Keynote Speaker

What is a Cocktail? (Wrong Answers Only)  

What makes a cocktail a cocktail, rather than some other sort of beverage? That is, why is the noble Martini a perfectly good example of a cocktail when a glass of water isn’t? In this talk I subject the craft of mixology to the age old philosophical practice of conceptual analysis, in an effort to make some headway on this question. But my aim isn’t (yet) to deliver a final answer. Here I engage in the negative project of clearing away various historical suggestions by way of counterexample (and, all going to plan, counter-demonstration) as I try to shake things up a little and discover the boundaries of the concept cocktail.