LSE Philosophy

02/10/2026

Join our upcoming Public Lecture with 2026 Winner of the Coller Dolittle Prize Julie Elie!

The lecture will dive into cutting‑edge developments in understanding animal cognition, emotion and welfare, and considering their implications for science, ethics and policy.

🗓️ 7 October 2026, 6.30-8pm
📍 LSE Campus and online

🎟️ Registration:

6:30pm Wed 7 Oct | Dr Julie Elie, Dr Irene Pepperberg, Professor Yossi Yovel | Ticket Required | Free public event at LSE

21/09/2026

🏆 We are delighted to share that the LSE Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method has been ranked number 1 in the UK for by the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2027. Our department has been ranked top for Philosophy for the third year running.

👏 The London School of Economics and Political Science - LSE has been named Russell Group University of the Year and ranked as the top university in London.

💻 To the ranking: https://www.thetimes.com/uk-university-rankings/league-table

18/09/2026

You can negotiate hard, protect your position, and still act with integrity. But most people in business have never been told how. Until now!

📚 We are delighted to share the release of Charles Sherwood's new book "A Fair Bargain: The Ethics of Negotiation" with LSE Press!

💻 You can download a FREE copy of the book at: https://lnkd.in/eQzVSXHJ

🎧 graduate and Phlexible Philosophy editor Hamza King sat down with Charles for his podcast to discuss his new book. You can find the episode at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeC4QPQohug

Is lying in a business negotiation ever justified? Should you discl...

17/09/2026

📚We are delighted to share the release of Charles Sherwood's new book 'A Fair Bargain - The Ethics of Negotiation' with LSE Press. The book is available to download for free online!

💻 Download your free copy at: https://press.lse.ac.uk/books/m/10.31389/lsepress.afb

🤔 When negotiating, is it acceptable to lie? What about lying just a bit? Don’t we at least have a right to lie about the highest price we are prepared to pay, or the lowest we are prepared to accept? And in negotiations, to what extent are we obliged to consider the outcome for the ‘other side’? Is it acceptable to exploit another’s extreme vulnerability to ‘drive a hard bargain’?

🤝 These are all questions we face regularly in both our careers and our personal lives, and yet there is little discussion of them in ethical terms: what is right, fair, morally acceptable. Drawing on 30 years of experience in business negotiation, Charles N.C. Sherwood sets out to answer these questions.

The London School of Economics and Political Science - LSE

14/09/2026

🏆 We are pleased to announce the 2026 Lakatos Award winner John Norton, who receives the award for his books The Material Theory of Induction (University of Calgary Press) and The Large-Scale Structure of Inductive Inference (University of Calgary Press). Congratulations!

More: https://www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/news/john-norton-wins-the-2026-lakatos-award

08/09/2026

👏 Exciting news! The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience is hosting an interdisciplinary conference to bring together animal sentience researchers.

👉 Share your work on the scientific, philosophical, ethical, policy-relevant and legal aspects of animal sentience.

⏳Abstract submission deadline: 11 December 2026
📆 Conference dates: 17–18 May 2027
📍 Senate House, University of London

🔗 More:https://www.lse.ac.uk/asset-library/Call-for-abstracts.pdf

27/08/2026

🤔Is "Woke" Good, Actually?

PhD student Rafael Ruiz discusses whether being "Woke" is a good thing on the Dissenter podcast:

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/th...

26/08/2026

📣 Join the community!

👉 We are recruiting a Student Experience and Programme Engagement Officer!

This is an exciting opportunity to play a central role in enhancing the student experience across our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Working closely with Programme Managers, academic colleagues, student representatives, alumni and professional services teams, you will support initiatives that strengthen student belonging, engagement, community and student voice throughout the student journey.

⏰ Application deadline: 21 September 2026.

💻 Please apply via this link: https://jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/5978/0/473432/15539/student-experience-and-programme-engagement-officer

25/08/2026

Professor Bryan Roberts has written a new paper titled "A New Origin for Entropy: Jauch’s Conservation Law and the Geometry of Thermodynamics" which he presented at the Foundations of Physics conference this summer.

A central question for the foundations of thermodynamics is which conceptual structures underpin the existence of entropy and temperature. Jauch claimed that entropy and temperature could be derived from a novel conservation law. This paper reconstructs the physics and mathematics of Jauch's claim and finds that his original proof is not valid. Remarkably, his theorem is still true. The alternative proof provided here uses geometric ideas from modern gauge theory, revealing a deep geometric structure in the heart of thermodynamics. This result also helps to settle an old debate by showing that entropy and temperature can be defined in a new, conceptually clear way without appeal to an irreversible assumption like the second law.

Bryan Robert's work on thermodynamics has been picked up by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for NewScientist.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2533428-mathematics-of-thermodynamics-is-being-rewritten-after-200-years/

The laws of physics that concern heat and work could gain a firmer mathematical footing thanks to “gauge theory”, which already helps us understand quantum fields

19/08/2026

🧐 Are Philosophers Absurd?

Associate Professor and CPNSS Director Lewis Ross has published his new paper "Are Philosophers Absurd? Progress, Testimony and Division of Labour" in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. In his paper, he discusses the current scale and volume of Philosophy debates and how we can make sense of it.

https://academic.oup.com/aristotelian/article/126/2/129/8721275?

Abstract. Philosophy now resembles, in many ways, a mature scientific discipline. There is extensive division of increasingly specialised cognitive labour.