Philosophy Colloquium Series

The Philosophy Department’s Colloquia Series takes place most Mondays of each academic quarter from 2-4pm in the Living and Learning Neighborhood in the Arts & Humanities Building 1, 0426. Snacks will be served.

To review past departmental colloquium please see our colloquium archive.

Schedule 2026-27

Fall 2026

November 9
Nick Riggle, University of San Diego

The Hype is Real
Work on hype has recently exploded across academic disciplines, largely inspired by hype-related distortions in science, technology, and medicine. This literature tends to treat hype as a social pathology rooted in viral exaggerations about value. But this ‘exaggeration’ view cannot account for the fact that, sometimes, the hype is real: something can be genuinely worthy of the enthusiasm hype generates. I argue that hype is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole but an overlooked type of social act—a form of “dramatic valuing.” Hype encourages collective valuing by emphatically highlighting sources of final value while calling for its own repetition. It is a mechanism through which people organize around and celebrate value. Its appropriateness in any given activity or practice therefore depends on the constitutive values of the activities or practices in which it operates, and hype can consequently pose different risks and benefits in aesthetic, ethical, scientific, and other practices. This account of hype has a peculiar precedent in Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment. I conclude by speculating that, under the distinctive cultural conditions of Kant’s time, his theory of aesthetic judgment responded to a problem that hype can solve: how to generate collective valuing in the absence of cultural authority. But as a result, Kant mistakenly infuses his theory of aesthetic judgment with the normative features of hype. 

November 23
Edouard Machery, University of Pittsburgh

Winter 2027

February 1
Karolina Hubner, UCLA

March 1
Zoe Drayson, UC Davis

Spring 2027