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Tuesday 6th May - 06:00 PM BST

Headline Debate: The Tyranny of Reason

We all want to be reasonable and be seen to be reasonable. Yet reason has been employed to defend everything from white supremacy to the divine right of kings and tyrants. And critics claim it is still used as a rhetorical front for the powerful. So it’s unclear how to use rationality that avoids cloaking interests and prejudices in a veil of respectability. Studies show we use reason to look for evidence to confirm beliefs twice as often as to challenge them. Moreover, experiments show that mathematicians and scientists, those at the forefront of reason, are often just as irrational as everyone else about many beliefs.

Should we conclude that rationality is a marketing exercise to appear convincing? Should we place more emphasis on wisdom, emotion and intuition? Or is reason a key tool in the fight against prejudice and which we abandon at great risk to ourselves and our culture?

Leading Stoic philosopher and defender of rationality Massimo Pigliucci, radical scholar and Enlightenment critic Tommy Curry, and distinguished philosopher Rebecca Roache go head to head on whether reason can ever be separated from prejudice.

Timetable:

17:20 BST - Opening Interview: Stoicism and Beyond The Lounge

18:00 BST - Headline Debate: The Tyranny of Reason arena

19:20 BST - Solo Talk: The Ilusion of Dualism arena

19:30 BST - Sadie Horler stage

Tommy J. Curry

Groundbreaking scholar

Tommy J. Curry is a Professor of Philosophy and holds the Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy and Black Male Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, which won the 2018 American Book Award.  Dr. Curry’s research has been recognized by Diverse as placing him among the Top 15 Emerging Scholars in the United States in 2018, and his public intellectual work earned him the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy’s Alain Locke Award in 2017.

Massimo Pigliucci

Massimo Pigliucci is a renowned philosopher and professor at the City College of New York. He is author of several books including How to be a Stoic and Beyond Stoicism. A former co-host of the Rationally Speaking Podcast and a self-proclaimed sceptic, Pigliucci is a champion of Enlightenment notions of reason and rationality.

Rebecca Roache

Distinguished philosopher

Rebecca Roache is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her book, For F*ck’s Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude & Fun, was published internationally by Oxford University Press in 2023. She is currently working on her next book, Spit It Out: How and Why We Speak In Code, also for Oxford University Press.