Philosophy Academic Year in Review

May 20, 2022

New Programs and Classes

In January 2022, the department offered 3 Pre-Session courses before the spring semester: “Ethics of Health Equality”, “The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, and “Ethics of Emerging Technologies”.

Dr. Adam Thompson, using pilot funding from UNL Center for Transformative Teaching, positioned UNL as the first public land grant university to design an Embedded Ethics Program based on Harvard University’s successful model. Thompson and graduate teaching assistants Trevor Adams and Christopher Stratman worked with computer science course instructors to develop and implement ethics modules in computer science courses.

Department Events

The Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable was April 1-2 and featured a keynote lecture from Calin O’Connor of University of California, Irvine.

The 13^th Annual Chambers Conference, titled “Philosophy of Language”, featured 8 speakers from universities across the country and was held April 22-23.

The Central States Philosophical Association’s Annual Conference was held at the City Campus Union in April. Keynote speaker Jennifer Morton of the University of Pennsylvania gave the talk “The Nature of Poverty”.

Guest Lectures

Professor Shamik Dasgupta of the University of California, Berkeley presented a paper titled “Undoing the Truth Fetish: The Normative Path to Pragmatism”.

Johann Frick of UC Berkeley presented “Dilemmas, Luck, and the Two Faces of Morality” via Zoom on April 5.

Books

Senior lecturer Jean Cahan’s book Szatmar Story was published in December 2021, and she gave a book talk on May 5.

Articles and Book Chapters

John Brunero

“Practical Reasons, Theoretical Reasons, and Permissive and Prohibitive Balancing” Synthese, forthcoming.
“Rationality and Normativity” International Encyclopedia of Ethics, forthcoming.
“Intention Persistence” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming.
“Reasons and Defeasible Reasoning” Philosophical Quarterly, 72 (January 2022): 41-64.
“Ambivalence, Incoherence, and Self-Governance” in The Philosophy and Psychology of Ambivalence: Being of Two Minds, D. Gatzia and B. Brogaard (eds.), London: Routledge, 2021, pp. 25-48.

David Henderson

(with Mark Risjord and Geshe Dadul Namgyal) “Language, Truth, and Pedagogy (The Epistemology of Western Science and Tibetan Buddhist Epistemology in Dialogue),” Frontiers in Communication, special issue on the Emory Tibet Science Initiative (2021).
(with Terence Horgan) “Norms: You Can’t Always Get What You Want… but You Can Get What You Need,”, Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social, Christopher Adair-Totesff (ed.), Poznań Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities (2021) 150-174.
“The Place of Non-Epistemic Matters in Epistemology: Norms and Regulation in Various Communities,” Synthese (2021).

Colin McLear

“Kant on the Receptivity of Time.” In Colin McLear, Colin Marshall (eds.), Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions. Oxford University Press (forthcoming)
“The Unity of the Faculties.” In James Conant, Jonas Held (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming)

Joe Mendola

“Conflicts and Cooperation in Act Consequentialism”, Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 513-528.
“Property Identity and the Supervenience Argument”, forthcoming in Protosociology 2022 in a festschrift for Jaegwon Kim.

Mark van Roojen

“Does Anything We Care About Distinguish the Non-Natural from the Natural?” in P. Bloomfield, D. Copp (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Moral Realism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022) forthcoming

Quinn White

Paper “Honesty and Discretion” Philosophy and Public Affairs, forthcoming.
“The Requirements of Loyalty.” in Loyalty, ed. T. Jollimore, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Zachariah Wrublewski and Zack Garrett

Coauthored "Impossible worlds and the safety of philosophical beliefs" now online in Metaphilosophy.

Presentations

Trevor Adams

“Foundational Hope” A New Hope: Optomism and the Good Life conference

John Brunero

Discussed his book ‘Instrumental Rationality' on January 6 in the American Philosophical Association 2022 Eastern Division Meeting
“Précis” and “Response to Stroud and Paul” Eastern APA (January 2022), Baltimore, Author Meets Critics on Instrumental Rationality
“Practical Reasons, Theoretical Reasons, and Underdetermination,” SLACRR (August 2021), St. Louis
Presidential Address of the Central States Philosophical Association, “Conditional Requirements and Hypocrisy”

Albert Casullo

“Essence and Modal Knowledge,” Cologne Summer School in Philosophy, August 4, 2021

Janelle Gormley

"A Defense of Non-Ideal Friendship," Philosophy Graduate Student/Faculty Colloquium, March 2022

Jack Henry

“Wide-scope rational requirements: resisting application symmetry and accommodating compliance symmetry,” Northwestern / Notre Dame Graduate Epistemology Conference, March 2022.

Colin McLear

“Kant on Control & Rationality.” Keynote speaker, Graduate Conference on Freedom, Action, and Control: Conceptions of Rational Agency in Kant and the European Enlightenment; University of Bucharest (online). June 2022
“Reason’s Order: Kant on the Conditions of Rational Agency.” Book workshop, University of Toronto. May 2022
“Self-Consciousness & Rationality.” Kantian Rationality Lab, Kaliningrad; Colloquium, Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Conference on Kant on the Self, Princeton University. May, October 2021
“Kant on the Receptivity of Time,” Kant’s Fundamental Assumptions, online workshop. August 2021

Joseph Mendola

2021 Inquire lecture series, “Pain and Pleasure in Philosophy”

Talhah Mustafa

South Carolina Society for Philosophy Annual Meeting, "The Role of Culture in Race"
Great Lakes Philosophy Conference, "The Role of Culture in Race"
University of Albany Philosophical Association, "Racial Powers," April, 2022

Christopher Stratman and Adam Thompson

“The Temporal Shape of Conscious Experience,” Central States Philosophical Association Annual Meeting

Quinn White

Discussion on "Forgiveness: Personal and Political," September 2

Student Events

Philosophy Club / Philosophers Chat

February 7: PhD student Ryan Turner shared their discussion on the philosophy of gender with the UNL Philosophy Club.
February 14: PhD student Trevor Adams joined the group to talk about the Epistemology of Love - the relationship between loving and knowing someone.
February 21: Janelle Gormley, a second-year PhD student and teaching assistant, joined this week's meeting for the topic "Are we really friends, tho?" - What does it mean for two people to be friends? Is it just a feeling? Are one-sided friendships real friendships?
February 28: Dr. John Brunero joined this session for the topic "Should We Follow the Law?"
March 7: Dr. Quinn White joined Philosophers Chat to discuss " When and Why Should We Tell the Truth?" - what reasons do we have to tell the truth? Is being honest an obligation? If so, what grounds this obligation?
March 21: Vileru Tivexi, a graduate student and teaching assistant, joined Philosophers Chat and led the group through a discussion of the Ethics of Social Media.
March 28: Dr. David Henderson joined the Philosophers Chat session and led the group through a discussion about Epistemic Norms.
April 4: Erica Nicolas, a first-year PhD student, led the group through a discussion on "Belief and Propaganda".
April 18: Dr. Adam Thompson, a faculty member in the department and the assistant director for the Kutak Ethics Center, spoke to the group about Collective Responsibility.

Graduate Student Colloquia

Fall 2021: Talhah Mustafa, Trevor Adams, Seungchul Yang, Chen Xi, Bjorn Flanagan, Zachariah Wrublewski, John Del Rosario, Il-Hwan Yu, Eunhong Lee, Janelle Gormley, Christopher Stratman.
Spring 2022: Swarnima Kain, Seungchul Yang, Jason Lemmon, Il-Hwan Yu, Drew Gallagher, Zach Garret, Eunhong Lee, Alfred Tu, Vileru Tivexi.