The UHM Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents Phenomenology, Delusions, and Intelligibility Without Rationality by Dr. Quinn Hiroshi Gibson Date: Friday, February 27, 2026Time: 2:30 PMLocation: Sakamaki C-308 Subjects with monothematic delusions believe apparently incredible things, e.g., that they are dead or that their spouses have been replaced by impostors, or aliens. The cognitive science … Continue reading Phenomenology, Delusions, and Intelligibility Without Rationality →

The UHM Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents The Causes of Suffering in Buddhist Philosophy: Craving for Feelings vs. Ignorance of Selflessness by Dr. Sean Smith Date: Thursday, February 12, 2026Time: 4:00 PMLocation: Sakamaki C-308 This presentation explores an interpretative dilemma about how to understand two strandsof analysis of the problem of suffering in Buddhist … Continue reading The Causes of Suffering in Buddhist Philosophy: Craving for Feelings vs. Ignorance of Selflessness →

The UH Manoa Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series presents A Just Claim to Know Another Person? by Arindam Chakrabarti We need friends to live and flourish as human beings. Friendship demands reciprocal knowledge of each other. Knowledge traditionally requires truth and justification. But knowing another person in a way that “does justice” to them without … Continue reading A Just Claim to Know Another Person? →

Theme: Emotions, Relationship, and Value Date: December 10, 2025Time: 12:30-3:00pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 Please join us in honoring this year’s graduating Philosophy majors. Our three presenters—Emma Davidson, Jackson Giannasio, and John Olubiyi—will share their capstone research. Emma Davidson will present on how the language of love shapes love. Jackson Giannasio will present on how our blaming … Continue reading 2025 Undergraduate Capstone Mini-Conference →

With Shangri La’s Scholar in Residence Hossein Nakhaei Join us for a conversation exploring Shangri La’s exceptional collection of Persian luster tiles. By re-imagining them in their original architectural settings, we discuss how these tiles are interpreted outside their historical contexts. Friday, November 216:30pm – 8:00pm University of Hawai’i at ManoaArchitecture Building (ARCH 205) Co-sponsored … Continue reading Every Piece You See is a Fragment: Persian Luster Tiles from Architectural Elements to Museum Objects 11/21/2025 →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents The Value of Philosophy or a Philosophy of Value By Steven Burik Response by Fanklin Perkins Date: Friday, November 21, 2025Time: 2:30pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 Email: philo@hawaii.eduPhone: (808) 956-8649 What is the use of something useless like philosophy? In this paper on the concepts of use and value, I … Continue reading The Value of Philosophy or a Philosophy of Value 11/21/2025 →

PBS HAWAI’IKĀKOU: HAWAII’S TOWN HALL How Do We Define Faith? THURSDAY,OCTOBER 23, 20257:30-9:00PM Dr. Tamara Albertini, Department Chair and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, will be a panelist on KĀKOU: Hawai’i’s Town Hall. KĀKOU: Hawai’i’s Town Hall is a public affairs forum presented by PBS Hawai’i which is televised statewide … Continue reading How Do We Define Faith? →

The UH Manoa Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents Theory Phobia in Biomedical Science: how philosophers might help understand and cure it presented by Brandon P. Reines Date: Friday, October 17, 2025Time: 2:30pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 In contrast to physical science which has a prestigious theoretical branch, biomedicine has a strained relationship with its concepts. Remarkably, … Continue reading Theory Phobia in Biomedical Science: how philosophers might help understand and cure it →

Title of Dissertation: Towards a New Theory of Knowing by Imagining Tuesday, August 4th, 20252:30pm HAST In Person: Sakamaki Hall, Room D-302 Zoom Link: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/97017431776?pwd=RLPJsaOckwFQfzPOg7aQBfUr6aF122.1Meeting ID: 970 1743 177Passcode: 101345 This dissertation explores the relationship between knowledge, imagination, and action in the light of some classical Indian, modern European, and more recent Euro-American sources on … Continue reading PhD Final Oral Defense – Ian Nicolay →

Join the UHM Department ofPhilosophy to cultivate care for kalo, the community, and each other at Ka Papa Loʻi ʻo Kānewai First Saturday Community Work Days are a Ka Papa Loʻi ʻo Kānewai tradition going back to 1980 and the revitalization of the current taro patch. The lo‘i provides light fefreshments for volunteers to enjoy. … Continue reading Ka Papa Loʻi ʻo Kānewai →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents On the Political Philosophy of the Zhuangzi and Opening of a Feminist Political Space by Dr. Jin Liu Date: Friday June 27, 2025Time: 2:30pmLocation: Sakamaki Hall C-308 This essay investigates some fundamental questions in Zhuangzi’s political philosophy and explores its significance to the opening of a feminist political … Continue reading On the Political Philosophy of the Zhuangzi and Opening of a Feminist Political Space →

The UH Manoa Department of Philosophy Presents The Eliot Deutsch Merit Award Presentation for Best PhD Proposal Defense The First Political Question: Value Disagreement and the Problem of Collective Action in Early China by Bobby McCullough Friday, April 25, 2025 | 2:30pm This dissertation explores what I term “the problem of collective action” in the … Continue reading The Eliot Deutsh Merit Award Presentation for Best PhD Proposal Defense →

Department of Philosophy presents Honolulu Hale 4/23  •  12-3pm

Implicit Bodily Knowledge and Practical Epistemic Injustice by Halie White Date: Friday, April 11, 2025Time: 2:30pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 Discussion of epistemic injustice has thus far been focused on propositional knowledge (knowing-that) following Miranda Fricker’s notions by hermeneutical and testimonial injustice (2007). I extend the discourse by providing an analysis of epistemic injustice applied to practical … Continue reading Graduate Student Essay Contest Prize Presentation →

The Department of PhilosophyColloquium Series Presents Comparative Philosophy: The Bricoleuse’s Promenade Through Philosophical Landscapes by Dr. Tamara Albertini Date: Friday, March 14, 2025 Time: 2:30PMLocation: Sakamaki C-308 The launching of philosophical pursuits undertaken in an East-West trajectory at the first East-West Philosophers’ Conference in 1939 represents a turning point in philosophy. However, as groundbreaking as … Continue reading Comparative Philosophy: The Bricoleuse’s Promenade Through Philosophical Landscapes →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents EMBODIED MIND AND ARGUMENTATION IN CLASSICAL NYĀYA Date: Wednesday, March 5, 2025 Time: 3:30-5:00pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 In this talk, I will offer a sampling of my recent work on and planned future research for the classical Indian school of Nyaya (Brāhminical Logic). I will first summarise a recent … Continue reading EMBODIED MIND AND ARGUMENTATION IN CLASSICAL NYĀYA →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents CONCEPTS AND THE NYĀYA THEORY OF ERROR Date: Friday, February 28, 2025Time: 3:30-5:oopmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 Nyāya philosophers explain the phenomenon of perceptual error in terms of our perceiving a real object but as another object. This view is called anyathā khyāti which is often translated as a ‘theory … Continue reading CONCEPTS AND THE NYĀYA THEORY OF ERROR →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents Talking About Nothing, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, Metaphor and Reference Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025Time: 4:00-5:30pmLocation: Sakamaki C-308 The seventh-century philosopher Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, in a passage explaining his theory of metaphor, also discusses the problem of negative existentials and non-referring terms. I show how Kumārila broadly descriptivist solution to these … Continue reading Talking About Nothing, Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, Metaphor and Reference →

Political & Social Emotions– How They Divide or Unite – January 23-24, 2025University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Campus Center Ballroom Keynote Speakers: Dr. Martha Nussbaum, University of ChicagoDr. Hagop Sarkissian, CUNY Graduate Center Phone: +1 (808) 956-8649Email: philo@hawaii.edu

December 11, 202412:30 – 3pmSakamaki C-308 Please join us in supporting this year’s outgoing undergraduate Philosophy majors. 3 of our 8 graduating seniors will present a paper based on This Life: Secular Faith & Spiritual Freedom by Martin Hagglund. The book analyzes the concepts of faith, love, and spirituality in a secular context in order … Continue reading 2024 Undergraduate Capstone Mini-Conference →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents CONFUCIAN FEMINISM: A FAMILY- AND CARE-BASED FEMINIST THEORY Date: November 15, 2024Location: Sakamaki C-308Time: 2:30 – 4:30pm Everyone is welcome to attend! This nook offers a hybrid feminist theory based on distinctive Confucian concepts – such as ren 仁, xiao 孝, you 友, li 禮, and datong 大同 … Continue reading Confucian Feminism: A Family- and Care-based Feminist Theory →

The Department of Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents Did Evolution Shape the Human Moral Mind? Date: November 8, 2024Location: Sakamaki C-308Time: 2:30 – 4:30pm Did evolution by natural selection shape our moral emotions, attitudes, and judgments? This talk assesses a prominent evolutionary proposal according to which our moral minds are adaptively plastic. On this proposal, morally … Continue reading Did Evolution Shape the Human Moral Mind? →

Thinking Like Dao: Environmental Virtue Ethics in Daoism Friday, October 18, 202411:00 AM (ST) ABSTRACT:This dissertation aims to establish that Daoist ethics can be understood as a form ofenvironmental virtue ethics, grounded in the Laozi (?) and the Zhuangzi (?), andsupplemented by the Huainanzi (?). Specifically, the central argument is that the Daoist key concept … Continue reading PH.D. Final Oral Defense →

Date: Friday, October 11, 2024 Time: 2:30 – 4:30pm Location: Arch 205 Professor Keya MaitraProfessor of Philosophy at UNC Asheville My paper aims to carry forward the cross-cultural dimension in the philosophy of emotion especially in relation to the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita or the Gita. Both Bilimoria & Johnson contend that the Gita … Continue reading RWCLS Colloquium Emotions in the Bhagavad Gita →

Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024 Time: 3pm – 6pm Location: Sakamaki C-308 Professor Keya MaitraProfessor of Philosophy at UNC Asheville If you plan on attending, please RSVP to Professor Sean Smith Please read text if you plan to attend: https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html At least 10 years before Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes Herland–often considered the first feminist utopian … Continue reading Sultana’s Dream: Philosophical Accounts of Decolonial Feminist Consciousness and Social Identity →

Rama Watumull Collaborative Lecture Series Visiting Speaker Monday, October 7, 2024 Location: Philosophy Department Lounge, Sakamaki C-308 Time: 4-6pm

Sep 27 (Friday), 2024 @ 2:30pm (HST) Sakamaki Hall C-308 Philosophy Department ColloquiumK. Whittingslow Prize Presentation In Book One of A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume lays down a few foundational principles for his system. These principles are then invoked and employed consistently in the following two books on the passions and the … Continue reading Hume’s Separability Principle & the Distinction of Reason: A Contradiction? →

Thursday July 25, 202411:30am (HST) Title of Dissertation: Alternative Talk of the Indefinite: A Cross-Cultural Examination of Epistemic and Semantic Problems in the Metaphysics of Consciousness Doctoral Advisory Committee:Arindam Chakrabarti, Dept. of Philosophy (chair)Sean Smith, Dept. of PhilosophyFranklin Perkins, Dept. of PhilosophyGeorge Tsai, Dept. of Philosophy External members:Sai Bhatawadekar, Indo-Pacific Lang. and Lit., UHMAnand Vaidya, … Continue reading PH.D. FINAL ORAL DEFENSE by EMMA IRWIN-HERZOG →

Friday, June 21, 2024, 2pm (HST) via Zoom Title of Dissertation: Exploring Alternative Foundations: Xuanxue Philosophers’ Quest for Social and Political Order Post-Han Dynasty Collapse

MAY 24-31, 2024. Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and the East-West Center Honolulu, Hawai‘i

Thursday, May 2, 2024, 2:30 PM. Ben Kiesewetter is a Professor of Practical Philosophy at Bielefeld University in Germany. In this talk, Dr. Kiesewetter will criticize Scanlon’s contractualist attempt to defend the duty to save the greater number.

EAducation: Letters from Hawaiʻi to Palestine | Friday, April 26, 2024, 2:30 PM | Sakamaki Hall C-308

Thursday, April 25, 2024. Michaela Manson, PhD is an instructor at Simon Fraser University. In this talk, Dr. Manson will argue that accounts of friendship of some early modern women philosophers formulate the ideal of friendship in a way that averts the elitism objection while preserving commitments to virtue and similarity.

Friday, April 19, 2024. The lecture will be followed by a reception celebrating Dr. Chung-ying Cheng’s retirement and over 60 years of service to the University of Hawaiʻi.

The Eliot Deutsch PhD Merit Award Award Presentation and Winner’s Talk – “Forgiveness as a Transformative Project” | Friday, April 12, 2024, 2:30 PM | Sakamaki Hall C-308

Prize Presentation and Winner’s Essay Presentation – “A Partial Case for Pragmatic Encroachment” by Sera Kong – Friday, March 15, 2024, 2:30pm

The Benefit of the Doubt: Skepticism, Epistemic and Moral. March 7-8th.

“The Worlds of Wang Guowei: A Philosophical Case Study of Coloniality” – MARCH 1, 2024 3:30pm HST via Zoom

With Dr. Mateusz Janik, Assistant Professor, Polish Academy of Sciences, Visiting Fulbright Scholar – March 1, 2024, 12:00-14:00

Presented by: Neil Sinhababu, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Singapore. February 23, 2024

Join the philosophy department for a service event tending to the niu (coconut) trees followed by a potluck lunch. Some trees are ready to take home!

Mandarin Robe, Jesuit Body: Epistemology of Accommodation and the Origins of Comparative Philosophy. – Friday, January 26 – Speaker: Mateusz Janik

Arendt is commonly read as relegating death to the private and opposing natality—the political condition par excellence—to mortality. And yet…

Prospects, Problems, and Urgency of Global Intercultural Philosophy Now. December 04-06, 2023 at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Center for Korean Studies, Auditorium

Date: December 1, 2023 “The Concept of Ekstasis in the Modern Japanese Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji”

Join the philosophy department for a service event planting niu (coconut) trees at the uluniu coconut grove. The work day will be followed by a potluck lunch!

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Art Auditorium, Saturday, October 21, 2023 Good morning, and welcome. I am Tamara Albertini, Chair and Professor of Philosophy here at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Philosophy and theater have a long shared history. In fact, philosophy stands at the origin of many disciplines — from astronomy to biology. … Continue reading “Discover Manoa Day” →

Applications of artificial intelligence are ubiquitous in everyday life. Who doesn’t use a smartphone or a smartwatch? However, relatively few of us are actually familiar with how AI systems work. This talk will attempt to close this gap.

K. Whittingslow Prize Presentation for Best Graduate Essay by Husayn Ja’fari Friday, March 24, 20232:30pm HST . Sakamaki C308 Johann Gottfried Herder argues in Sculpture that the sense of touch is essential to the aesthetic appreciation of sculpture, while other senses play only a limited role, if any. While we may grant him the inclusion … Continue reading A Rilkean Challege to Herder on Aesthetic Appreciation of Sculpture →

Leo Strauss’s Theory on Tyranny: Ancient and Modern. This talk deals with the theory on tyranny by Leo Strauss (1899-1973), the German American scholar who was one of the leading political philosophers of the 20th century. His disciples are called the Straussians, and they are influential not only in America but all over the world.

Dr. Yong Li, (PhD, Saint Louis University), Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University, Associate Dean of School of philosophy. Dr. Li works primarily in ethics and political philosophy, and focuses on Confucian ethics and comparative political philosophy.

Jeff Mikulina on the cultural impacts of climate change Dec. 2, 2022, 2:30-4:00pm, POST 127 Click here to view the full flier