Graduate Student Research Colloquia - Spring 2018

Spring 2018

Presenter: Andrew Christmas

Abstract:

I will discuss the role that a community's portrayal of history plays in framing the way that members of the community view the world. In particular, I will focus on the common assumption that views the history of humanity as one of social, cultural, moral, etc. progress and argue that this assumption is not well supported and is only plausible when viewed within a particular framework.

The Graduate Student Research Colloquium will not be held. Instead the Faculty / Graduate Student Colloquium will take place. Zachary Garrett will present.

Presenter: Mark Selzer

Presenter: Andrew Spaid

Presenter: Chelsea Richardson

Title: "Ancestry in Visual Experience"

Abstract:

Both the folk and Critical Race theorists appeal to ancestry as something that is present in visual experience. If they are correct, then acquaintance, a relational concept popular in philosophy of mind, seems like the most likely relation by which one could come to have a visual experience of ancestry. Literature on acquaintance tells us that it is epistemically rewarding. Assuming this is correct, being in an acquaintance relation with some person should make us more likely to form true beliefs about their ancestry. However this is problematic since, acquaintance often provides false beliefs about the location or visual appearance of someone's ancestors. So, either acquaintance is not virtuous (because it is likely to provide false beliefs in these cases), or we are wrong about the sense in which acquaintance makes us more likely to form true beliefs about ancestry. If we conceive of ancestry in a social way, as an understanding of the present social hierarchy, then acquaintance is epistemically rewarding because it tends to provide true beliefs about people's positions in this hierarchy. This account of ancestry preserves the virtues of acquaintance but requires revising our common understanding of what ancestry is.

Presenter: Aaron Elliott

Title: "Grounding the Duty of Non-Maleficence: Why doctors should do-no-harm, and what this tells us about public policy."

Abstract:

The folk conception of physicians' duty to do no harm considers the Hippocratic Oath as its basis. Standard medical ethics textbooks do not address the grounds for the duty of non-maleficence (henceforth "theDuty"). Both are mistakes. First I'll argue that, because the Hippocratic Oath is at best a promise, it is an inadequate basis for the Duty. Second, I'll support an alternative two-part account of the basis--the badness of harm, and healthcare practitioners' special role in society ground the Duty. Third, I'll show how this alternative account has wider implications on the morality of individual care choices, and on the morality of certain public policy positions. Even if my proposed basis for the Duty is wrong, this shows that alternative proposals can have concrete normative implications, and so medical ethics education needs to include discussion of the bases for standard duties of medical ethics.

Presenter: Adam Thompson

Title: "On Balance and Course-Design: A Balance-Primitivist Strategy for Squaring Content Coverage with Skill Building."

Abstract:

Balancing content coverage with philosophical skill/disposition building is a particularly pernicious course-design problem. By delineating a strategy for approaching the balance-challenge, as I'll call it, this essay aims to help philosophy teachers overcome it. One key to overcoming the challenge is to push against the orthodox view that treats the balance-challenge as subsidiary to adopting learning objectives and aligning them with educative assessments. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how executing the strategy has the following three payoffs: (1) It helps us build rigor into the heart of the course; (2) It aids in the development of assessments that draw more on intrinsic motivators as opposed to extrinsic motivators; and (3) It straightforwardly connects grades to learning-objective mastery. For illustration, I focus on how I used the strategy to build my upper-level course on ethical theory. I follow up by generalizing the strategy. In particular, I show how to use the strategy to design an intro-level course on applied ethics and how to apply it to design a graduate course in philosophy.

Presenter: Lauren Sweetland

Title: "Interpreting and Evaluating Legal Practices"

Abstract:

Hart argues that whether a rule is obeyed or accepted, broken or rejected, is determined by "good reasons" from an internal perspective (The Concept of Law 55). Ronald Dworkin objects that Hart's view of rules gives an internal participant's point of view, as well as the role of interpretation in legal theory, too little treatment. Hart replies that his secondary rules, especially rules of recognition, are the basis of reason from an internal perspective. As for the role of interpretation in legal theory, Hart insists that from an external observer's point of view, no moral judgment need be made with respect to some rule when describing that rule. I think that while Hart's secondary rules do indeed figure into reasons from an internal perspective, what is necessary for the legal theorist (external perspective) to describe those reasons is a value judgment. How much interpretation, if any, on the part of the legal theorist is sufficient for describing the practice of law, according to Hart's view? I argue that without interpretive and evaluative judgments about rules of recognition on the part of the legal theorist, the legal theorist could not understand reasons to regard rules in certain ways from an internal perspective. Hart's legal theorist utilizes value judgments in describing the internal perspective on reasons for rules more than he envisions.

Presenter: Shane George

Title: "APR"

Abstract:

Traditional accounts of autonomy have assumed autonomy stems from a connection to an authentic self. However, in my dissertation I argue that not only is this position untenable, this understanding of the relationship is backwards. Authenticity is a property which is generated by autonomy which is itself not a simple relation but a recursive process. In this presentation I will explain the ab initio Problem and the Value Formation Problem which undermine traditional explanations of autonomy. I will then argue for a Coherentist Psychosocial account of the self which is necessary for the autonomous process, and explain how this account contributes to solving both the ab initio Problem and the Value Formation Problem.

Presenter: Joseph Dante

Presenter: Adam Thompson

Title: "On Balance and Course-Design: A Balance-Primitivist Strategy for Squaring Content Coverage with Skill Building"

Abstract:

Balancing content coverage with philosophical skill/disposition building is a particularly pernicious course-design problem. By delineating a strategy for approaching the balance-challenge, as I'll call it, this essay aims to help philosophy teachers overcome it. One key to overcoming the challenge is to push against the orthodox view that treats the balance-challenge as subsidiary to adopting learning objectives and aligning them with educative assessments. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how executing the strategy has the following three payoffs: (1) It helps us build rigor into the heart of the course; (2) It aids in the development of assessments that draw more on intrinsic motivators as opposed to extrinsic motivators; and (3) It straightforwardly connects grades to learning-objective mastery. For illustration, I focus on how I used the strategy to build my upper-level course on ethical theory. I follow up by generalizing the strategy. In particular, I show how to use the strategy to design an intro-level course on applied ethics and how to apply it to design a graduate course in philosophy.

Presenter: Kevin Patton

Title: "Safety and Swamping."

Abstract:

It is common for epistemologists to use the value problem as a kind of litmus test for a theory of knowledge. The value problem is, roughly, the problem philosophers run into when they attempt to explain how knowledge is more valuable than its components. If knowledge is not more valuable than its components, then our intuitions about its value are left unexplained. If knowledge is more valuable than its components, it is not/has not been uncontroversial how to articulate why. Either way, many feel that if a theory of knowledge cannot address this problem, then the theory is not worth considering. Georgi Gardiner has recently argued that any theory of knowledge which is even partially explicated in modal terms cannot, in principle, provide an answer to the value problem, and hence, is not worth considering. Gardiner specifically targets Duncan Pritchard's modal condition safety. Safety is, again roughly, a condition on knowledge which invokes possible worlds to assess if the truth of a given belief was a matter of luck. Gardiner modifies the swamping problem and uses it to argue that safety adds no value to a true belief, and, so, safety cannot answer the value problem. She then claims that this kind of argument can be generalized and applied to any theory which uses a modal condition on knowledge. In this paper, I will demonstrate that the structure of Gardiner's argument relies on an assumption about what is epistemically valuable and what is not. Once made explicit, this assumption actually serves to undermine a great many more theories than Gardiner is aware. This assumption, however, is problematic. The core issue is between epistemic value monism and epistemic value pluralism. Replacing monism with pluralism avoids all of the standard reasons to adopt the swamping problem. As such, Gardiner's argument against safety fails.