This event has now finished.
  • Date and time: Monday 27 November 2023, 6.15pm to 7.45pm
  • Location: In-person only
    Room BS/104, The Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building, Campus West, University of York (Map)
  • Audience: Open to alumni, staff, students, the public
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

Royal Institute of Philosophy Lecture

This talk will be about Nothing. It is not the case that there will be no thing that Suki will be talking about, nevertheless she will indeed talk about the absence of referents as well as reference to absence. Nothing is said to have many extraordinary properties, but in predicating anything of Nothing we contradict its nothingyness. In trying to avoid such misleading descriptions, Nothing could be described as indescribable, but since that is a description in itself, then perhaps Nothing is inescapably contradictory. Since Nothing (and contradictions) quickly explodes into infinity, and having only restricted finite time, this talk covers some introductory thoughts on material from a variety of disciplines and traditions, including the empty set, the vacuum, zero, emptiness, nonexistents, and holes, from which Suki hopes you will get something (and maybe even Everything) from Nothing.

About the speaker

Dr Suki Finn is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, and previously a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Southampton. She completed her PhD at the University of York and has held visiting fellowships at the University of Oslo, University of Vienna, Australian National University, New York University, and City University of New York Graduate Center. Her areas of research span the philosophy of logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science, feminism, and epistemology, though her most recent work focuses on gender and pregnancy. She has published a number of articles on these topics in Synthese, Bioethics, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, European Journal of the Philosophy of Science, Australasian Journal of Logic, Philosophia, and more. She is the author of What’s in a Doughnut Hole? And other philosophical food for thought (Icon, 2024) and editor of Women of Ideas (Oxford University Press, 2021). Dr Finn is a University and College Union representative, and is on the Executive Committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK and the Council for the Royal Institute of Philosophy. For more information, see: www.sukifinn.com