Philosophy
Graduate Student Colloquia
Graduate Student Colloquia Fall 2009
Fall Semester , 2009
Hello all,
I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our new students and to welcome back all of our returning students. I trust that you all had a nice summer break. Our meetings are held on Fridays from 4:00 to 5:45 pm in Oldfather 1007. The colloquia provide students the opportunity to present some of their current research and receive comments from their peers. It is an invaluable experience, because it allows the presenter to hone their skills for professional conferences and in-class presentations. Furthermore, this is a valuable opportunity for the audience to expand and develop their interests and sharpen their critical skills. I would like to officially extend an invitation to all majors and minors who are interested. If you have any questions about the colloquia series, please contact me at cullen.gatten@gmail.com.
November 6, 2009, David Chavez "Smith's Argument for the Humean Theory of Motivation Assessed." Below is the abstract:
In this paper I examine one argument put forward by Michael Smith (1997) for the Humean Theory of motivation. For this particular argument to work, Smith needs to help himself to intuitively clear cases of weakness of will in order to rule out the existence of besires (dual-direction of fit mental states). I puzzle through some of Smith's commitments regarding the modal connection between desire and the disposition to act. I attempt to show that these commitments make it the case that, by his own lights, Smith's argument from weakness of will against the existence of besires does not work. That is, the same tools that Smith should use to establish a tight modal connection between desire and the disposition to act can be used to establish a similarly tight connection between normative judgment and the disposition to act. In the overall dialectic between the Humean and the Anti-Humean, this result does not leave us at a standstill. Rather, it reveals just what the Anti-Humean wants to show, namely that normative judgement can be sufficient for motivation. Hence, desire is not necessary for motivation. So HTM is false.
October 23, 2009, Cullen Gatten "How to Solve the Too Many Reasons Problem for Humean Accounts of Reasons for Action" Here's the abstract:
According to Humean accounts of reasons for action, one has a reason to perform an action if and only if it would satisfy or promote a desire she currently has. However, a consequence of being committed to this account of reasons for action is that it generates reasons for an agent to do certain actions we intuitively take there to be no reasons to perform, thus generating too many reasons. This is due in part to the fact that any action that would satisfy or promote any of our desires we have at least a wimpy reason to perform it. There are two proposed ways of ways of handling this objection. The first is to reduce the set of reason-giving desires to those that would survive some form of idealization. A second is to bite the bullet and admit that there really are too many reasons, but show that when we claim that one has no reason to perform an action, we are largely mistaken in doing so based on the unreliability of our intuitions in which we assert that one has no reason to perform an action. This proposal also requires an alternate explanation as to what we are conveying when we assert that one has no reason to act. I argue that both proposals fail to properly handle the too many reasons problem. The first proposal fails because, upon closer examination, it fails to speak to the question of the too many reasons problem. The second proposal fails to properly show that we are largely mistaken in making claims that there is no reason to perform an action. I then provide a new solution. This new proposal rules out certain reasons based on the implicit content of the agent's desires, which roughly revolves around the claim that the content of one's desires is thicker than we often think. Support for this move comes from certain natural intuitions about content individuation, and an old, familiar conception of desires.October 16, 2009, Cameron Nelson will be presenting his paper, 'Experimenting with Fuzziness', here's the abstract:
In their paper, 'Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions', Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich offer an enthnology of epistemic intuitions. Their data, they claim, poses worries for epistemologists engaged in intuition driven romanticism. While I don't disagree with their findings that cultural and socio-economic factors influence epistemic intuitions, I believe their experiment contains an artifact. I argue that if the psycho-linguistic literature is correct then we have good empirically based reason to suspect that the categories and concepts vital to epistemology (such as knowledge and belief) exhibit fuzzy boundaries. That knowledge and belief are fuzzy concepts, as I see it, doesn't conflict with the Weinberg et al project. Rather, it compounds their worries against the role of intuitions in standard analytic epistemology. I conclude with my preliminary sketch of how to fix the Weinberg et al artifact.
October 9, 2009, Patrick Arens will present his paper, 'Sensory Deformity, Teleology, and Content'. Here's the abstract:
In his Anti-Externalism, Joseph Mendola argues that the teleological approach to content, and, in particular, its application to sensory content is mistaken. Mendola’s treatment of the teleological approach to content, or as Mendola calls it in his book ‘Etiological Teleosemantics’ (or ‘ET,’ for short), consists in arguing that no form of ET can adequately account for sensory deformity; ET is committed to the claim that sensory deformity will not change sensory content in spite of the fact that such deformities do intuitively change such content.
My goal in this project is to show that one way of utilizing teleological facts can have the appropriate results; that is, one way of developing ET can allow sensory deformity to affect content in the way our intuitions indicate. I argue that Mendola’s mistake is a product of his not appreciating the ETers semantic options; they are not committed to the claim that proper states of functioning are the only viable content-fixing teleological facts. They can claim, as I urge, that the functions of the actual behaviors initiated by consumers can fix sensory content.
October 2, 2009, Bill Bauer will present his paper, "Four Theories of Pure Dispositions", you'll find the abstract.
Abstract: The Pure Dispositions Thesis maintains that some dispositional properties require no causal basis either in other dispositions or categorical properties. This thesis faces the Problem of Being: Without a causal basis, what ontologically grounds the continued existence of a pure disposition when it is not manifesting? This paper presents the Problem of Being, establishes criteria and assumptions for evaluating it, and examines four theories of the being of pure dispositions: (i) that pure dispositions are grounded globally in all properties; (ii) that pure dispositions are grounded in the world as a whole prior to the world's parts; (iii) that pure dispositions are grounded by their object-bearers; and (iv) that pure dispositions are self-grounded properties. The paper advances reasons against (i), (ii), and (iii), argues that (iv) is the most viable, and develops an explanation of how a pure disposition grounds itself via its own power.
September 25, 2009 Steven Swartzer will present his paper, "Humeanism and Amoralism" Here's the abstract:
According to the Humean Theory of Motivation (hereafter 'HTM'), agents cannot be motivated to act by beliefs alone, but must have a distinct desire. Amoralists are sometimes thought to pose a special problem for those who deny this theory: if moral beliefs are not necessarily connected to motivation, then something extra is needed to pick up the slack and a complete explanation of an agent's behavior must appeal to this extra element. For, since the presence of moral beliefs does not guarantee that she will be appropriately motivated, explanations citing only those beliefs would be too shallow. I contend that the possibility of amoralism offers no support for HTM. The direct argument from amoralism to HTM rests on questionable premises about desire. Moreover, the reasons for doubting these premises also give us reason to doubt that Humean explanations are any deeper than the supposedly objectionable anti-Humean alternatives.
September 11, 2009 Errol Lord and Adam Thompson will be presenting their paper, 'A Case for Intuition Reductionism: Part One.' Here's the abstract:
This paper is the first part of our defense of intuition reductionism. Intuition reductionism, as we understand it, has both a positive thesis and a negative thesis. The positive thesis holds that the epistemology of thought-experiment intuitions is subsumed under the epistemology of more ubiquitous faculties like the imagination. The negative thesis holds both that there is no special faculty of intuition and that there is no unique psychological state constituting ‘intuitions.’ In this paper, we defend the negative thesis. We do this arguing that anti-reductionists—those who both deny the negative thesis and think that thought-experiment intuitions have evidential value—cannot vindicate the evidential value of intuition. This is because their views fail to meet a key explanatory burden. In short, they attempt to explain the evidential value of intuitions by stipulating that there is some faculty—the faculty of intuition—that has evidential value. The problem is that stipulating that such a faculty exists does little by way of explaining how intuitions have evidential value. The stipulation just moves the explanatory burden. We show that the anti-reductionist’s strategy is a strategy that surfaces in several other debates in philosophy (we focus mostly on dualist and Kantian views in the free will debate). In nearly all of the other debates it is recognized that the stipulation is a dubious dialectical move. We argue that those in the debate about intuitions should see anti-reductionism in the same light. Thus, we conclude that if you think that intuitions have evidential value, then you should be a reductionist.
Past Colloquia:
Graduate Student Colloquia Spring 2009
I would like to welcome our new students and welcome back all of our returning students. As many of you already know, the Philosophy graduate students have a regularly scheduled colloquia series. The colloquia provide students the opportunity to present some of their current research and receive feedback from their peers. This is also a valuable opportunity for the audience to expand and develop their philosophical interests and sharpen their critical skills. Our meetings are held on Fridays from 4:00 to 5:45 in Oldfather 1007. I would like to officially extend an invitation to any philosophy majors and minors who are interested. Contact Steve Swartzer for more information.
May 1, 2009 "Criticizing Radical Simulation Theory" Teresa Bartoletti (the final of this spring)
Abstract: Robert Gordon presents a radical view of simulation theory in the simulation/ theory theory debate. That is, Gordon argues that theory can play no role in the process of simulating others' mental states. In the following paper, I discuss the implications this may have on the social sciences. I then present several cases in an effort to show that the simulations had by the reader cannot be accomplished without some presupposed theory. I then discuss the possible routes Gordon has upon evaluating my case. Though perhaps all-out concession to theory-theory is not the answer, at least in cases relevant to the ones discussed in this paper, simulation theory is incomplete as a model to account for our ability to ascribe mental states to other agents. At the very least, in these cases, and any relevant extensions that can be made, theoretical knowledge seems to be a fundamental component of the simulation.
April 24, 2009 "The Being of Pure Powers" Bill Bauer
Abstract: The Pure Powers Thesis holds that it is possible that a dispositional property may have no causal basis. This paper defends the Pure Powers Thesis from a series of objections: the Powers Regress Argument (Psillos 2006), the Insufficient Causal Basis Argument (Psillos 2006), the Argument from the Identity Thesis (Mumford 1998, Heil 2003), and the Argument from Composition (Heil 2003) which takes issue with purported empirical examples of pure powers (i.e., dispositions of fundamental particles). After critiquing these objections, the key elements of the counter-arguments are used to sketch a positive account of the being of pure powers.
April 17, 2009 "Counterfactuals and Context-Shifting" Andrew Jaeger
Abstract: Counterfactual conditionals enter into not only our ?everyday? speech, but also philosophical argumentation. It has often been argued that the transitive inference is not valid for counterfactual conditionals (e.g., A>B, B>C; therefore, A>C), despite its' intuitive validity in many cases. One worry that philosophers have with it is the many counter-examples that can be given showing that the premises might appear to be true (or assertable), while the consequent appears to come out clearly false (See Stalnaker, A Theory of Conditionals). E.J. Lowe has defended the view that transitivity is a valid inference for counterfactuals (see "Conditionals, Context, and Transitivity"), granted there are no context-shifts (i.e. shifts in similarity measures) between premises. It seems that many of the worries that arise for CF transitivity occur because of the fallacy of equivocation and not because of transitivity itself, and by fixing the context one might avoid such equivocation.
April 10, 2009 "Mickinsey's Problem, Privileged Access, and the A Priori" David Chavez
Broadly speaking the McKinsey Problem is supposed to show that externalism about mental content is incompatible with the Cartesian notion that one has a priori privileged access one?s own thought. And because some version of first-person privileged access seems undeniable, the Problem is therefore generally viewed as a potential reductio on externalism. By now, it has looked like nearly all the plausible lines of resolving the puzzle have been identified and explored, albeit in varying degrees of depth. This paper contends, however, that there is one viable approach to resolving key features of the debate that has remained significantly unexplored. This approach will involve taking a careful look at the epistemic status of knowledge gleaned via introspection on occurrent thought. I argue for at least three results. First, on McKinsey's own construal of privileged access and the a priori, the McKinsey Problem does not go through. Moreover, on other prominent versions of the a priori, the Problem, again, does not go through. Finally, the only reasonable fallback position, according to which the a priori characterization of introspection on occurrent thought is replaced by a characterization of it in terms of "armchair knowledge," fails to produce the reductio on externalism that the advocate of the puzzle had hoped for.
April 3, 2009 "Indeterminacy and the Four-Category Ontology" Justin Moss
Abstract: E.J. Lowe's four-category ontology aims to provide a complete metaphysical foundation for natural science by recognizing (1) two basic ontological distinctions (substantial/non-substantial and universal/particular) which cut across each other to produce four ontological categories, and (2) two basic formal ontological relations (instantiation and characterization) that are asymmetrical and relate the categories to one another. The apparent lack of parsimony in Lowe's ontology is overcome, he thinks, by arguing that his system provides a unified account of causation, dispositions, natural laws, and other relevant issues of interest. I will argue that, contrary to Lowe's claim, his system cannot provide such a unified account because his system provides no ontological foundation for dispositions that involve probabilities and/or indeterminacy. I will appeal to (perhaps) familiar cases from physics, such as the property of a radioactive element being such that it undergoes spontaneous decay. I analyze this sort of event in a few different ways and find that on each reading, the property of being such that the element undergoes spontaneous decay involves two possibilities, one of which causes problem for Lowe's view. Now, according to Lowe, every property-instance (i.e., a trope, or mode) instantiates an attribute or relation (i.e., a universal). I argue that individual spontaneous-decay events cannot satisfactorily instantiate a universal that involves probabilities. If that is correct, then it it is questionable whether universals that involve probabilities can have complete instantiations. If it is true that they cannot have instantiations, then Lowe, being an immanent realist about universals, may be stuck with the unpalatable consequence of having to deny the existence of such universals.
March 13, 2009 "Kant's Comprehensive Liberalism" Christopher McCammon
Abstract: John Rawls believed that Immanuel Kant's political philosophy is an example of what Rawls called a "comprehensive" rather than a "freestanding" liberalism. Unfortunately,his published works do not contain very much explanation or argument for this claim. My goal here is to fill in some of this absent explanation and argument. Though I grant that certain elements of Kant's theory of political right can be interpreted as "freestanding" and thus independent of his systematic theoretical and practical philosophy, I will argue that Kant's account of the "general, united will" as a legislative ideal for republican constitutions does in fact depend on his doctrine of the rational will's autonomous self-legislation?perhaps the central tenet of his broader moral theory - and thus that Rawls' assessment of Kantian liberalism is essentially correct.
February 27, 2009 "Knowledge of Modality" Albert Casullo
February 20, 2009 "Subjectivism and the Conditions of Appropriate Blame" Cullen Gatten
Abstract: The commitments of subjective accounts of reasons for action give rise to a puzzle about the conditions of appropriate moral blame. More specifically, the commitments of subjectivism entails that there are some agents, either actual or possible, that have most reason to do nasty immoral actions. If there are some agents, either actual or possible, that have most reason to do nasty, immoral actions, and we maintain the common assumption that warranted moral blame implies that the agent didn't have most reason to do some action other than the one that they performed, then it seems that blaming agents that have most reason to do nasty, immoral actions is in bad form. Intuitively, it seems like blame or condemnation of an agent's action in these scenarios is in good order. If subjectivism cannot accommodate for conditions of appropriate moral blame in the cases where it's most appropriate, then it seems like this is a major point counting against the view; partly because other theories of practical reasons seem well-positioned to accommodate for conditions of appropriate blame. I will consider two solutions to the puzzle, and show why they both fail. I will then provide a quick sketch of another plausible solution to the puzzle.
February 11, 2009 "Epistemic Entitlement and Undercutting Defeaters." Tim Loughlin
Abstract: Some epistemologists (Bergmann 2005, Burge 2003) have recently defended the thesis that at least some beliefs can be epistemically justified without our believing that the process used to arrive at those beliefs is truth conducive. These authors maintain further that if one has reason to believe that the processes employed are not truth conducive, i.e. if one has an undercutting defeater for one's relevant beliefs, then one's relevant beliefs are not justified. In this paper I argue that (i) although the existence of undercutting defeaters is plausible verging on undeniable, the mechanism by which such defeaters function is in need of explanation, and (ii) that these authors cannot avail themselves of any of the obvious mechanisms.
February 6, 2009 "Being Committed: Subjective Reasons, Propositional Attitudes, and Coherence Requirements." Errol Lord
Abstract: For many participants in the literature on practical reason, means-end requirements are the only uncontroversial requirements of rationality. So, for example, it is supposed to be uncontroversial that if I intend to eat a sandwich and believe that a necessary means to eating the sandwich is paying the cashier, then I ought to intend to pay the cashier. The intuitions supporting this thought are very strong. Despite this, it seems like any general principle supporting the thought must be false. For I might intend to do bad things. For example, instead of wanting a sandwich, I might want to kill my mother. And I might believe that I will kill my mother only if I pay the assassin I've hired to do the job. But surely it's not the case that I ought to intend to pay the assassin! And so we have a problem. One traditional answer has been to make the 'ought' a wide-scope 'ought'--i.e. have it range over the whole conditional instead of just the consequent. The first part of the paper will argue that the wide-scope account is false. I then consider Mark Schroeder's narrow-scope view. Although it can solve many of the main problems with the wide-scope view, I argue in section 3 that it shares a problem with the wide-scope view--viz. The Normativity Problem. The problem has to do with whether the wide-scope or narrow-scope requirements are normative in any robust sense. I argue in section 3 that the wide-scope requirements aren't. Moreover, I argue that more needs to be said in order to show that the narrow-scope requirements are robustly normative. Finally, in section 4 I propose an addition to Schroeder's view that I argue solves The Normativity Problem.
Graduate Student Colloquia Fall 2008
November 7, 2008 "The Basing Relation and Tracking Defeaters." Luke Elwonger
The concept of an epistemic basis for beliefs plays a role in many accounts of justification. In particular many philosophers believe that a belief cannot be justified without some basis. Using this as a guide, I will attempt to develop a probabilistic tracking account of the basing relation which will be acceptable to externalists about knowledge and justification. This account will hopefully also explain and resolve certain conflicts surrounding internalist intuitions about justification such as clairvoyants and evil demon scenarios.
October 24, 2008 "The Norm of Assertion: It Ain't Just About You" Matt Dee
In this paper I begin by surveying the various reasons for thinking that the currently available options for the norm of assertion (Truth, Knowledge, and Justification) are less than satisfactory. After this, I propose an account of my own and run it through what seems to be the standard test for determining whether or not a given account will be allowed to contend with the currently available options, namely lottery assertions and Moorean paradoxes.
October 10, 2008 "A Defense of Simple Subjectivism about Reasons for Action." Tim Loughlin
Subjectivism about reasons for action is the thesis that facts about an agent's set of desires or pro-attitudes, are the truth-makers for propositions about that agent's reasons for action. The simple form of subjectivism maintains that the relevant facts are facts about the actual agent's entire set of desires. This account has been widely regarded as extensionally inadequate: it attributes reasons where there are none and fails to attribute reasons where there are some. In this paper I defend simple subjectivism from this objection by arguing first, that more nuanced forms of subjectivism (e.g. ideal advisor theory) achieve extensional adequacy only insofar as they assert that the agent has a reason to act iff the agent is disposed to be properly affected (e.g. pleased) by so acting; second, that an agent desires to act iff the agent is disposed to be properly affected by so acting; and third, that on this account of desire simple subjectivism is extensionally adequate.
October 3, 2008 "Donkey Sentences: DRT vs. IF" Cliff Hill
When attempting to translate sentences such as,
(1) If Pedro owns a donkey then he beats it.
(2) Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it.
into first-order predicate logic, a problem arises. There appears to be no way to translate such sentences into first-order predicate logic and get the correct truth conditions. There have been two important attempts to solve this problem, Hans Kamp's Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) and Jaakko Hintikka's Independence-Friendly Logic (IF). DRT attempts to solve the problem by introducing "representation boxes" which they claim is more in line with our everyday discourse. IF attempts to solve the problem by recognizing a difference between "priority scope" and "binding scope". As of yet, there has been only one small attempt to compare these two possible solutions (Hintikka, "No Scope for Scope" section 10, (1997)). First, my project is to offer a comparison of these two solutions which goes further than Hintikka's section. Second, if this comparison is successful then, I hope, we will be in a better position to determine which one is the better solution.
September 26, 2008 "A Defense of the Compatibility of Indeterminism with Presentism and Eternalism" Adam Thompson
Recently, Michael C. Rea (2006) argued that presentists face a dilemma. According to Rea, presentists must either accept bivalence and deny indeterminism, or deny bivalence. In this paper, pace Rea, I argue that presentists can accept both bivalence and indeterminism. Indeed, if I am correct, then eternalists can accept indeterminism as well. Thus, whatever eternalism and presentism commits adherents to, alone, neither entails the denial of indeterminist free will. It seems that the compatibility of indeterminism and eternalism simply adds to the already long list of reasons in favor of eternalism.
September 12, 2008 "Criticism, Moral Criticism, and Reasons for Action" Cullen Gatten
Abstract: In this paper, I attempt to do three things. First, I provide an analysis of the general, common sense structure of criticism, and I identify the normative force behind all kinds of criticism. Second, I show that this analysis poses a puzzle for a certain theory of reasons for action that I call Ethical Anti-Rationalism, which maintains that moral reasons are not necessarily reasons for action for all agents. In particular, the puzzle focuses on Ethical Anti-Rationalism's success in capturing the common-sense notion of moral criticism and its underlying normative force. Finally, I gesture at a robust explanation of moral criticism, consistent with the commitments of Ethical Anti-Rationalism, but denies that moral criticism is distinctly different than other kinds of criticism. And, though this cuts against the common-sense notion of moral criticism, I provide some reason to think that the normative explanation behind the common-sense notion of moral criticism has trouble of a different kind. I take this trouble as good reason to explore an alternative analysis.
September 5, 2008 "Two Puzzles about Ought" Errol Lord
Errol has provided a draft of the paper for those who would like to read it ahead of time.
Abstract: This paper investigates the puzzling three-envelope case. I argue that the traditional appeal to subjective and objective 'oughts' is unpromising. This is because two state of the art views of the subjective ought do a poor job explaining our judgments about the case. I then offer an alternative proposal that seems to do the work needed. But there is a second puzzling feature of the case that is only accentuated by my proposal. I argue that this puzzle is solved if we hold that 'ought' is assessor-sensitive.
August 29, 2008 "Dispositions, Desires, and the Humean Theory of Motivation" Steven Swartzer
ABSTRACT: The Humean Theory of Motivation claims that to be motivated to perform some action, an agent must have some suitably related desire. If the Humean Theory is correct, there must be some explanation for why desires are necessary for motivation and motivated action. In other words, there must be something special about desires that allow them to uniquely lead to motivation. I contend that the standard dispositionalist account of desire fails to vindicate the Humean Theory. I argue that properly understood, dispositionalism leaves room for motivation (and motivated behavior) without desires, and is thus unable to supply an explanation for why the Humean Theory should be true.
Graduate Student Colloquia Spring 2008
January 25, 2008 "A Defense of The Factoring Account of the Having Reasons Relation" Errol Lord
Abstract: It's natural to say that when I ought to ?, I have reasons to ?. That is, there are reasons for ?-ing, and moreover, I have some of them. Mark Schroeder calls this view The Factoring Account of the having reasons relation. He thinks The Factoring Account is false. In this paper, I defend The Factoring Account. Not only do I provide intuitive support for the view, but I also defend it against Schroeder's criticisms. Moreover, I show that it helps us understand the requirements of substantive rationality, or what we are rationally required to do when responding to reasons.
February 1, 2008 "Knowledge as Evidence: Gettier Cases and The Closure of Justification" Matt Dee
Abstract:
In their article, "Is Evidence Knowledge?", Juan Comesaña and Holly Kantin argue that Timothy Williamson's claim that evidence is knowledge has two rather unacceptable consequences. More specifically, they claim that since Williamson's view is committed to E=K 1: The proposition that p justifies S in believing that q only if S knows that p, it will not only have the unfortunate result of being incompatible with the existence of Gettier cases, but it will also entail that an eminently plausible closure principle fails. Since it is obvious that Gettier cases exist and that the closure principle in question is true, Comesaña and Kantin take it that these two consequences are enough to show that evidence is not knowledge. In this paper I will argue that Comesaña and Kantin have failed to show that E=K 1 actually has these consequences.
February 15, 2008 "Privileged Access and Indistinguishable Mental Contents" Tim Loughlin
ABSTRACT: John Gibbons (1996) has defended the compatibility of externalism about mental content and privileged access to one's own mental content against Paul Boghossian's (1989) memory argument. I maintain that, although Gibbons' defense is successful against the memory argument, it points the way to a modified argument that is untouched by his defense. In this paper I present the considerations that led up to the memory argument and Gibbons' response, develop my modified argument, consider possible objections to it, and explore its implications for the compatibility of externalism and privileged access.
February 22, 2008 "Responsibly-safe belief" Robert Mallory
Abstract: The aim of this project is to develop a new account of safety, which can avoid problems that afflict both Sosa and Pritchard's accounts. Sosa proposes a further condition on safe belief, namely the 'reliable indication' condition. I argue that safety so-construed entails that most beliefs we acquire on the basis of inductive methods of reasoning cannot constitute knowledge. Pritchard's account, super-safety, provides a replacement for reliable indication. I provide a case to show that this condition is also too strong, i.e. it denies that we have knowledge we typically take ourselves to possess. The replacement condition I propose, namely 'responsibility' or (RC), does not face these problems. I explain that RC is derived from an intuitive epistemic principle, namely RP, and is needed to avoid crediting knowledge in cases like that of the Quasi-Clairvoyant. Moreover, responsibility-safety correctly predicts our intuition concerning the Oboe case, which Vogel adduces against Sosa. Lastly, I consider Murphy's claim that safety entails the denial of the closure principle for knowledge (or CK) and show that this is a mistake.
February 29, 2008 "Boyd, Homeostatic Property Clusters, and Psychological Kinds" Patrick Arens
Abstract: In this paper I will argue against Richard Boyd's claim that his Homeostatic Property Cluster (HPC) account of kinds can be extended to both inter-species and cross-species psychological kinds. Specifically, I will argue that his HPC account, in the end, cannot differentiate one psychological kind from another for either inter-species or cross-species psychological kinds; the way Boyd incorporates functionalism into his view inadvertently blocks him from being able to properly individuate such kinds.
March 7, 2008 "A Defense of Compatibilist Theories of Practical Reasons" Cullen Gatten
Compatibilist theories about practical reasons (CPR) maintain that there are two different kinds of reasons: there are reasons that explain an agent's action motivating reasons) and there are reasons that justify the action an agent carried out (normative reasons). There are two problems for CPR. First, advocates of CPR have not provided a plausible explanation of what these two kinds of reasons have to do with each other (Wiland 2001). Second, CPR violates the explanation constraint, a minimal criterion on a plausible theory of practical reason, because it allows reasons that cannot explain actions at all (Wiland, 2001, Dancy 1995, Dancy 2001). But, as I will argue, the second objection relies on an explanation constraint that restricts too much, and, in one sense, CPR can accommodate for this minimal criterion on practical reasons. Further, I will offer a rough sketch that might suitably explain the relationship between motivating and normative reasons, if developed.
March 14, 2008 "Depression, Amoralism, and Humean Externalism" Steven Swartzer
ABSTRACT: A popular account of moral motivation is committed to Motivational Externalism and the Humean Theory of Motivation. I will argue that this position is unstable. The strongest independent reasons to accept Motivational Externalism can also be used to undermine Humeanism. I draw on and develop the classical case-based arguments for externalism, based on serious depression and amoralism. These cases undermine internalism by driving a wedge between moral judgments and motivation. I then argue that we can construct variants of these cases that similarly undermine the Humean theory by driving a wedge between the agent's desires and her motivation.
April 18, 2008 "Bonjour and the Demands of Skepticism." Robert Mallory
Abstract: On Bonjour's favored account, explanatory considerations underwrite perceptual justification. Commonsense tells us that our perceptual experiences are due to the existence of an external world. Perceptual justification, then, depends on the fact that the commonsense hypothesis is superior to its skeptical competitors, and Bonjour requires that the believer grasp this fact, as it were. Thomas Kelly argues that Bonjour invites the charge of skepticism on the basis that he requires too much of the ordinary believer. Moreover, Kelly claims that it is unclear why we should take such a believer to be adequately justified even if the believer were to meet these requirements. I agree with Kelly that Bonjour invites the charge of skepticism, but I argue that he does so for a different reason, namely that Bonjour does not take seriously the demands of skepticism. It is my aim to show (1) how Bonjour might avoid Kelly's worries and (2) even if this can be done, Bonjour lacks the theoretical tools necessary to give a satisfactory response to a weaker skeptical thesis.
Graduate Student Colloquia Fall 2007
Meets: Fridays 4pm - 5:45pm in Oldfather 1007, unless otherwise noted.
Contact Steve Swartzer for more information.
September 7, 2007 "Can an Ideal Advisor Save Ecumenical Expressivism?" Bill Bauer
ABSTRACT: Ridge's Ecumenical Expressivism maintains that a speaker approves of all and only actions insofar as her ideal advisor so approves. For any given moral utterance, the speaker expresses such an attitude plus a belief that such an ideal advisor would approve of the action. Because of these features, Ridge thinks his view avoids the Frege-Geach problem. However, I will argue that this is not the case. First, I explain van Roojen's dilemma for sophisticated expressivist theories. Then I show why this dilemma applies to Ecumenical Expressivism as well. However, a possible modification to the ideal advisor component of Ridge's view may allow it to escape van Roojen?s dilemma. But provided that the modification works, it moves Ridge's view uncomfortably close to cognitivism, leaving it subject to a new dilemma.
September 14, 2007 "Contradiction in Cohen's Contextualism". Tim Loughlin
ABSTRACT: Stewart Cohen defends a fairly convincing form of contextualism about knowledge that he claims is supported by his Airport case. In this paper I will argue that Cohen's form of contextualism and a few innocent assumptions straight-forwardly entail a contradiction in cases like the Airport case. I will also consider what implications this conclusion has for other forms of contextualism.
September 21, 2007 "An Account of Non-Autonomous Levels" Patrick Arens
ABSTRACT: The goal of this project is to develop a view concerning the nature of the properties of the special sciences that mixes two independently plausible theoretical ideas. The first theoretical idea is that of realism about properties and higher-order properties; the second theoretical idea is the physical causal intuition that if physicalism is true, then the properties of physics are the only causally relevant properties. First, I will offer a prima facie plausible way of combining the above-mentioned theoretical ideas. Then, I will suggest some ways to defend the view against objections. The resultant view will take the properties of the special sciences to be irreducible, non-autonomous, and non-epiphenomenal.
September 28, 2007 "Principled Particularism and the Rationality of Regret" Cullen Gatten
ABSTRACT: Jonathan Dancy argues that moral theories that reject the use of contributory reasons cannot handle the rationality of regret because, without contributory reasons, one cannot point to anything that could be the object of an agent?s regret. This argument is intended to not only motivate Dancy?s own view of contributory reasons, but to also motivate his own brand of Particularism. This paper provides a sketch of a counterfactual analysis of regret, which is compatible with moral theories that reject the use of contributory reasons.
October 5, 2007 There will not be a Graduate Student Colloquium this Friday (10/05). Several students will be making the trip to Des Moines this weekend for the CSPA, and it would be unreasonable to force someone to present when so many will be absent.
October 19, 2007 "Can I believe p and not p? : Epistemology, Psychology, and Contradictory Beliefs" Cliff Hill
ABSTRACT: There is a debate within Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology concerning the notion of Contradictory Beliefs. Several well respected philosophers going as far back as Aristotle to more recent examples of Donald Davidson and Ruth Barcan Marcus have rejected the notion that people can and do have contradictory beliefs. Such a rejection seems to fly in the face of common-sense, so often we seem to find ourselves around people who appear to have contradictory beliefs. What people like Marcus and Davidson appear to recognize is that any attempt to give a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context (that also holds onto the Law of Non-contradiction) is already doomed to fail if we accept that people can and do have contradictory beliefs. The responses from those who wish to hold onto common-sense have been to either give up on a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context (Roy Sorensen) or the LNC (Graham Priest). I propose another option: there appears to be two different notions of belief that have been conflated so as to produce this debate. The first notion defines belief in terms of assent, a believes that p iff a assents to p. The second notion defines belief in relation to knowledge; beliefs are the kinds of things that epistemic agents gain so they can eventually reach knowledge. Recognizing this distinction will allow us to hold onto our common-sense, that we can have a theoretical model of belief in an epistemic context, and the LNC.
October 26, 2007 "On Maximal Rationality" Errol Lord
ABSTRACT: Despite the common divorce of one's rational status and the set of one's reasons, philosophers have been slow to analyze exactly what is required of an agent in order to be immune from rational criticism. In this paper, I argue for a theory that aims at telling us what it takes. First, though, I argue against a very popular view of what substantive rationality is. On this view, substantive rationality is not relevantly similar to procedural rationality. This common view holds that substantive rationality is merely the set of which reasons you have. Thus, if you do not act in accordance with substantive rationality, you aren't necessarily criticizable. I argue that we should think of substantive rationality as relevantly similar to procedural rationality. In the second half of the paper, I argue for my theory of maximal rationality and maximal irrationality, which aims at providing an analysis of the 'realm of criticizability.'
November 9, 2007 ?Come Let Us Reason Together: Public Reason and the Ethics of Citizenship? Christopher McCammon
ABSTRACT: Should those who wield coercive power in democratic societies base their political choices only on suitably public reasons? John Rawls, with many of those influenced by his account of political legitimacy, answers this question in the affirmative. I think they are right to do so. But what reasons count as suitable? Rawls thought that suitably public reasons must be commonsensical: in other words, some consideration may count as a reason to enact a potentially coercive policy or law only if its reason-giving force is non-controversial. I believe this is a mistake. In pluralistic democracies at the beginning of the 21st Century, the state must either prohibit or permit many deeply controversial practices (e.g. same-sex marriage, et al.). But the reason-giving force of considerations brought to bear on such practices?e.g. the nature of marriage, the place of government in regulating marriage, the moral status of same-sex relationships, etc?are equally controversial. Therefore, if coercive power is legitimate only when motivated by public reasons, and public reasons must be non-controversial, the coercive power of law cannot be legitimately exercised either to permit or prohibit such practices. This looks like a reductio of liberal conceptions of political legitimacy. Here, I will argue for a formulation of public reason faithful to the requirements of the liberal conception of political legitimacy but which has the advantage of permitting controversial reasons to count as suitably public, thus widening the domain of considerations that can be brought to bear on questions of public policy.
November 16 . "Assertoric Obligations" David Chavez
ABSTRACT: The knowledge account of assertion (KAA) holds something like the following principle: you should assert that p only if you know that p. It's a consequence of this principle that, even when reasonably asked, you are both prohibited from and to be blamed for voicing your false, justified beliefs. I will argue that this is an unacceptable consequence. Moreover, norms are constructs in need of justification and some unjustified norms are to be rejected. (KAA), on a certain common reading of it, is unjustified and hence to be rejected. Part of the thought will be that (KAA) is in part an epistemic norm, which happens also to conflict with more fundamental epistemic requirements. If there are fundamental epistemic obligations and an alleged hoity toity norm conflicts with our most fundamental epistemic obligations, it should be rejected.
November 30 . "Solving the 'Species Problem'" Robert Mallory
ABSTRACT: How are we to specify the facts that determine species boundaries? A satisfactory solution to the ?species problem? depends on the answer to this question. Both Aristotle and Locke believed that species are classes, i.e. the properties shared by the members of the species determine the boundaries and define the criteria for class membership. On the other hand, Michael Ghiselin and David Hull argue that classes cannot evolve; hence species cannot be classes. Furthermore, Ghiselin and Hall argue that species are individuals. It is my aim to show that their objection is mistaken. Richard Boyd has suggested that natural kinds are Homeostatic Property Clusters (or HPCs). Although I borrow much from Boyd?s view, I argue that Boyd?s construction cannot defeat the objection. The HPC view I propose is consistent with the two ways in which biologists invoke the ?evolve? idiom; hence my view allows for evolution. Lastly, I will discuss a puzzle for the species-as-individuals view and conclude that no solution can save it.
December 7 "PRACTICAL REASONING AND THE CASE FOR PRAGMATIC ENCROACHMENT" Steve Swartzer
ABSTRACT: Pragmatic encroachment is the view that whether or not a subject knows (or is justified in believing) some proposition is partly determined by non-epistemic features of her practical circumstances. A formidable argument for this thesis attempts to derive it from general features of practical rationality. In this paper, I reject two recent versions of this argument?one suggested by John Hawthorne, the other by Jeremy Fantl and Matt McGrath. I will show that the intuitions on which Hawthorne's version relies cannot support the weight of the argument, while Fantl and McGrath's version relies on a hidden assumption about practical rationality that is itself part and parcel with pragmatic encroachment. I then attempt to provide an alternative explanation of the driving intuitions behind these arguments. This alternative can be captured by the slogan ?Its not just what you know, its how you know it.? I provide a modest defense of this explanation by arguing that it is at least as plausible as the explanation provided by pragmatic encroachment.
Graduate Student Colloquia Spring 2007
January 12, 2007 "Rational Requirements and Rational Advice" Cullen Gatten
Abstract:
A problem that puzzles the non-reductionist about reason is what are the reasons one has to comply with rational requirements. One response is that we have no reason to comply with rational requirements; it merely appears that way. This response, however, leads to unintuitive results when one considers cases of advice. It merely appears that when an advisor provides the advisee with a reason to adopt or drop an attitude they are providing a further reason to comply with rational requirements.
I explore different permutations of this view, but conclude that one ought to reject this view on the grounds that there are cases of advice where the advisor provides the advisee with a further reason to be rational, whatever form those reasons might take. I also explore the cause of this objection. I conclude that the cause is a commitment to a false distinction between the 'ought' of reason and the 'ought' of rationality. These objections provide motivating reasons to reject non-reductionism.
January 19, 2007 "What a Computer can't Compute, what a Believer can't Believe" Cliff Hill
Abstract:
In 1961 J.R. Lucas argued that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems show that no mechanistic model of the mind is possible. The argument can be summarized as follows: if we consider the sentence "This sentence is not provable," then we seem to be able to recognize that such a sentence is true. There is no mechanistic method for determining whether it is true or not because if you can prove the sentence to be true then you make it false. How are humans or things with minds able to determine that the Gödel sentence is true? The simple answer for Lucas is "intuition" and this is something that the machine/computer will never have.
Interestingly enough in 1986 Raymond Smullyan published a book entitled Forever Undecided: A Puzzle Guide to Gödel which has not been recognized as a response to Lucas. Smullyan does not appear to have written the book as a criticism of Lucas but as a defense for Modal Logic. What seems to be a very small point that Smullyan tries to make within the course of the book can easily be modified to refute Lucas's claim. I believe I can provide this modification.
What I plan to show in this presentation is that even though the machine cannot determine the truth value of its own Gödel sentence there is a Gödel sentence that individual minds can't determine either. In other words the intuition that Lucas claims we have for identifying the Gödel sentence as true is the same intuition that the machine has. The machine cannot recognize that the sentence, "This sentence is not provable," is true (without making itself inconsistent) and we cannot recognize that the sentence, "I am consistent," is true (without making ourselves inconsistent). I will not be concerned with whether a mechanistic model of mind is the correct model of the mind only that Gödel's theorems cannot rule out such a model.
January 26, 2007 'An Account of Non-Autonomous Levels' Patrick Arens
Abstract:
What is the nature of mental/psychological states? Are they causally relevant? Can they be reduced to physics?
In this presentation I will present a view that is founded on two independently plausible ideas: (1) that physical properties (as in physics) are the only causally relevant properties; and (2) realism about higher-order properties. The resultant view is that mental properties are non-reductive, causally inert, and not epiphenomenal.
February 9, 2007 David Chavez
Abstract:
Gettier cases showed the JTB analysis of knowledge to be too permissive. The repeated failure of attempts at providing a fourth condition for the JTB account led many to conclude that providing a necessary and sufficient analysis of the concept of knowledge is a bankrupt project. There was an early attempt at a fourth condition that was immediately counterexampled and hence rejected: Clarks no-false-lemmas condition. I, however, argue that an approach in the spirit of Clark's makes JTB impervious to Gettier-style counterexamples with no additional costs--one hopes--to the analysis. Bill Lycan argues for a similar approach, but I maintain that he underestimates the scope of cases it handles.
February 16, 2007 "Warranted Assertability Maneuvers and the Rules of Assertion" Leo Iacano
Abstract:
I argue that a warranted assertability maneuver (WAM) against the cases that motivate epistemic contextualism cannot succeed. Such a WAM is inconsistent with the knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is governed by the rule: Assert ' p' only if you know that p. Although the knowledge account of assertion is well supported by diverse linguistic evidence, it has recently been argued that other, weaker rules suffice to account for the supporting evidence. The rules that have been proposed, however, are also inconsistent with a WAM against the contextualist cases.
Graduate Student Colloquia Fall 2006
Meets: Fridays 4pm - 5:45pm in Oldfather 1007, unless otherwise noted.
September 22, 2006 "Reflective Faith and the Boundaries of Mere Reason" Christopher McCammon
The abstract follows:
In the General Remark he appends to Book I of Religion, Kant makes a series of startling admissions: (1) reason is subject to moral impotence; (2) beyond the borders of reason there lies an "inscrutable field of the supernatural" which may contain "something more" that could supplement the moral impotence of reason. (3) This "something more" is available through an what Kant calls reflective faith. These admissions spawn corresponding interpretive difficulties: (i) In what sense is reason morally impotent? (ii) What is the "something more" that populates the inscrutable field of the supernatural that might "make up" for this impotence? (iii) What is the reflective faith that might make this "something more" available to us? In this paper I will attempt to reconstruct answers to these questions and fit these answers within a coherent picture of Kant's moral and religious philosophy.
September 29, 2006 "Synonymy in Proclus's Elements of Theology" Brent Braga
Abstract:
Neoplatonist metaphysics had it that the essential properties possessed by the head of a genus differed from the properties possessed by members of that genus. This required a rejection of the Aristotelian concept of synonymy. A. C. Lloyd has argued that two early propositions in Proclus's Elements of Theology call for adoption of Aristotelian synonymy, while a later proposition explicitly rejects the concept. My project has both a negative and a positive aim. I argue first that Lloyd's reading of the two early propositions is not well supported by the text. Once that argument is in place I will present an alternative interpretation of the two propositions that is more coherent with the context in which the propositions appear and is consistent with the rejection of synonymy.
October 6, 2006 "Metaethics and Metaphilosophy" Tim Loughlin
Abstract:
When told that one ought to φ, one may meaningfully ask why one ought to φ . The response that one's interlocutor provides, if it is to have any hope of being satisfactory, must be a member of one of the following types:
(a) You ought to φ because φing is an instance of ψ, and you ought to ψ.
(b) That you ought to φ admits of no explanation, it is a brute fact.
(c) You ought to φ because φing will accomplish ψ, and ψing is something that you desire/ you are psychologically predisposed to do/ is evolutionarily beneficial, etc.
It is my thesis that neither (a), (b) nor (c) can, upon close inspection, provide one with a satisfactory explanation as to why one ought to φ . This project depends upon the correct analysis of the concept of explanation and not upon the metaphysical or epistemological status of moral propositions. As such, this thesis, if correct, will have implications for the moral realist, anti-realist, skeptic and anti-skeptic alike.
In this paper, I will analyze the concept of explanation, show why (a), (b) and (c) are the only potential explainers and show why neither (a), (b) nor (c) can explain normativity. I will then explain how this position differs from moral anti-realism and moral skepticism. Finally, I will outline how this critique of ethics might be generalized for application to metaphysics and epistemology."
October 20, 2006 "Maybe We CAN Solve the Mind-Body Problem" Bill Bauer
Abstract:
Assuming a physicalist stance, we know that the brain and consciousness are connected somehow, so we might presume that eventually we can come to understand how they are connected. Despite our relatively open access to the two terms of the mind-body relation, the nature of the link remains elusive. Colin McGinn thinks it will remain so, at least for beings like us, because we are not cognitively equipped to solve the mind-body problem. He claims there is some natural property, P, responsible for the connection between mind and body, but he argues that we cannot understand what P is or how it works. We are cognitively closed with respect to P, thus we cannot solve the mind-body problem. After explaining McGinn's argument for cognitive closure, I argue that we might arrive at an understanding of P by means of a theoretical inference to the best explanation from brain data, in contrast to McGinn's argument that such an inference is not possible. My main claim is that the purported cognitive closure breaks down because McGinn presents too narrow an
account of how we would go about trying to theoretically infer the nature of P.
October 27, 2006 "Governing the Globe, Albeit Differently" Charlie Gilkely
Abstract:
The classic question in international political theory-what is the best possible international political regime?-is posed and answered by Michael Walzer in his recent book Arguing about War. His project, at first glance, is very simple: identify the criteria by which to judge the different arrangements and provide a logical methodology by which to delineate different arrangements. However, the actual structure of his argument is quite complex. My project will be to simplify the structure of his argument, accept his criteria, and show that the world federation arrangement is a much better candidate for the ideal international arrangement than the candidate he indicates.
November 10, 2006 "Can a Dispositional Property be an Essential Property?" Cliff Hill
Abstract:
The essentialist debate has found itself on the outskirts of the dispositional debate; Brian Ellis has argued for scientific essentialism which claims that a dispositional property of an object is essential to that object. Elizabeth Prior appears to imply some connection between essentialism and dispositions when she suggests that we should use rigid designators to pick out dispositional properties. On the other hand there are many within the dispositional debate who don't even mention its relation to essentialism and others who flat out reject the idea rather quickly.
This presentation will show that at least some objects have dispositional properties which are essential to the object in question. The clearest example of this is an electron: if we come across an object that is disposed to be attracted to protons and disposed to repel from objects like itself in any possible world then necessarily, that object is an electron. Even though this implies that some dispositional properties are essential it does not imply that all dispositional properties are essential. This is a far less radical view than Ellis's scientific essentialism."
November 17, 2006 'Two conception of justification' Seyed Ali Taher
Abstract:
There are two possible conceptions for epistemic justification. One requires the justification to be determined by the content of proposition. I call this conception the strict conception of justification and the other which does not requrie this limitation the tolerant conception. I argue for the possiblity of strict conception and further argue for advantages of adoption of this conception in epistemology.
If I have time I will argue for one consequence of this conception and that will be the inconsistency of a priori knowledge of a proposition with a posteriori knowledge of that proposition.
Graduate Student Colloquia Spring 2006
Meets: Fridays 4pm - 5:45pm in Oldfather 1007, unless otherwise noted.
January 13, 2006 "Contextualism, Invariantism, and their Error Theories." - Leo Iacono
Abstract: Contextualists and invariantists have to account for the intuitive plausibility of certain utterances that they take to be false; each view must therefore be accompanied by an error theory. I sketch an error theory for invariantism which explains why "I don't know that I am not a BIV" is intuitively plausible yet false, and compare this error theory to the contextualist error theory that purports to explain the intuitive plausibility of "I know that I have a hand," which contextualists claim is false when uttered in skeptical contexts. I argue that the invariantist error theory is superior to the contextualist error theory. Although the invariantist error theory remains a mere sketch until it is supplemented by a correct theory of knowledge and an empirically adequate psychological account of our epistemic reasoning, it is easy to see how certain plausible theories would, if correct, provide a complete explanation for the recalcitrant but incorrect epistemic judgments. The contextualist error theory, on the other hand, leaves it utterly mysterious how a rational and linguistically competent subject could make the sort of mistake the contextualist attributes to her. Other things being equal, the classical invariantist error theory is therefore preferable to the contextualist error theory.
January 20, 2006 "Is Cultural Anthropology Science?" Becky Zavada
January 27, 2006 "Consequentialism and Detachable Obligations" Mark Decker, 3:55-5:45 pm
Abstract: My comments on a paper for the upcoming Pacific APA meeting.
Fun TV-style abstract: Tonight's episode - "Deadly Came the Dangerous" When a group of consequentialists get together to argue about how "the best consequences" should be interpreted, they miss dozens of opportunities to make the world a better place! Hilarity ensues.
February 10, 2006 "Constraints on the Independence Constraint" Virendra Tripathi
February 17, 2006 "The Fuss about Fit" Steve Swartzer
Abstract: To avoid the charge of dogmatic adherence to the Humean Theory of Motivation, proponents of this view have relied extensively on an argument surrounding the notion of ‘direction of fit.’ The direction of fit argument is meant to show (1) motivated action mustbe caused by an attitude with the appropriate direction of fit, (2) beliefs don’t have this fit, therefore (3) beliefs cannot, by themselves, cause motivated action. The author argues that the anti-Humean should reject (2); some unitary attitudes might have more than one “fit,” and if this is true of a subset of beliefs (e.g. normative judgments), these beliefs might be intrinsically motivating.Furthermore, the author contends, the common Humean responses to problem betray the position for what it is—dogmatic Humeanism in rather thin disguise.
February 24, 2006 "Persistence: A Defense of Perdurantism" Michael Tooley
March 3, 2006 "Knowledge, Hope and Religious Belief" Christopher McCammon
A rough abstract: "A popular version of religious epistemology (sometimes called 'Reformed') has claimed that religious beliefs - at least sometimes - are epistemically okay (even sufficiently okay to count as knowledge) in the same ways that ordinary workaday beliefs are epistemically okay (even sufficiently okay to count as knowldge): i.e. both may be "properly basic" or "weakly justified" etc. I think there are generally Kantian reasons to think this is mistaken. What I'm doing here is just the first steps toward exploring these generally Kantian reasons. Kant claimed that optimal religious beliefs are a species of hope rather than of knowledge. I will address two questions that must be answered in order to make sense of this and related claims: (i) What is hope? (ii) Are there norms that apply to hope? After a brief attempt to answer these questions, I'll turn to what I take to be an obvious intial objection to the Kantian story about religious belief - Isn't it just bad descriptive psychology to talk about religious belief as a species of hope?"
March 10, 2006 "Against Deriving Pluralism" Mark Decker
Abstract: Moral pluralism claims that there are multiple properties which are fundamentally morally relevant (e.g., W.D. Ross's view). Some philosophers have attempted to defend moral pluralism by embedding it within a monistic moral theory such as consequentialism or Kantianism. I argue that any such attempts are doomed to failure.
April 7, 2006 "In Defense of BonJour's Doxastic Presumption" Bill Bauer
Abstract: Laurence BonJour (1985, 2003) claims that any coherence theory of empirical justification must make the Doxastic Presumption, the assumption that an agent’s grasp of her overall belief system is approximately correct. This grasp is in the form of beliefs about one’s beliefs, or metabeliefs. After clarifying the role of the Doxastic Presumption I will discuss the objection, raised separately by Alvin Goldman (1989) and Noah Lemos (1989), that the metabeliefs specified by the presumption act like basic beliefs, and thus force coherence theory to collapse into foundationalism. Drawing upon the strengths of their accounts of the objection, I will reformulate the objection and argue that it does not work because metabeliefs and basic beliefs serve different justificatory roles in their respective theories. Nonetheless, the metabeliefs specified by the Doxastic Presumption possess a similar degree of epistemic priority to basic beliefs.
April 14, 2006 "Hole Time- The End of A Game" Maria Kon
Fall 2005
Meets: Fridays 4pm - 5:45pm in Oldfather 1007, unless otherwise noted.
August 26, 2005 "Classical Invariantism and the Knowledge Account of Assertion" Leo Iacono
Keith DeRose's argument in "Assertion, Knowledge, and Context" fails to establish that classical invariantism (the traditional view that denies both epistemic contextualism and subject-sensitive invariantism) is false.
September 2, 2005 "More Than They Think It Does" Mark Decker
Abstract: Moral particularists think that there are no true moral generalizations: the moral status of any specific action must be determined on a case-by-case basis. Advocates of this view often argue for it by appealing to holism about reasons. Recently, it has been argued that, regardless of its truth-value, holism provides no support for moral particularism. I argue that this is mistaken: if holism about reasons is true, then so is moral particularism.
September 9, 2005 "Representation in Rawls's Original Positions" Ed Abplanalp
There are still openings throughout the remainder of the fall semester. Those of you working on honors theses or 400-level papers are encouraged to present.
September 16, 2005 There will be no philosophy graduate student colloquium this week.
September 23, 2005 "Notions of 'Actually' and Primary Necessity" Grace Helton
Abstract: In response to arguments by Putnam and Kripke that necessity does not entail apriority, some have attempted to salvage a version of the necessity-->apriority link by arguing that a certain type of necessity, called primary necessity or 1-necessity, entails apriority. Against the 1-necessity-->apriority relation, I will argue that some claims are both 1-necessary and aposteriori.
September 30, 2005 "Animals, Brainstems, and Persistence: A Response to Olson" William Bauer
Abstract: Eric T. Olson thinks that psychology is neither necessary nor sufficient in questions about our identity over time. In place of the Psychological Approach, he posits a Biological Approach to questions of personal identity. According to his view, a human animal persists just in case its capacity to direct its vital functions persists. In this paper I present two counter-arguments to Olson’s claim about our persistence conditions. In one case, I explain a scenario, contrary to Olson’s criteria, in which a human animal persists that I think Olson would reluctantly consent to. In another case, I expose a contradiction in Olson’s argument between his privileging of the brainstem—the organ which directs vital functions— and his overall picture of the nature of animals.
October 14, 2005 "Kant's Anthropocentrism" Edward Abplanalp
Abstract: By exploring many subtleties of Kant’s anthropocentrism, including certain aspects of his philosophical theology and teleology, this paper explains how Kant’s anthropocentrism is rooted in his broad conception of the human race and its relationship with the cosmos. Specifically, I examine certain important connections between his anthropocentrism and his conception of the human species (the only entities on the earth possessing rationality) and his teleological conception of the universe. Although his deontology is patently anthropocentric, he does believe that moral agents have duties to non-human animals, as well as our natural environment. After demonstrating the affect of Kant’s anthropocentrism on his theory of the duties we have to the myriad non-human entities in our world, I conclude the paper by sketching out the ramifications for Kant’s moral theory if, as biocentrists maintain, other non-human entities possess absolute worth. If Kant’s anthropocentrism is wrong, it is possible to construct a Kantian moral theory under which nature itself is the rational determining ground for morality. The second formulation of Kant’s Categorical Imperative would then implore moral agents to respect nature by never using natural entities merely as a means to an end.
We will not have a colloquium on October 21, 2005 . Instead everyone is encouraged to attend the talk by Sir Michael Atiyah, entitled "The Nature of Space", which will be in Kimball Recital Hall at 4:00 pm.
October 28, 2005 No colloquium, presentation by Sydney Shoemaker.
November 4, 2005 "Supervenience and Multiple Realizability" Tim Loughlin
Abstract: In his article, 'Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction', Jaegwon Kim carries multiple realizability to what he considers to be its logical conclusion concerning the reducibility of the psychological (and, in fact, reducibility simpliciter). His conclusions, however, are not palatable to everyone. I will argue that, using his framework for scientific kinds and supervenience, another interesting, more acceptable conclusion for reduction beyond Kim's own might be drawn from the problem of multiple realizability.
November 11, 2005 "Dispositions, Causation, and Reduction" Jennifer McKitrick
Abstract: Dispositions are not conceptually or metaphysically reducible to causes. Definitions of dispositions in terms of causes are inadequate or non-reductive. A necessary condition for metaphysical reduction cannot be met: disposition facts do not globally supervene on causal facts. The best attempts at reducing dispositions point towards reducing both dispositions and causes to something else. The possibility that causal laws reduce to dispositions is at least an equally viable option.
December 2, 2005 "Mental Content and Moral Motivation" Mark Decker
Abstract: Tonight's episode begins with two bar-room brawls - one between individualism and anti-individualism about mental content, the other between the dark forces of Humeanism and the renegade freedom fighters of anti-Humeanism about motivation. Worlds collide when THE OXFORD PROFESSOR points out that the two fights are occurring in the same bar! All seems bleak when the dark forces of Humeanism, lead by THE OXFORD PROFESSOR, attempt to marshal the powers of externalism in favor of their view. It is left to THE UGLY AMERICAN to set things straight.
December 9, 2005 "Implicit Definition and A Priori Knowledge" - Nate Charlow
