This seminar is hosted by the Institute for Science and Ethics

Abstract: Since the terrorist attacks by Islamic militants upon the United States (and Great Britain) in the early 2000s, the drive to prevent further such attacks has produced a host of anti-terrorist governmental measures. These have included new laws and amendments to old ones, regulations concerning immigration and border control, the resort to torture and “enhanced interrogation”, wars and military strikes, diplomatic manoeuvres, and a great deal of political exhortation. All these raise both conceptual and ethical issues that have serious implications for practical politics, and will be discussed in this seminar.

Speaker: Professor Tony Coady, Professorial Fellow, Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, University of Melbourne

Biography: Tony Coady is one of Australia's best-known philosophers. He has an outstanding international reputation for his writings on epistemology and on political violence and political ethics. Coady's best known work, Testimony: a Philosophical Study (OUP, 1992), relates to the epistemological problems posed by testimony. In addition to his academic work, he is a regular contributor to public debate on topics having to do with ethical and philosophical dimensions of current affairs. A Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, he has served as the founding director of the Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues and the deputy director of the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and head of its University of Melbourne division. In 2005, he gave the Uehiro Lectures on practical ethics at Oxford University which were subsequently published in 2008 by Oxford University Press under the title Messy Morality: the Challenge of Politics. His most recent publication is Morality and Political Violence (CUP, 2008).