The purpose of the conference is to bring together researchers from aesthetics and metaethics—especially moral epistemology—to discuss the nature of moral and aesthetic testimony. It has been observed that, while testimony is an important and perfectly good source of justification and knowledge in most domains, there is something odd about basing one’s moral and aesthetic beliefs (purely) on the testimony of others. For example, while I can know that there’s an ATM around the corner purely on the basis of your testimony, and basing my belief on this testimony seems totally unproblematic (assuming I don’t have reason to think you’re lying, unreliable, etc.), basing my belief that eating meat is morally wrong, or that the new painting in the gallery is beautiful wholly on your testimony is problematic in some way. This conference will explore questions such as, ‘What, if anything, is problematic about this?’, ‘What does this mean for the possibility of moral and aesthetic experts?’, and ‘Are there relevant asymmetries between the moral and aesthetic cases?’.

Confirmed speakers are: Alison Hills (Oxford) Julia Driver (Washington) Louise Hanson (Cambridge) Errol Lord (Pennsylvania) Jon Robson (Nottingham) Aaron Meskin (Leeds)

Please let us know if you would like to come by emailing either Justin Snedegar (js280@st-andrews.ac.uk) or Lisa Jones(lj14@st-andrews.ac.uk)

This conference is open to all philosophers in Scotland and beyond and is made possible by the generous support of the Scots Philosophical Association.