Professor Barry C Smith, Director of the Institute of Philosophy and Leadership Fellow for the AHRC Science in Culture Theme  has featured in a new BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of Ideas’ with Melyvn Bragg. ‘A History of Ideas’ will address big questions from a variety of perspectives involve leading thinkers from Philosophy, Science, Theology and the Arts. The first programme which asks ‘Why are things beautiful?’ features historian of science Simon Shaffer, mathematician Professor Vicky Neale and philosophers Angie Hobbs and Barry Smith.

INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY 18 November 2014, 17:15 - 19:00 Objective Probability, and Conditional Reasoning Seminar: Room 243, Senate House, WC1  The Principal Principle implies the Principle of Indifference Jon Williamson (Kent)

INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY Monday 10 November 2014, 17:30-19:30 Practical Reasoning Seminar Room G34, Senate House, WC1 Acting for the Right Reasons, Alison Hills (Oxford) I begin with the idea of acting for a reason. I distinguish Humean and Kantian approaches to this question and sketch some familiar objections to them. Then I defend a third possibility: a dispositional account of acting for a reason. I then apply this approach to the question of acting for moral reasons; that is, doing the right thing for the right reason.

INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY In association with the Forum for European Philosophy. 29 October 2014, 18:30 - 20:00 The Senate Room (Senate House, First Floor) The Infrastructure of Democracy Philip Pettit, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values, Princeton University