Date/Time
08/10/2026 (Thursday)
8.00 - 9.30 pm
Location
The Adelaide
Anthony Kenny, one of Britain’s most distinguished philosophers over the last fifty years, died in August 2026 at the age of 95. You can read Jane O’Grady’s Obituary for Anthony Kenny here: Sir Anthony Kenny obituary
At tonight’s event we shall listen to a talk that Kenny gave at Oxford in 2015 on “Humanism v Anthropomorphism” in which he argues that anthropomorphism – which he defines as applying to non-humans predicates that are appropriate only to human beings – is misleading and even dangerous, illustrating his case with examples of what he calls anthropomorphic thinking in the fields of biology, zoology, technology, sociology/politics, and theology.
Here is the link to the talk: Anthony Kenny – Humanism vs Anthropomorphism. It lasts seventy-seven minutes but we shall play only the fifty minutes of his talk (omitting introductions and questions), after which we shall discuss what we think of it, including what he says about anthropomorphizing AI.