Annual Lecture
Annual Lecture 2011
The second annual lecture was given by Professor Colin Blakemore, an eminent neuro-scientist, on 20 October 2011. The title of the lecture was What is Special About the Human Brain? Download the slides from his lecture (PDF).
Annual Lecture 2010
The First Annual St John's College Research Centre Lecture was given by the distinguished philosopher, Professor Onora O'Neill on 28 October 2010 in St John's College. The title of the lecture was: 'Toleration, Self-Expression and Communication'.
Professor O'Neill would be pleased to receive comments on the text as it remains a work in progress - you can read the abstract below or download the full lecture.
Abstract
Does toleration demand more than indifference to what others do and say? If so, tolerating what they say may be quite easy: we can simply ignore it.
This minimal view of what it takes to tolerate what others say is widely shared today, and makes sense if we think of freedom of speech as no more than freedom of expression. Why should it be hard to tolerate others' self-expression? But if we think of others' speech as communication, we must see it as comprising not merely speech content, but speech acts. Most speech acts will be directed to some audience and will aim to communicate with and to affect that audience, and perhaps others. On this view toleration of others' speech is often hard, and may not always be a desirable, let alone required.
