Graduate Student Colloquia Spring 2008

Meets: Fridays 4pm - 5:45pm in Oldfather 1007, unless otherwise noted.

Contact Steve Swartzer for more information.

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