Philosophy Department News- - Spring 2008
Announcement of the Chambers Philosophy Conference Series:
The department is pleased to announce a new series of conferences, The Chambers Philosophy Conference Series. This conference series is made possible by the generous gifts to the department of Robert R. Chambers. The department is also grateful for support for this conference series from the College of Arts and Sciences.
The first conference in this series is the 2nd Annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop . Organized by Al Casullo, this conference is scheduled for October 17-18, 2008. Participants include:
Mike Bergmann, Purdue
Brit Brogaard, Missouri-St.Louis/ANU
Tyler Burge, UCLA, keynote
Juan Comesaña, Wisconsin
Andy Egan, Michigan
Adam Leite, Indiana
Peter Markie, Missouri
Jonathan Weinberg, Indiana
Additional information is available at the Conference Website.
The second conference in this series is Epistemic Modals . It is being organized by Janice Dowell and John Gibbons and is planned for April 16-18, 2010 . Participants include:
Keith DeRose, Yale
Thony Gillies, University of Michigan
Kai von Fintel, MIT
Angelika Kratzer , University of Massachusetts-Amherst
John MacFarlane, UC-Berkeley
Robert Stalnaker, MIT
Eric Swanson, University of Michigan
The third conference in this series is Epistemology . It is being organized by David Henderson and is planned for the 2010-1 academic year.
The fourth conference in this series is Ethics . It is being organized by Joe Mendola, David Sobel, and Mark van Roojen. It is planned for the 2011-2 academic year.
Further conferences in this series are anticipated.
Recent Faculty News:
Selected achievements of faculty from 2006 to the present:
Al Casullo's paper "Defeasible A Priori Justification: A Reply to Thurow," is forthcoming in The Philosophical Quarterly . His "Testimony and A Priori Knowledge" appeared in Episteme in 2007. He presented "Analyzing A Priori Knowledge," as an invited symposium paper at the Pacific Division APA Meeting in 2007 and as the keynote speaker at The University of Iowa 2007 Graduate Philosophy Conference.
Janice Dowell has four forthcoming papers including "Empirical Metaphysics: The Role of Intuitions about Possible Cases in Philosophy," Philosophical Studies , BSPC volume; "A Priori Entailment and Conceptual Analysis: Making Room for Type-C Physicalism," Australasian Journal of Philosophy ; and "Serious Metaphysics and the Vindication of Reductions," Philosophical Studies . She was the contributing editor of a 2006 volume of Philosophical Studies entitled Formulating Physicalism. She has accepted a visiting scholar position for the fall of 2008 at the Arche Research Centre at the University of St. Andrews.
John Gibbons has recently placed papers in The Philosophical Review , Mind , and Nous . The papers are "You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do," Nous (forthcoming); "Mental Causation Without Downward Causation,"Philosophical Review (2006); and "Access Externalism," Mind (2006).
Reina Hayaki's paper "Contingent Objects and the Barcan Formula" was published in Erkenntnis in 2006 and her "The Transience of Possibility" was published in the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy in 2006.
David Henderson has a co-edited Spindel Conference volume and seven papers forthcoming. Among his forthcoming articles are "Testimonial Belief and Epistemic Competence," Nous ; "Monitoring and Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony" (with Sanford Goldberg), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research ; and "Motivated Contextualism" Philosophical Studies. His "The Ins and Outs of Transglobal Reliabilism" (with Terry Horgan), was published in 2007 in Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology, Oxford University Press.
Jennifer McKitrick will be presenting a paper at the conference Powers: Their Grounding and Their Realization to be held at Oxford University in 2008. Her fellow presenters are Kit Fine, John Heil, Jaegwon Kim, Johnathan Lowe, Stephen Mumford, Sidney Shoemaker, and Ernest Sosa. Her "Gender Identity Disorder," was published in 2007 in Establishing Medical Reality: Essays in the Metaphysics and Epistemology of Biomedical Science , Springer, which she co-edited. Her "Liberty, Gender, and the Family," was published in 2007 in Liberty and Justice , Hoover University Press.
Joe Mendola's book Anti-Externalism is forthcoming from Oxford. His "Knowledge and Evidence" was published in 2007 by The Journal of Philosophy . Joe's "old" book, Goodness and Justice, was published by Cambridge in 2006.
Charles Sayward 2007 paper "Quine and his Critics on Truth-Functionality and Extensionality" was published in Logic and Logical Philosophy . His three publications in 2006 were: 1) "What is the Logic of Propositional Identity?" Logic and Logical Philosophy ; 2) Arithmetic and Ontology: A Non-realist Philosophy of Arithmetic, volume 90 of the Monographs-in-Debate subseries of Poznan Studies in Science and Humanities . Co-authored by Philip Hugly; and 3) "What Truth is there in Psychological Egoism?" Facta Philosophica .
David Sobel has accepted visiting fellowships for the 2008-9 academic year at All Souls College, Oxford University, and at the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs, The University of St. Andrews. He recently published "The Impotence of the Demandingness Objection," The Philosophers' Imprint , 2007 and "Practical Reasons and Mistakes of Practical Rationality," Moral Psychology , edited by Sergio Tenenbaum, 2007. His co-edited volume, Reasons for Action, is forthcoming from Cambridge.
Mark van Roojen's "Knowing Enough to Disagree: A New Response to the Moral Twin Earth Argument," appeared in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.) Oxford Studies In Metaethics , Volume 1 (Oxford University Press, 2006). He presented a paper on rational amoralism at the Wyoming Metaethics Mini-Conference, University of Wyoming, in 2007. He presented comments on Patricia Marino's "Why Unification? ," at the American Philosophical Association Central Division meetings in 2007. He also presented comments at a Symposium on Kevin Brosnan's "The Dissolution of a Dilemma: Why Darwinian Considerations Don't Confront Moral Realism with Hard Choices," at the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meetings in 2007.
Recent Graduate Student News:
The department recently calculated its placement record over the past 26 years. The results were quite encouraging. We found that 80 percent of our Ph.D. graduates during this period have stable or somewhat stable employment in academia. Details here.
Several of our graduate students have recently had success in getting their papers accepted at conferences and/or journals.
Patrick Arens will be presenting "Boyd, Homeostatic Property Clusters, and
Psychological Kinds" at the 2008 Annual Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference.
Clifford Hill will be presenting "What a Computer Can't Compute, What a Believer Can't Believe" at the 2008 annual New Mexico-West Texas Philosophical Society. This paper is now forthcoming in Southwest Philosophical Studies .
Errol Lord's "On Maximal Rationality" was accepted at (1) the 2008 USC/UCLA Graduate Conference, (2) the 2008 Pitt/Carnegie Mellon Graduate Conference, (3) and the 2008 Society of Student Philosophers' Central APA Meeting. His "Belief, Evidence, and Practical Reasons" was accepted at the 2008 Society of Student Philosophers' Annual Meeting.
Timothy Loughlin presented a paper, "Contradiction in Cohen's Contextualism," at the 2007 University of Calgary Philosophy Graduate Student Conference.
Leo Iacono's article, "Beyond Millianism," is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies . His "Relevant Alternatives and the Subject's Context," will soon appear in The Reasoner. He will be presenting a colloquium paper, "Warranted Assertability Maneuvers and the Rules of Assertion," at the 2008 APA, Central Division.
Christopher McCammon presented "'Come Let Us Reason Together'- Public Reason
and the Ethics of Citizenship" at the Southern Political Science Association meetings in New Orleans in 2008.
Speaker News
We have an exciting lineup of speakers coming to Lincoln this Spring. Speakers for the Spring, 2008 include:
Mark Schroeder, January 18, 2008
Terry Horgan, February 8, 2008
David Copp, April 11, 2008
Kit Fine, April 25, 2008
