FIRST COLLOQUIUM
Wilfrid Sellars, "On Looking at Something and Seeing it"
Ronald Hepburn, "God and Ambiguity" Comments: Dennis O'Brien
Kurt Baier, "Itching and Scratching" Comments: David Falk/Bruce Aune
Annette Baier, "Motives" Comments: Jerome Schneewind
1961 SECOND COLLOQUIUM
W.D. Falk, "Hegel, Hare and the Existential Malady"
Richard Cartwright, "Propositions" Comments: Ruth Barcan Marcus
D.A.T. Casking, "Avowals" Comments: Martin Lean
Zeno Vendler, "Consequences, Effects and Results" Comments: William Dray/Sylvan Bromberger
PUBLISHED: Analytical Philosophy, First Series, R.J. Butler (ed.), Oxford, Blackwell's, 1962.
1962 THIRD COLLOQUIUM
C.J. Warnock, "Truth"
Arthur Prior, "Some Exercises in Epistemic Logic"
Newton Garver, "Criteria" Comments: Carl Ginet/Paul Ziff
Hector-Neri Castenada, "The Private Language Argument" Comments: Vere Chappell/James Thomson
John Searle, "Meaning and Speech Acts" Comments: Paul Benacerraf/Zeno Vendler
PUBLISHED: Knowledge and Experience, C.D. Rollins (ed.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964.
1963 FOURTH COLLOQUIUM
Michael Scriven, "Insanity"
Frederick Will, "The Preferability of Probable Beliefs"
Norman Malcolm, "Criteria" Comments: Peter Geach/George Pitcher
Terrence Penelhum, "Pleasure and Falsity" Comments: William Kennick/Arnold Isenberg
1964 FIFTH COLLOQUIUM
Stephen Korner, "Some Remarks on Deductivism"
J.J.C. Smart, "Nonsense"
Joel Feinberg, "Causing Voluntary Actions" Comments: Keith Donnellan/Keith Lehrer
Nicholas Rescher, "Evaluative Metaphysics" Comments: Lewis W. Beck/Thomas E. Patton
Herbert Hochberg, "Qualities" Comments: Richard Severens/J.M. Shorter
PUBLISHED: Metaphysics and Explanation, W.H. Capitan and D.D. Merrill (eds.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1966.
1965 SIXTH COLLOQUIUM
Patrick Nowell-Smith, "Acts and Locutions"
George Nakhnikian, "St. Anselm's Four Ontological Arguments"
Hilary Putnam, "Psychological Predicates" Comments: Bruce Aune/U.T. Place
Stanley Cavell, "Aesthetic Theory and Philosophical Method" Comments: Monroe Beardsley/Joseph Margolis
Ninian Smart, "Mysticism" Comments: Nelson Pike/Paul Schmidt
PUBLISHED: Art, Mind and Religion, W.H. Capitan and D.D. Merrill (eds.), University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967.
1966 SEVENTH COLLOQUIUM
Vere Chappell, "Identity"
Wesley Salmon, What Next, Dammit, David Hume"
Mary Hesse, "The Confirmation of Theories" Comments: Peter Achinstein/Peter Alexander
Leonard Linsky, "Pure Reference" Comments: John Wallace/Montgomery Furth
Murray Kitely: "The Objects of Thought" Comments: Bruce Freed/Robert Fogelin
1967 EIGHTH COLLOQUIUM
Richard Popkin, "Skepticism and the Origin of Modern Problems of Knowledge"
Fred Dretske, "Seeing and Believing" Comments: Philip Hugly
Roderick Chisholm, "The Loose and Popular and the Strict and Philosophical Senses of Identity" Comments: Sydney Shoemaker
Robert Fogelin, "The Practical Syllogism Revisited (Again)"
Jaakko Hintikka, "On the Logic of Perception" Comments: Romane Clark
PUBLISHED: Perception and Personal Identity, N.S. Care and R.H. Grimm, (eds.), Press of Case Western Reserve U., 1971.
1968 NINTH COLLOQUIUM
David Wiggins, "How Does One Tell if a Word Has One, Several, or Many Senses" Comments: William Alston
Richard Thomason, "Modality and Reference" Comments: Terence Parsons
N.P. Grice, "Utterers Meaning and Intention" Comments Gilbert Harman
Storrs McCall: "Impossibility"
Nuel Belnap, "Relativised Questions" Comments: Lennart Aqvist
1969 TENTH COLLOQUIUM
Jerome Schneewind, "Moral Criticism of Society" Comments: Joel Feinberg
Arnold Kaufman, "Disorder, Violence, and Parliamentary Institutions" Comments: Felix Oppenheim
Ronald Dworkin, "Philosophy, Constitutional Interpretation and Social Reform" Comments: Gerald MacCallum
Henry David Aiken, "Youth and Its Rights"
David Braybrooke, "Revolution Intelligible or Unintelligible" Comments: Marshall Cohen
PUBLISHED: Society: Revolution and Reform, R.H. Grimm and A.F. MacKay, (eds.), Press of Case Western Reserve U., 1971.
1970 ELEVENTH COLLOQUIUM
Dennis Stampe, "Making Promises" Comments: Charles Chastain
Neil Wilson, "Qualities and Quality Reference" Comments: Richard Cartwright
Paul Ziff, "There's More to Seeing than Meets The Eye" Comments: Charles Caton
Richard Wollheim, "Imagination and Identification"
David S. Shwayder, "Meaning and Saying" Comments: Irving Thalberg
1971 TWELFTH COLLOQUIUM
Graham Hughes, "The Morality of Disruption of the Judicial Process" Comments: Hyman Gross
Gerald MacCallum, "Law, Conscience, and Integrity" Comments: Hugo Bedau
Joel Feinberg, "The Problem of Legal Control of Obscenity and Pornography or More Generally, the Rationales or Lack Thereof for Prohibiting Merely 'Offensive' (as opposed to 'Harmful') Conduct" Comments: Michael Bayles
Ted Honderich, "Substantial Principles to Preserve the Rights of Individuals Against the State" Comments: Edmund Pincoffs
PUBLISHED: Issues in Law and Morality, N.S. Care and Thomas K. Trelogan, (eds.), The Press of Case Western Reserve, 1973.
1972 THIRTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Alan Ross Anderson, "Logic and Shoulder Shrugging"
Zeno Vendler, "Illocutionary Suicide" Comments: Charles E. Caton
Fred Sommers: "Logical Syntax in Natural Language" Comments: David Massie
Charles Landesman, "Remarks on Reference and Action" Comments: Jay Rosenberg
Saul Kripke, "Existence: Vacuous Names and Mythical Kinds" Comments: David Shwayder
Robert Stalnaker, "Propositions" Comments: Lawrence Powers
PUBLISHED: Issues in the Philosophy of Language. Alfred F. MacKay and Daniel D. Merrill, (eds.). Yale U. Press, 1976.
1973 FOURTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Antony Flew, "Hume and Historical Necessity"
Terrence M. Penelhum, "Hume's Theory of Self, Revisited" Comments: Vere C. Chappell
W.D. Falk, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought'" Comments: Judith N. Thomson
Wilfrid Sellars, "Hume and the Cartesian Tradition" Comments: James F. Thomson
Robert J. Fogelin, "The muddle over necessity and causality in Hume's Treatise" Comments: Daniel C. Dennett
1974 FIFTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Roderick M. Chisholm, "The Logic of the Concept of Purpose" Comments: Irving Thalberg
Morton Beckner, "Purpose and Reduction" Comments: Hugh S. Lehman
Hector-Neri Castenada, "Purpose, Action and Ought: An Integrated Theory" Comments: Alvin Goldman
Keith Gunderson: "Purpose and Poetry" Comments: Petra Von Morstein
1975 SIXTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Herbert Morris, "Lost Innocence" Comments: David Sachs
Kai Nielsen, "Rationality and the Moral Sentiments" Comments: James Rachels
Richard Brandt, "Benevolence" Comments: Michael Stocker
Andrew Oldenquist, "Rationalisation" Comments: Gerald Dworkin
1976 SEVENTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Fred Dretske, "Knowledge and Information" Comments: Jay Rosenberg
John Pollock, "Synthetic Predicates" Comments: William Lycan
James Bogen, "An Empirical Refutation of Cartesian Skepticism" Comments: Peter Unger
Nicholas Rescher, "Scepticism and theBurden of Proof" Comments: Michael Hooker
1977 EIGHTEENTH COLLOQUIUM
J.L. Mackie, "Causal Asymmetry in Concept and Reality" Comments: Lawrence Sklar
Wesley C. Salmon, "Causation in Scientific Explanation" Comments: John Earman
G.E.M. Anscombe, "Different kinds of cause" Comments: Ernest Sosa/Robert Hambourger
Michael Scriven, "The Logic of Causation and the Practice of Inquiry: An Attempt at Renewed Cross-Fertilisation" Comments: Gilbert Harman
Jaegwon Kim, "Nomological Incommensurables" Comments: Marshall Swain
1978 NINETEENTH COLLOQUIUM
Edmund Pincoffs, "Selves, Ideals, and Others: The Example of Gandhi" Comments: James D. Wallace
Hector-Neri Castaneda, "'I Shall', 'I Will': Predicting and Willing" Comments: Bruce Aune
B.J. Diggs: "A Contractarian Ground of Respect for Persons" Comments: Dan W. Brock
Alasdair MacIntyre, "The Nature of Virtures"
James Rachels, "Honesty" Comments: Holly Goldman
1979 TWENTIETH COLLOQUIUM
William Lycan, "Believing in Believing" Comments: David Sanford
John Perry, "A Problem About the Dynamics of Belief" Comments: John Heintz
David Lewis, "Attitudes de Dicto and de Se" Comments: Roderick Chisholm
Romane Clark, "Not Every Act of Thought Has a Matching Proposition" Comments: Herbert Heidelberger
Charles Chastain, "Knowledge and the Origin of Belief" Comments: Lawrence Powers
1980 TWENTY-FIRST COLLOQUIUM
Joseph Margolis, "Animal and Human Minds" Comments: Gareth Matthews
Milton Fisk, "A Social View of Human Nature" Comments: Lawrence Becker
Graham Nerlich, "On the Anatomy of Human Nature" Comments: Allan Gibbard
Anthony Quinton, "The Importance of Being Human" Comments: Brian Barry
Michael Ruse, "Is Science Sexist? The Case of Sociobiology" Comments: Andrew Oldenquist
1981 TWENTY-SECOND COLLOQUIUM
Annette Baier, "Promises, Promises, Promises" Comments: W. David Falk
Holly Smith: "Culpable Ignorance" Comments: David Gauthier
Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, "Akratic Belief" Comments: Alexander Nehamas
Jonathan Bennett, "A Problem about Sins of Omission" Comments: James Rachels
David Lyons, "Moral Aspects of Legal Theory" Comments: Gerald Postema
1983 TWENTY-THIRD COLLOQUIUM
Richard Wollheim, "Our Selves and Our Futures" Comments: John Deigh
Richard Boyd, "Natural Kinds, Linguistic Precision, and Inductive Generalization" Comments: Alan Stairs
Alvin Goldman, "Epistemology and Mental Representation" Comments: Fred Dretske
John Searle, "Intentionality and Its Place in Nature" Comments: Peter Van Inwagen
Clark Glymour, "Android Epistemology" Comments: Henry Kyburg
1984 TWENTY-FOURTH COLLOQUIUM
John C. Harsanyi, "Does Reason Tell Us What Moral Code to Follow and, Indeed, to Follow Any Moral Code at All?" Comments: Donald Regan
David Gauthier, "The Unity of Reason: A Subversive Reinterpretation of Kant" Comments: Stephen Darwall
Allan Gibbard, "Rationality and Morality" Comments: Nicholas Sturgeon
John Elster, "Rationality, Morality, and Collective Action" Comments: Brian Barry
James Griffin, "Fairness" Comments: Kurt Baier
PUBLISHED: "Symposium on Rationality and Morality," Ethics, 96 (October, 1985).
1985 TWENTY-FIFTH COLLOQUIUM
Fred I. Dretske, "The Explanatory Role of Content" Comments: Robert Cummins
Lynne Rudder Baker, "Cognitive Suicide" Comments: Charles Chastain
Brian Loar, "Social Content and Psychological Content" Comments: Akeel Bilgrami
Tyler Burge, "Cartesian Error and the Objectivity of Perception" Comments: Robert Matthews
Robert Stalnaker, "Belief Attribution and Context" Comments: Hans Kamp
PUBLISHED: Contents of Thought, editors Daniel D. Merrill and Robert H. Grimm. University of Arizona Press, 1988.
1986 TWENTY-SIXTH COLLOQUIUM
Robert Turnbull, "Plato on Becoming and Intelligibility" Comments: Gail Fine
Michael Frede, "Plato on Being and Becoming" Comments: Alan Code
Terence Irwin, "Aristotle and the Stoics on the Unity of the Virtues" Comments: Richard Kraut
Martha Nussbaum, "Nature, Function, Capability: Aristotle on the Basis of Political Distribution" Comments: David Charles
Jonathan Barnes, "The Epicureans on Inductive Inference" Comments: A.A. Long
PUBLISHED: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. Supp. Vol. 1988. Editors: Julia Annas and Robert H. Grimm. Oxford University Press, 1988
1987 TWENTY-SEVENTH COLLOQUIUM
Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Justifying to Oneself" Comments: Christine M. Korsgaard
Peter Railton, "The Justification of Morality" Comments: David Copp
Susan Wolf, "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Moral Responsibility" Comments: John Martin Fischer
J.B. Schneewind, "A Neglected Method of Ethics: Agency and Morality in Kant and the British Moralists" Comments: Karl Ameriks
Richard Miller, "Political Choice and Balanced Judgment" Comments: Annette Baier
1988 TWENTY-EIGHTH COLLOQUIUM
John Searle, "Collective Intentionality" Comments: Meredith Williams
Keith Lehrer, "Social Knowledge" Comments: Ernest Sosa
Ronald Giere, "The Role of Individuals and Social Groups in Producing Scientific Knowledge" Comments: Steve Fuller
Sandra Harding, "Feminist Epistemologies" Comments: Sara Ruddick
Charles Guignon, "Pragmatism or Hermeneutics? Epistemology after Foundationalism" Comments: David Hiley
1989 TWENTY-NINTH COLLOQUIUM
Simon Blackburn, "Concerning Moral Realism" Comments: Nicholas Sturgeon
Ian Hacking, "Are Natural Kinds Social Constructs?" Comments: Richard Boyd
Arthur Fine, "Piecemeal Realism" Comments: Ernan McMullin
Michael Devitt, "Aberrations of the Realism Debate" Comments: Anthony Appiah
Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, "Being a Realist About Relativism" Comments: David Wong
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 61:1-2 (February 1991). Guest Editor: Peter McInerney
1991 THIRTIETH COLLOQUIUM
Joseph Margolis, "The Construction of Persons and the Construction of Reason" Comments: John Greenwood
Thomas McCarthy, "Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Philosophy: Variations on Kantian Themes" Comments: Thomas Rockmore
Linda Nicholson, "Arrogance, and Social Theory" Comments: Lawrence Blum
Robert Solomon, "Emotion and the Limits of Reason" Comments: Robert Gordon
Nicholas Rescher, "Rationality and Consensus" Comments: Susan Haack
1993 THIRTY-FIRST COLLOQUIUM
Colin McGinn, "The Limits of Thought and the Nature of Philosophy" Comments: Carol Rovane
Lynne Rudder Baker, "Attitudes as Nonentities" Comments: Robert Van Gulick
William Lycan, "Conditional Reasoning and Conditional Logic" Comments: Hilary Kornblith
Stephen Schiffer, "The Language-of-Thought Relation and its Implications" Comments: Takashi Yagisawa
Terry Horgan: "Naturalism and Intentionality" Comments: Frances Egan
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 76:2-3 (December 1994). Guest Editor: Robert Grimm
1995 THIRTY-SECOND COLLOQUIUM
Lawrence Blum, "Racial Status and Moral Asymmetries in Manifestations of Racism" Comments: Marilyn Friedman
Stephen Darwall, "A Plea for Accountability" Comments: Terrance McConnell
John Deigh, "Freudian Theory, Naturalism, and Ethics" Comments: Cheshire Calhoun
Adrian M.S. Piper, "Rationality and the Structure of the Self" Comments: Michael Stocker
Robin Dillon, "Self-Respect: Emotional, Moral Political" Comments: Laurence Mordekhai Thomas
1997 THIRTY-THIRD COLLOQUIUM
Jaegwon Kim, "Making Sense of Emergence" Comments: Louise Antony
Ruth Garrett Millikan, "Kinds of Kinds and the Historical Sciences" Comments: Richard Boyd
Fred Dretske, "The Mind's Awareness of Itself" Comments: William Lycan
Elliott Sober, "Physicalism in a Problematic Context" Comments: Peter Godfrey-Smith
Lawrence Sklar, "The Reduction(?) of Thermodynamics to Statistical Mechanics" Comments: Geoffrey Hellman
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 95:1-2 (August 1999). Guest Editor: Peter McInerney
1999 THIRTY-FOURTH COLLOQUIUM
Michael Williams, "Contextualism, Externalism and Epistemic Standards" Comments: Timothy Williamson
Ernest Sosa, "Two False Dichotomies: Foundationalism/Coherentism and Internalism/Externalism" Comments: Richard Fumerton
William Lycan, "Moore Against the New Skeptics" Comments: Earl Conee
Alvin Goldman, "Internalism Exposed" Comments: Frederick Adams
Richard Feldman, "Contextualism and Skepticism" Comments: Stewart Cohen
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 103:1 (March 2001).
2002 THIRTY-FIFTH COLLOQUIUM
Fred Dretske, "Change Blindness" Comments: Gary Hatfield
Michael Martin, "The Limits of Self-Awareness: Disjunctivism and Indiscriminablility" Comments: Susanna Siegel
Mark Johnston, "The Obscure Object of Hallucination" Comments: David Hilbert
Michael Thau, "What is Disjunctivism?" Comments: Robert Schwartz
John Campbell, "Reference as Attention" Comments: Sean Kelly
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 120:1-3 (July 2004). Guest Editors: Martin Jones and Todd Ganson
2004 THIRTY-SIXTH COLLOQUIUM – Problems in Non-Consequentialism: Agents, Reasons, and Value
Jeff McMahan, "Unjust War" Comments: Thaddeus Metz
David Velleman, "The Centered Self" Comments: Thomas Hill
Frances Kamm, "Failures of Just War Theory: Terror, Harm, and Justice" Comments: Arthur Kuflik
R.G. Frey, "Non-Consequentialism and Double Effect" Comments: Paul Hurley
Barbara Herman, "Contingent Obligations" Comments: David Sussman
2006 THIRTY-SEVENTH COLLOQUIUM – Aesthetics
Noel Carroll, “Narrative Closure” Comments: Susan Feagin
Peter Lamarque, “Can There be an Aesthetics of Literature?” Comments: Deborah Knight
Gregory Currie, “The Genealogy of Aesthetics” Comments: Andrew Kania
George Wilson, “Recent Work on Narration in Film and Literature” Comments: Tom Wartenberg
Cynthia Freeland “Portraits in Painting and Photography” Comments: Patrick Maynard
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 135:1 (August 2007). Guest Editor: Katherine Thomson-Jones
2008 THIRTY-EIGHTH COLLOQUIUM – Models, Methods, and Evidence: Topics in the Philosophy of Science
Bas van Fraassen, "The Perils of Perrin, in the Hands of Philosophers" Comments: Helen Longino
Margaret Morrison, "Models, Mediation, and Measurement" Comments: Ronald Giere
Elliott Sober, "Absence of Evidence and Evidence of Absence" Comments: Michael Strevens
Peter Godfrey-Smith, "Models and Fictions in Science" Comments: Arthur Fine
Nancy Cartwright, "Evidence-Based Policy: So, What's Evidence?" Comments: Sherrilyn Roush
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 143:1 (March 2009). Guest Editor: Martin Thomson-Jones
2010 THIRTY-NINTH COLLOQUIUM – Epistemology
Gilbert Harman and Brett Sherman, "Knowledge and Assumptions" Comments: Thomas Kelly
Crispin Wright, "Basic Arithmetical Knowledge" Comments: Anthony Brueckner
Tamar Szabo Gendler, "On the Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias" Comments: Andy Egan
Keith DeRose, "Contextualism, Contrastivism, and X-Phi Surveys" Comments: Patrick Rysiew
Jason Stanley, "Ryle on Knowing How" Comments: Jeremy Fantl
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 156:1 (October 2011). Guest Editor: Dorit Ganson
2012 FORTIETH COLLOQUIUM – Philosophy of Mind
Christopher Peacocke, "Interpersonal Self-Consciousness" Comments: Michael Martin
Frances Egan, "How to Think About Mental Content" Comments: Mohan Matthen
Michael Tye, "Transparency, Qualia Realism, and Representationalism" Comments: Jeff Speaks
Susanna Schellenberg, "The Epistemic Role of Experience" Comments: Alex Byrne
Peter Carruthers, "On Central Cognition" Comments: Wayne Wu
PUBLISHED: Philosophical Studies, 170:1 (August 2014). Guest Editor: Todd Ganson
2014 FORTY-FIRST COLLOQUIUM – Metaphysics
Kit Fine, "Criteria of Identity and Ground" Comments: Ted Sider
Karen Bennett, "There is No Special Problem With Metaphysics" Comments: Thomas Hofweber
Jonathan Schaffer, "Grounding in the Image of Causation" Comments: Kathrin Koslicki
Sally Haslanger, "What is a (Social) Structural Explanation?" Comments: Amie Thomasson
Stephen Yablo, "Parts and Differences" Comments: L. A. Paul
PROCEEDINGS: Philosophical Studies (forthcoming). Guest Editor: Martin Thomson-Jones
