The department also regularly plays host to conferences of various sorts.  In 2003 the department hosted the conference A Logical Approach to Philosophy: A Conference in Memory of Graham Solomon, which attracted a slate of well known philosophers from St Andrews, Ohio State and Connecticut, as well as from Toronto, Western Ontario and McMaster and elsewhere. In 2002 we hosted the annual meetings of the Ontario Philosophical Society. In 2001, the department sponsored a conference called The Limits of Warrant, which was attended by representatives from Universities of Alberta, Western Ontario, Aberdeen, California, and Oxford and elsewhere. The University of Waterloo co-sponsored (with Wilfrid Laurier University) the North American Society for Social Philosophy conference in July 2000.  In the past the department has held conferences on a variety of other topics, ranging from the philosophy of  Susan Langer to gay pornography. The department also hosts the annual mini-conference of the Canadian Association for Reductive Philosophy.

Recently we have been able to fund a number of other initiatives which enrich the intellectual climate of the department.  Each summer the department is visited by a distinguished scholar who holds the Humphrey Visiting Chair in Feminist Philosophy for that year.  In May 2003, Christine Overall of Queen’s University was the inaugural holder of the Chair. We have also been able to bring in distinguished speakers to give series of lectures over the space of a week. Visitors have included Susan Haack and Stephen Reid.

For a list of recent conferences, special events, and speakers, see here.