1. Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures
  2. School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science
  3. Mangoletsi-Potts lectures

Mangoletsi-Potts lectures

The Mangoletsi-Potts Lectures are an annual series of four public lectures aimed at a general academic audience, addressing topics in 'theoretical philosophy' broadly construed. The series is funded by the Mangoletsi Trust.

The trust was set up by our late colleague Dr Timothy Potts to honour the commitment of his mother to education.

2024 lectures

The 2024 Mangoletsi-Potts lectures will be given by Professor Marya Schechtman on the theme of: ‘Still Me: The experience of self in time, personal identity, and the depth of a human life’.

Marya Schechtman is a professor of philosophy and member of the Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Illinois, Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1988. Her work focuses on the philosophy of personal identity, particularly on the relation between metaphysical, ethical, and phenomenological approaches to this topic. She also has interests in the philosophy of memory and bioethics and has published numerous articles on these topics. She is the author of The Constitution of Selves (1996) and Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (OUP, 2014).

Lecture 1: How Long Has This Been Going on? Weak and Strong Relations to One’s Past Self

Wednesday 22 May, 16:00 – 17:30, Nathan Bodington Chamber

Lecture 2: Talking to Myself: ChatGPT and Resurrecting the Past

Thursday 23 May, 16:00 – 17:30, Nathan Bodington Chamber

Lecture 3: Borrowing from Myself: Affect, Memory, and Imagination

Wednesday 29 May, 16:00 – 17:30, Nathan Bodington Chamber

Lecture 4: All the Things You Are: A Complex Account of the Self in Time

Thursday 30 May, 16:00 – 17:30, Nathan Bodington Chamber

Previous lectures:

  • 2023 Professor Mark Schroeder: When Things Get Personal
  • 2022 Professor John Norton: The Material Theory of Induction – Introduced; Analogy, Abduction and Simplicity; Why Not Bayes; There is No Complete Calculus of Inductive Inference
  • 2019 Christina Van Dyke: Philosophy as a Way of Life: Self-Knowledge, Love, and Wisdom in the Medieval Contemplatives
  • 2018 Sally Haslanger: Ameliorating Social Practices: Cognition, Culture, and Critique
  • 2017 Mohan Matthen: Art's for Pleasure's Sake
  • 2016 Rae Langton: Doing and Undoing Things with Words
  • 2015 Helen Beebee: Turf Wars: Science and Metaphysics
  • 2014 John Cottingham: Towards a More Humane Philosophy of Religion
  • 2012 Dominic McIver Lopes: Four Arts of Photography
  • 2011 Jane Heal: Other Minds
  • 2010 Katherine Hawley: Distrust, Ignorance and Injustice
  • 2009 Peter van Inwagen: God, Science and Philosophy
  • 2008 John Dupré: The New Philosophy of Nature