Applied Ethics Forum

Applied Ethics Forum

The Applied Ethics Forum, housed within the Department of Philosophy, is the university’s primary intellectual venue for extracurricular ethical programming. Its purpose is to foster CSULB’s fundamental mission—the production (research) and dissemination (teaching) of knowledge—regarding ethical issues in applied, practical, professional settings for the benefit of all faculty, students, and community members. The Applied Ethics Forum is funded by a generous grant from the Andre Family Foundation, and features an array of speakers, conferences, and projects on topics in applied ethics each year.

 

Current Events

2024–2025

  • tbd

 

Previous Events

2023–2024

2022–2023

2021–2022

2020–2021

2019–2020

2018–2019

  • Christa Johnson (Oberlin College) • ‘The intrapersonal paradox of deontology’ • 11 Feb 2019
  • Nick Laskowski (University of Duisburg-Essen) • ‘Resisting reductive realism’ • 06 Feb 2019
  • Sungwoo Um (Duke University) • ‘What is a relational virtue?’ • 30 Jan 2019
  • Jake Monaghan (SUNY Buffalo) • ‘Informal norms and legitimate policing’ • 28 Jan 2019

2017–2018

  • Eden Lin (Ohio State University) • ‘Should we respect the past desires of people with dementia?’ • 26 Apr 2018
  • Guy Fletcher (University of Edinburgh) • ‘Moral skepticisms and the normativity of prudential discourse’ • 10 Apr 2018
  • Erin Frykholm (University of Kansas) • ‘Humean psychology and the cultivation of virtue’ •  22 Mar 2018

2016–2017

  • Justin Klocksiem (New Mexico State University) • ‘Epistocracy: a wolf in wolf’s clothing’ • 6 April 2017
  • Molly Gardner (Bowling Green State University) • ‘Doing right by future generations’ • 9 Mar 2017
  • Kristina Meshelski (Cal State Northridge) • ‘Calexit from a social contract perspective’ • 23 Feb 2017

2015–2016

No events (director on leave)

2014–2015

  • Dale Dorsey (University of Kansas) • ‘A good death’ • 9 Apr 2015
  • Meghan Masto (Lafayette College) • ‘Empathy, autism, psychopathy, and right action’ • 5 Mar 2015
  • Megs Gendreau (Cal Poly Pomona) • ‘Relocation, climate migration, and justification’ • 26 Feb 2015

2013–2014

  • Alida Liberman (University of Southern California) • ‘A promise-acceptance model of organ donation’ • 8 Apr 2014
  • Russ Shafer-Landau (University of Wisconsin Madison) • ‘The morality of the death penalty’ • 6 Mar 2014
  • John Corvino (Wayne State University) • ‘The definition of marriage’ • 6 Feb 2014

2011–2012

  • David Adams (Cal Poly Pomona) • ‘Fairness, experimental research, and the desperately ill’ • 10 May 2012
  • Maria Svedberg (Stockholm University) • ‘Free will and determinism: David Lewis’s local miracle compatibilism’  • 26 Apr 2012
  • Harriet Baber (University of San Diego) • ‘Freedom that matters’ • 11 Apr 2012

2010–2011

  • Julie Tannenbaum (Pomona College) • ‘The promise and peril of the pharmacological enhancer modafinil’ • 14 Apr 2011
  • Mohammed Abed (Cal State Los Angeles) • ‘What is genocide?’ • 24 Feb 2011
  • Steven Luper (Trinity University San Antonio) • ‘Retroactive harm’ • 17 Feb 2011 

2009–2010

  • Jens Johansson (Uppsala University) • ‘The philosophy of death’ • 13 May 2010
  • Noell Birondo (Claremont McKenna) • ‘Environmental ethics and the end of nature’ • 22 Apr 2010
  • Michael Cholbi (Cal Poly Pomona) • ‘A direct Kantian duty to animals’ • 13 Apr 2010

2008–2009

  • Conference: ‘Ethical and social scientific perspectives on well-being‘ • 5–7 Mar 2009
    • Daniel Haybron (St. Louis University) • ‘The proper pursuit of happiness’
    • J. D. Trout (Loyola University Chicago) • ‘Hard choices: paternalize or patronize?’
    • Neera Badhwar (University of Oklahoma) • ‘Happiness: from subjectivity to objectivity’
    • Randy Larsen (Washington University St. Louis) • ‘Overcoming the hedonic treadmill: the role of positive and negative affect in psychological well-being’
    • Charles Wallis (Cal State Long Beach) • ‘The lazy eye of enactivism and other tales of horror from the bleeding edge of cognitive science’
    • Erik Angner (University of Alabama Birmingham) • ‘The politics of happiness: subjective vs. economic measures as measures of social well-being’
    • Jason Raibley (Cal State Long Beach) • ‘Health and well-being’
    • Georg Northoff (University of Magdeburg) • ‘The brain and its self: empirical investigations and conceptual implications’
    • Golnaz Tabibnia (Carnegie Mellon) • ‘Neuroeconomics and well-being’
    • Michael Bishop (Florida State University) • ‘What a theory of well-being might be’
    • Irving Biederman (University of Southern California) • ‘The neural basis of perceptual and cognitive pleasure’
    • Valerie Tiberius (University of Minnesota) • ‘Normative theory and psychological research: advantages of the value-based life-satisfaction theory of well-being’

2007–2008

  • Martin Gunderson (Macalester College) • ‘How the use of human rights treaties to prohibit genetic engineering weakens human rights’ • 13 Mar 2008
  • Chris Heathwood (University of Colorado Boulder) • ‘Personal identity and abortion’ • 21 Feb 2008
  • Matt Zwolinski (University of San Diego) • ‘The ethics of price gouging’ • 14 Nov 2007
  • Laurie Shrage (Cal Poly Pomona) • “Pro-choice or no-choice’ and other alternatives’ • 8 Nov 2007

2006–2007

  • Edward Stein (Yeshiva Cardozo School of Law) • ‘Etiology, mutability, and the law: a critique of biological and psychological arguments concerning lesbian and gay rights’ • 10 May 2007
  • Matt Zwolinski (University of San Diego) • ‘Good folk gone bad: the moral psychology of unethical behavior at work’ • 2 Nov 2006

2005–2006

  • Clare Palmer (Washington University in St. Louis) • ‘Animals, environmental ethics, and the importance of context’ • 4 May 2006
  • Dale Jamieson (New York University) • ‘The heart of environmentalism’ • 4 Apr 2006
  • Conference: ‘Environmental ethics, aesthetics, and education’
    • Jen Everett (Carleton College) •
    • Phil Cafaro (Colorado State University) •
    • Ted Toadvine (University of Oregon) •
    • Brian Treanor (Loyola Marymount University) •

2004–2005

  • Amy Coplan (Cal State Fullerton) • ‘Caring about characters: four determinants of emotional engagement’ • 20 Apr 2005
  • J. Angelo Corlett (Cal State San Diego) • ‘Was 9/11 morally justified?’ • 10 Mar 2005

2003–2004

  • Conference: ‘Race, social justice, and the professions’ • 19 Feb 2004
    • Naomi Zack (University of Oregon) •
    • Jorge L. A. Garcia (Boston College) •
    • Howard McGary (Rutgers University) •
    • David Kim (University of San Francisco) •

 2002–2003

  • Conference: ‘The ethics of stem cell research and human cloning’ • 5 Apr 2003
    • Carol Itatani (Cal State Long Beach) •
    • Mary Mahowald (University of Chicago) •
    • Radhika Rao (Hastings College of Law) •
    • Bonnie Steinbock (SUNY Albany) •

2001–2002

  • Conference: ‘Challenging democracy: religious diversity and political institutions on a global scale’ • 8 Mar 2002
    • M. A. Muqtedar Khan (Adrian College) •
    • Matthius Lutz-Bachmann (Goethe Universität) •
    • Andrew Wallace (Sonoma State University) •

2000–2001

  • Conference: ‘Sequencing the future: ethical issues arising from the human genome project’ • 21 Apr 2001 
    • Troy Duster (University of California Berkeley) •
    • Erik Parens (Hastings Center) •
    • Anita Silvers (San Francisco State University) •
  • Conference: ‘Philosophy and ethics in children’s literature’ • 21 Jun 2001
    • Gareth Matthews (University of Massachusetts Amherst) •
    • Claudia Mills (University of Colorado Boulder) •
    • David Shapiro (University of Washington) •
    • Dale Turner (Cal Poly Pomona) •
  • Michael Pritchard (Western Michigan University) • ‘Perception and imagination in engineering ethics’ • 26 Nov 2001
  • Xinyan Jiang (University of Redlands) • ‘Rational beings and moral agency in Xunzi’ • 16 Jun 2001
  • Ann Davis (Pomona College) • ‘Running faster but moving slower: information, technology, and the ambiguity of progress’ • 12 Apr 2000