PhD researcher, Paul Taylor, chairs session at Theistic Ethics Workshop, Wake Forest University, North Carolina
Paul Taylor is a 3rd year PhD researcher (part-time). His thesis, supervised by Dr Daniel Hill and Dr Stephen McLeod, is on the Euthyphro Dilemma and is tentatively titled ‘All Theists should be Divine-Command Theorists’. Here he tells us about his recent trip to the US.
“I was delighted to take part in the Seventh Theistic Ethics Workshop in September, hosted by Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Having inquired about attendance after becoming aware of the event via the Liverpool List, I was kindly invited by Christian B Miller, Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest, to chair a session during the event.
The three-day event took place in Wake Forest’s beautiful Graylyn campus near Winston-Salem. It consisted of nine talks in total spanning a broad array of topics under the umbrella of theistic ethics; including ‘Metaethical Constructivism and Jewish Theology’, ‘Duplicity or Discernment? Code Switching in the Christian Life’ and ‘Forgive, Because You Were Forgiven: Lessons from the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant.’ Whilst only perhaps two or three were immediately relevant to my own research, the broadness of the workshop was arguably one of its strengths – the variation providing interesting insight into topic areas that I would perhaps not otherwise consider.
Aside from the presentations themselves, I was able to meet and get to know several Philosophy professors and postgraduate students from around the world. We discussed our research and our broader experiences in academia, and I got some invaluable insight from the more experienced professors who had been working in the world of academic Philosophy for 20+ years.”