Burmanföreläsningarna i filosofi har årligen getts av internationellt ledande filosofer sedan 1996. Föreläsningarna arrangeras av Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier vid Umeå universitet.
Föreläsare: Carolina Sartorio, Rutgers University, som ger tre öppna föreläsningar under tre dagar.
Tid: 19-21 maj 2026, kl. 13.15-15.00
Plats: Humanisthuset, Hörsal HUM.D.220 – Hjortronlandet
Föreläsning 1: Basic and Non-Basic Responsibility: Against Unification
Tisdag 19 maj kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal HUM.D.220 – Hjortronlandet
Abstract (på engelska): Unlike the basic kind of responsibility, the non-basic kind (responsibility for consequences, or “out in the world” things) is a form of moral responsibility that is inherited from something else. Should we still expect these two forms of responsibility to be unified in some significant way? Is unification a virtue of a theory of responsibility? Some have thought so. I first argue against unification. I then draw consequences for debates about the relevance of alternative possibilities to moral responsibility.
Föreläsning 2: Responsibility, Causation, and the Problem of Collective Harms
Onsdag 20 maj kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal HUM.D.220 – Hjortronlandet
Abstract (på engelska): What is the relation between (non-basic) moral responsibility and causation? Some think that we can only be responsible for what we cause, and that our responsibility for an outcome is always grounded in having caused it; in contrast, others think that we can be responsible for outcomes that we don’t cause, as in the case of collective harms, and that our responsibility in those cases is grounded in other factors. I first argue against both views—I argue that they fail for the same reason: they are too dependent on the truth of controversial metaphysical assumptions. I then put forth an alternative view that is more metaphysically neutral (and independently plausible). Finally, I draw consequences for the problem of collective harms.
Föreläsning 3: Grounding Responsibility for Consequences
Torsdag 21 maj kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal HUM.D.220 – Hjortronlandet
Abstract (på engelska): In the two previous lectures I motivated a particular way of thinking about non-basic moral responsibility, and I hinted at some possible applications of the view. In this final lecture I discuss other applications that, I think, help cement the view. I first draw attention to the grounding structure of non-basic responsibility. I then explain how this bears on the debate about tracing as well as on our responsibility in complex cases, including scenarios of overdetermination of various kinds and scenarios of causal deviance.
Föreläsningarna ges på engelska. Alla intresserade är välkomna till dessa föreläsningar!
2026 års Burmanföreläsningar stöds av ett generöst bidrag från Vitterhetsakademien.
2025
John Macfarlane, Professor i filosofi vid University of California, Berkeley.
Word and Plan
Föreläsning 1: Felicitous Underspecification
Föreläsning 2: Disagreement and Meaning
Föreläsning 3: Panvariabilism
2025 års Burmanföreläsningar fick stöd av ett generöst bidrag från Wenner-Gren Stiftelserna.
2024
C. Thi Nguyen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah.
Scores and the Meaning of Life
Föreläsning 1: Value Capture
Föreläsning 2: Mechanical Scoring Systems and Human Values
Föreläsning 3: Bureaucratic Meanings and Semantic Self-Determination
2023
Professor David Enoch, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Autonomy: Coercion, Nudging and the Epistemic Analogy
Föreläsing 1: Contrastive Consent and Third-Party Coercion
Föreläsning 2: How Nudging Upsets Autonomy
Föreläsning 3: Epistemic Autonomy May Not Be a Thing
Professor Elisabeth Camp, Rutgers University
Perspectives, Frames, and the Coercion of Intimacy
Föreläsning 1: From Point of View to Perspective
Föreläsning 2: Perspectival Framing With Pictures and Words
Föreläsning 3: Frames, Nicknames, and the Coercion of Intimacy
Jeff McMahan, Sekyra and White’s Professor i moralfilosofi vid Oxford University
The Ethics of Creating, Saving, and Ending Lives
Föreläsning 1: Abortion, Prenatal Injury, and What Matters in Alternative Possible Lives
Föreläsning 2: The Population Ethics Asymmetry and the Permissibility of Procreation
Föreläsning 3: Moral Reasons to Cause People to Exist
Professor Ingrid Robeyns, Utrecht University
Why worry about wealth?
Föreläsning 1: What is limitarianism?
Föreläsning 2: Arguments for economic limitarianism
Föreläsning 3. Objections to economic limitarianism
Prof. Jennifer Saul, University of Sheffield.
Race, Manipulative Language, and Politics
Lecture I: Dogwhistles, Political Manipulation and the Philosophy of Language
Lecture II: Racial Figleaves, The Shifting Boundaries of the Permissible, and the Rise of Donald Trump
Lecture III: 'Immigration' in the Brexit Campaign: Dogwhistle Terms in Complex Contexts
Jenann Ismael, University of Arizona
Determinism, Time, and Totality
Lecture I: Determinism and the Causal Order
Lecture II: Time and Transcendence
Lecture III: Totality
Karen Bennett, Cornell University.
Making things Up
Lecture 1: Building
Lecture 2: Causing
Lecture 3: Relative Fundamentality
Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan.
Pragmatism in Ethics: Why and How
Lecture 1: Why Pragmatism?
Lecture 2: How to Be a Pragmatist 1: Correcting Moral Biases
Lecture 3: How to Be a Pragmatist 2: Experiments in Living
Michael Smith, McCosh Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
What We Should Do and Why We Should Do It
Lecture 1: "The Standard Story of Action"
Lecture 2: "A Constitutivist Theory of Reasons"
Lecture 3: "A Case Study: The Reasons of Love"
David Chalmers, Australian National University and New York University
Structuralism, space, and skepticism
Lecture 1: Constructing the world
Lecture 2: Three puzzles about spatial experience
Lecture 3: The structuralist response to skepticism
Stephen Finlay, University of Southern California
Metaethics as a Confusion of Tongues
Lecture 1: Metaethics: Why and How?
Lecture 2: The Semantics of "Ought"
Lecture 3: The Pragmatics of Normative Disagreement
Dag Prawitz, Stockholm University
Bevis, mening och sanning
Tim Crane, University of Cambridge
Problems of Being and Existence
Lecture 1: Existence, Being and Being-so
Lecture 2: Existence and Quantification Reconsidered
Lecture 3: The Singularity of Singular Thought
2009
Jerry Fodor, Rutgers University
What Darwin Got Wrong
Lecture 1: What kind of theory is the Theory of Natural Selection?
Lecture 2: The problem about 'selection-for'
2008
Susanna Siegel, Harvard
The Nature of Visual Experience
Lecture 1: The varieties of perceptual intentionality
Lecture 2: The contents of visual experience
2007
Alex Byrne, MIT
How do we know our own minds?
Lecture 1: Transparency and Self-Knowledge
Lecture 2: Knowing that I am thinking
2006
Jonathan Dancy, University of Reading and University of Texas, Austin
Lecture 1: Reasons and Rationality
Lecture 2: Practical Reasoning and Inference
2005
Ned Block, New York University
Consciousness and Neuroscience
Lecture 1: The Epistemological Problem of the Neuroscience of Consciousness
Lecture 2: How Empirical Evidence can be Relevant to the Mind-Body Problem
2004
John Broome, Oxford
Reasoning
2003
Wlodek Rabinowicz, Lund
Värde och passande attityder
2002
Kevin Mulligan, Genève
Lecture 1: Essence, Logic and Ontology
Lecture 2: Foolishness and Cognitive Values
2001
Hubert Dreyfus, Berkeley
Lecture 1: What is moral maturity? A Phenomenological Account Of The Development Of Ethical Expertise
Lecture 2: The primacy of the phenomenological over logical analysis: A Merleau-Pontian Critique of Searle's Account of Action and Social Reality
2000
Herbert Hochberg, University of Texas, Austin
Lecture 1: A Simple Refutation of Mindless Materialism
Lecture 2: Universals, Particulars and the Logic of Predication
1999
Susan Haack, University of Miami
The Science of Sociology and the Sociology of Science
Lecture 1: Social Science as Semiotic.
Lecture 2: Sociology of Science: The Sensible Program.
1998
Howard Sobel, University of Toronto
Lecture 1: First causes: St. Thomas Aquinas's 'Second way'.
Lecture 2: Ultimate reasons if not first causes: Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz on 'the Ultimate Origination of Things'.
1997
Ian Jarvie, York University
Science and the Open Society
1996
David Kaplan, UCLA
What is Meaning: Notes toward a theory of Meaning as Use
Burmanföreläsningarna startade 1996 på initiativ av Inge-Bert Täljedal, då ordförande i kommunalfullmäktige i Umeå och senare rektor vid Umeå universitet. Föreläsningarna är döpta efter Erik Olof Burmans (1845–1929), Umeås "första professor i filosofi".
Burman föddes i Yttertavle utanför Umeå, gick gymnasiet i Umeå och blev professor i praktisk filosofi 1896–1910 vid Uppsala universitet. Numera är Burman mest känd som lärare till Axel Hägerström, som är känd bland annat för sin expressivistiska teori om moraliska omdömen.