Past Events
Baylor Webinar Series: Celebrating "The Gift of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois
Introducing W.E.B. DuBois and "The Gift of Black Folk"
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 • 12:15-1:30 p.m. CDT
September 4: "AI and Peace and Human Rights" panel, Moderator: Dr. Paul Martens, Geneva, Switzerland and online.
August 21-23, 2024: PRSA Southwest District Conference - Bentonville, Arkansas. Presenter: Dr. Marlene Neill
July 31 - August 3, 2024: Finding Holy Ground Black Religion Summit, at the IBTF
Dr. Elise Edwards attended the 2024 IBTF (International Black Theatre Festival) in Winston-Salem, NC, this summer as part of the Finding Holy Ground Black Religion Summit.
Dr. Edwards participated in a panel on August 2nd with Dr. Corey D.B. Walker, Dr. Marquisha Scott, and H. Adam Harris to discuss the play, commissioned by Finding Holy Ground Project, “Heritage” by JuCoby Johnson, exploring race, religion, and justice. Find more about the panel here.
She also attended the premiere of “I Am... a Shepherdess” by Eljon Wardally, which examines similar themes and was commissioned by the same project.
Find the post on Facebook here
July 28-August 2, 2024: IABI/SLU Symposium - Bioethics and the Philosophy of Biology, "Biophilosophy" offered by the International Academy of Bioethical Inquiry (IABI), Rochefort-du-Gard, France
The Symposium will begin with an opening program on Sunday afternoon, July 28, 2024. Our Bioethics Convener Dr. Devan Stahl presented on July 29th.
Visit the Chateau Saint Andre Center for Ethics and Integrity for more information.
Dr. Neil Messer presented “Evolution, the problem of evil, and human responsibility: attending theologically to animal suffering.” at the 2024 IABI Symposium
July 22, 2024: Loving Our Land and Neighbor: Can Agro-Ecology Bring About Ecological Conversion?
This event invited our Drs. Jenny Howell and Matthew Whelan to a series of Integral Ecology Dialogues, hosted by the Laudato Si' Research Institute, Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and the Integral Ecology Research Network.
Learn more about the discussion here.
Watch the recording on YouTube here.
June 1-2, 2024: Grand Opening of Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) New Building, Princeton, NJ - Dr. Edwards
On Saturday, June 1st, the Director, Board of Trustees, and guests celebrated the official opening of the Center’s newly renovated building.
May 22, 2024: Beyond the Dark Clouds Lecture Series, "Augmenting Our Minds? Neurotechnologies and the Common Good", lecturer Dr. Neil Messer
This is the fifth lecture in the 'Beyond the Dark Clouds' lecture series - "Augmenting Our Minds? Neurotechnologies and the Common Good", which was broadcast online.
For more information go to Leeds Trinity University. To listen to the series, go to Spotify, to hear Dr. Messer's lecture click here.
April 19-27, 2024: The Black Religion Summit Detroit, MI - Dr. Edwards
Our Ethics in Leadership co-convener Dr. Elise Edwards attended the Black Religion Summit in Detroit.
Learn more about the summit here: https://dreamofdetroit.org/blackreligionsummit/
April 16-18, 2024: Migration and Food Needs: Latin American and U.S. Perspectives Symposium
Dr. Carlos Cardoza of the Religion Department was the head organizer for this event. The keynote “Religion, Food Security, and Migration in the Americas: Implications for Policy and Research” by Dr. Victor Hinojosa was presented on Wednesday, April 17th 9:15am – 10:45am.
Learn more here: https://religion.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/event/2024
April 3-5, 2024: “Activating Hidden Assets: Making the Most of Sacred Places for the Wider Community,” Philadelphia, PA - Dr. Edwards
Leaders from philanthropy, government, city planning and architecture, the arts, human services, academia, the media, and religion will engage in a full day of conversation and strategizing. The format will include plenaries with speakers and panels, small groups focusing on case studies and specific topics, video case studies, and follow-up steps.
April 2024: International Neuroethics Society, Baltimore.
Dr. Neil Messer presented a poster, “On the Contribution of Christian Theology to Ethical Deliberation about Neuroscience and AI”.
January 2024: Society of Christian Ethics Annual Meeting, Chicago
Dr. Neil Messer, Convener of the Neuroethics and Theology Interest Group, convened a session of this group on the theme of “Moral Bioenhancement: ‘Urgent Imperative’ or Incoherent Project?”, with panelists Fabrice Jotterand (Medical College of Wisconsin), Warren Kinghorn (Duke University), and Devan Stahl (Baylor).
2023
Bioethics - Brown Bag Discussion Meetings (Hybrid)
Moderated by: Harrison Lee
Meetings are held from 12:15-1:00 pm ever other Friday in a hybrid form (Teams and in-person) to discuss current issues, research, and topics in the bioethics field. The meetings are every other Friday in Morrison Hall. Any faculty are welcome to join.
Friday, November 17, 2023: Environmental Humanities Faculty R&R (Relate and Regenerate)
All Environmental Humanities Undergraduate Minor (EHUM) faculty and contributors join us to share coffee and tea while relating and regenerating ideas for teaching, collaboration, and investigation. This event will take place at 2:00PM in the Creekmore Conference Room of the Jones Library.
Wednesday, October 4, afternoon: Celebration of St. Francis, Patron Saint of Ecology, and Call to Environmental Action
Afternoon of events reflecting upon the varied ecological and theological legacies of St. Francis, along with an Environmental Humanities Open House in the Baylor Community Garden.
Society for the Study of Christian Ethics Annual Conference, Cambridge, UK, September 2023: “Racial Justice and Decolonising Christian Ethics.”
As President of the Society, Dr. Neil Messer presided over this conference. The papers are published in Studies in Christian Ethics, vo. 37 no. 1 (February 2024).
Wednesday, September 20, 7:00-8:00PM: Undergraduate Ethics Society Interest Meeting
Tuesday, September 19, 1:00PM: Testing Patience Lecture with Dr. Jennifer Frey
Tuesday, September 12, 4:00PM: Islam, Land, and Justice
September 6: EHUM R&R (Relate and Regenerate)
Join us tomorrow for an Environmental Humanities Undergraduate Minor R&R (Relate & Regenerate) session. All EHUM faculty and contributors are invited! Come share coffee and tea while relating and regenerating ideas for teaching, collaboration, and investigation. The session will begin at 2:00 PM in the Creekmore Conference Room, located on the second floor of the Jones Library. To learn more about the Environmental Humanities Undergraduate Minor, click here.
August 30: Bioethics Bowl Interest Meeting
Lecture: Disability, Medicine, and Human Flourishing
Thank you for everyone that joined in for Dr. Devan Stahl's guest lectures at Boston College, providing valuable insight into the subjects of disability, medicine, and the subsequent impact on the human ability to flourish. The lecture took place at 4:00 PM Eastern/3:00 PM Central time via Zoom from Boston College.
Bioethics - Brown Bag Discussion Meetings (Virtual)
Moderated by: Caitlin Maples
Meetings are held from 1:00-2:00 pm every other Friday via Zoom to discuss current issues, research, and topics in the bioethics field. Any faculty are welcome to join. For more information, or to receive an invitation to the meeting, email Caitlin Maples at caitlin_maples1@baylor.edu.
2023 National Bioethics Bowl- Boston, MA (April 15)
Our undergraduate Bioethics Bowl team attended the 2023 National Bioethics Bowl competition on April 15. The National Bioethics Bowl is an annual tournament which brings teams from colleges and universities around the country to discuss ethical challenges in biomedicine and technology.
For more information, you can visit the 2023 National Bioethics Bowl website: https://cssh.northeastern.edu/ethics/national-bioethics-bowl/
Early Events
Guest Ethics Lecture: "The Power of Positive Thinking"
Dr. Eric Wiland, University of Missouri- St. Louis; Friday, March 24 at 3:00pm, Morrison Hall 108
Abstract:
Imagine two people — Felicia and Dolores — whose lives are nearly identical. They both are recently divorced, work as real estate agents, play the clarinet, talk to their respective brothers on the phone regularly, have slightly high blood pressure, travel to the beach twice a year, and so on. Overall, both lives seem pretty good, and there is almost no way their lives differ. Can we safely conclude that they are doing equally well?
Subjectivists (and others) correctly answer: no. After all, Felicia and Dolores may have different attitudes towards these various aspects of their lives. If their attitudes toward these various aspects of their lives differ, then one of them is likely doing better than the other. To compensate for this, suppose further that Felicia and Dolores have exactly the same attitudes towards these various particular aspects of their lives. They thus share all the same specific prudential goods and specific prudential bads. Now if their lives have the same particular elements, and their attitudes toward these elements are likewise the same, then even most subjectivists would likely conclude that they are doing equally well. After all, doesn’t their well-being supervene upon the various facts of their lives and their attitudes toward these various facts?
Maybe not. For Felicia might view her overall situation as good for her, while Dolores might not. That is, two people might assess each element of her life in the same way, and yet draw very different conclusions about how things ‘add up’. Thus we can distinguish between a person’s many judgments about the myriad particular prudential goods and bads in their life, and a person’s overall judgment about their well-being.
Now, it is possible that your assessment of the quality of your own life makes absolutely no direct difference to the actual quality of your life. Perhaps the well-being of Felicia and Dolores is, in fact, the same, and their global attitudes toward their own lives are evaluatively irrelevant. But I doubt it. If our well- being depends at all upon our attitudes towards the particular elements of our lives, then, it seems, it also depends upon our global attitudes towards our overall lives. But how does it so depend?
One (rare) view about this is Wayne Sumner’s. He holds that thinking (upon careful reflection) that your life is going well is a necessary condition for it to be going well. But that’s too strong. A person might be doing very well despite not making such a judgment under careful reflection. But Sumner is, I think, on the right track. Thinking that your life is going well makes some sort of difference.
Another view comes from Frugé, who argues that people have different desires about how various prudential goods add up, and that these desires determine how the value of the prudential goods in fact add up. This is, by my lights, an improvement over Sumner. But I seriously doubt that most people in fact have the “aggregative attitudes” putatively playing the normative role Frugé identifies. Frugé’s suggestion, which might be correct as far as it goes, says nothing about cases like Felicia’s, who thinks that things are going well for her, but has no recherché desire whose content is about how various types of goods and bads are to be weighed against each other.
Instead I will argue that judging that your life is good typically intensifies the prudential value of the various prudential goods in your life. Just as an intensifying reason for action and a contributory reason for action play different roles in shaping what you have overall reason to do, so too your judgment about the quality of your own life and the particular prudential goods/bads in your life play different roles in shaping your overall well-being. Thanks to Raz and Dancy, we now know not to mistake an intensifying reason for a contributing reason. Likewise, we shouldn’t mistake the prudential role played by your global judgment about your own well-being with the prudential role played by the particular goods and bads in your life. They each play different roles.
This sets me up to argue that if you are otherwise doing well, and you correctly judge that things overall are indeed going well for you, then things are going better for you than they would be if instead you were in the dark about the quality of your life. It’s good for you to know that your life is going well. It makes your life even better.
I also argue that thinking that things are going badly for you intensifies how bad the prudential bads in your life are, thereby making your life worse. Even so, there are some differences between the good case and the bad case: while knowing that your life is going well has no intrinsically bad features, and is better for you than merely believing it’s going well, knowing that your life is going badly is arguably better for you than is merely believing that it’s going badly – this if knowledge is a prudential good.
I look at a few death-bed cases (Ivan Ilyich, Ludwig Wittgenstein) which raise interesting points, but also caution against easy generalizations.
I deal with a bunch of objections, allowing me to clarify what here I have only roughly sketched.
I conclude that the quality of your life is not just something that happens to you; rather, if you become aware of how well your life is going, you can become even better off. The goodness of your life is thus not just some objective fact about you — like your height — completely unrelated to your thoughts about it. Rather, as a self-conscious being, how well you are depends, at least in part, upon what you now make of your life. It’s a tired cliché, but there’s a power in positive thinking.
Church Music Book Launch
A celebratory symposium and virtual book launch featuring monographs from two of Baylor's 2018 Church Music Ph.D. graduates: Dr. Nathan Myrick and Dr. Marcell Steuernagel. Featuring a panel of congregational music, religion, and ethics scholars moderated by Dr. Monique Ingalls.
April 20, 2021
Sponsored by the Baylor Center for Christian Music Studies in conjunction with the Baylor Ethics in the Professions Research Group, Mercer University, and Southern Methodist University.
Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer's Disease
Baylor University's Medical Ethics and Humanities Seminar Series: "Dignity for Deeply Forgetful People: How Caregivers Can Meet the Challenges of Alzheimer’s Disease” - A Conversation with Dr. Stephen Post.
April 14, 2021
Sponsored by Baylor University's Ethics Initiative, the Medical Humanities Program, Pre-Health Programs, and the Institute for Studies of Religion