Anatomy of lying explored in free public lecture

What's Wrong with Lying? That's the question to be explored in a free public lecture at The University of Queensland on Thursday, July 6.

Chair of the Philosophy Department at Harvard University Professor Christine Korsgaard will explore the topic at Steele Building Lecture Theatre 206, St Lucia, from 8pm to 9.30pm.

The lecture, which is sponsored by the Australasian Association of Philosophy 2000 Conference and the University's Faculty of Arts, will be introduced by State Minister for Education Dean Wells MLA.

Professor Korsgaard will compare three philosophical answers to the question: What's wrong with lying?

The Moral Intuitionist believes that lying is wrong just because it is lying; the Moral Consequentialist believes that lying is wrong because it does more harm than good; and the Kantian believes that lying is wrong because it violates the autonomy of the person to whom one lies.

Professor Korsgaard will explain why she believes the Consequentialist and Kantian accounts are often confused with one another, and why the Kantian account is superior.

Professor Korsgaard is Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Illinois and her PhD from Harvard. She taught at Yale, the University of California, and the University of Chicago before taking up her present position at Harvard.

Her primary academic interests are in moral philosophy and its history; in the relation of issues in moral philosophy to issues in metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and the theory of personal identity; in the theory of personal relationships; and in normativity in general.

She has two recently published books: Creating the Kingdom of Ends is a collection of her previously published essays expounding Kant's moral philosophy and comparing Kant's ideas to
those of Aristotle, Hume, Sidgwick, Moore, Nagel, Williams, and Parfit. The Sources of Normativity, an exploration of modern views about the basis of obligation, is an expanded version of her 1992 Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

Media: Further information, Dr Julian Lamont, UQ Philosophy Department, telephone 07 3365 6319 or Jan King at UQ Communications, telephone 0413 601 248.