Criminal Law and the Mind Seminar

As part of my Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship project, Belief in Philosophy and the Criminal Law, I am running a visiting speaker seminar series in the UCL Philosophy Department in 2020-21. It will focus on various psychological concepts that both have been discussed by philosophers and play a role in the criminal law, such as knowledge, belief, awareness, consciousness, intention, action, attempt, reason, and emotion. It will bring together legal and philosophical perspectives on these concepts and see how legal theory and philosophy can mutually inform one another.

Some of the seminars will be pre-read and some will be presentations. Each seminar will feature comments from a UCL respondent followed by a Q&A.

The seminars will take place on Zoom Thursdays at 17:00-18:30 UK time (unless otherwise indicated). If you’d like to attend, email me with ‘Criminal Law and the Mind registration’ in the subject line, and I’ll add you to the mailing list for the seminars. In advance of each seminar you’ll receive a Zoom link and the paper for the pre-read sessions.

Spring Seminars

• 21st January: Mark Dsouza (UCL), “False Beliefs and Consent to Sex” (pre-read)
• 11th February: Matt Matravers (York), “Mental Capacity in Conviction and Sentencing” (presentation)
• 25th February: Aness Webster (Nottingham), “Blameworthiness for Negligence” (pre-read)
• 4th March: Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov (Surrey), “Law, Knowledge and Consciousness” (presentation)
• 11th March, 10am UK Time: Andrew Simester (KCL/National University of Singapore), “Five Functions, and Two Kinds, of Mens Rea” (pre-read)
• 18th March: Elinor Mason (UC Santa Barbara), “Consent and Consensuality” (presentation)
• 25th March: Antony Duff (Stirling), “Criminal Responsibility without Blame?” (pre-read)

Past Seminars

• 15th October: Gideon Yaffe (Yale), “Intoxication, Recklessness, and Negligence” (pre-read)
• 29th October: Katrina Sifferd (Elmhurst), “Legal insanity and moral knowledge: Why is a lack of moral knowledge related to a mental illness exculpatory?” (presentation)
• 26th November: James Manwaring (Cambridge), “Insanity’s Wrongness Limb” (presentation)
• 3rd December: Michael Moore (Illinois), “Can We Maintain the Distinction Between Intention and Belief (so Crucial to Both Culpability and Permissibility Discriminations)?” (pre-read)
• 17th December: Marcia Baron (Indiana), chapter from Self-Defense, Reason, and the Law: “The Imminence Requirement” (book in progress) (pre-read)