Spring 2023 Philosophy Graduate Colloquium

Presenter: Gabriel Bruguier

Title: Lakota Language and Meaning of Life

Abstract: In this paper I will explore a positive aspect of contemporary efforts to reintroduce Indigenous languages to new generations of speakers. The positive aspect is that Indigenous languages reveal information about that peoples’ conception of the meaning of life, or remove misconceptions that may be due to the use of colonizing language in place of traditional language. My discussion will primarily focus on the Lakota language and philosophy, though some evidence will be offered that supports the claim that the connection between language and meaning of life is evident in other Indigenous languages. In the first part of my paper, I will outline a Lakota conception of the meaning of life. The general ontological background of meaningfulness is captured in the phrase Mitakuye Oyas'in, rendered as, 'all my relatives' or, 'we are all related'. Lakota oral tradition reveals that ‘we’ is inclusive of all creation, and that every individual has life or energy (Wakan). One’s life or energy can be either good or bad, depending on whether one is pleased or displeased by another being. An account of meaningfulness therefore involves how humans fit into creation, and how to be good relatives to all beings. Sicangu Lakota Philosopher Robert Bunge argues that meaningfulness is obtained through participation in the Seven Sacred Rites of the Lakota. Bunge’s use of ‘participation’ contains metaphysical, epistemological, and performative elements, which will be discussed in turn. My discussion of the Seven Sacred rites, and the performative nature of ‘participation’ will segue into the second part of the paper. Here I will make use of Lakota Language and Culture course material from Sinte Gleska University, located on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Courses are taught by Lakota Elders and Medicine Men, and in them they teach the origin of Lakota rituals and ceremonies, but more to the purpose of my paper, they offer careful renderings of the Lakota names for rituals and ceremony. One salient example of how language reveals meaningfulness is the Sweat Lodge ceremony. The English name suggests a lodge where people go to sweat, like a sauna, which may have leisure, or health and beauty connotations. In contrast, the Lakota name Inipi is broken down in the following way: ni means ‘to be alive’, I refers to a life-giving resource in this case the lodge, and pi is the plural form. So inipi is rendered as, “they are receiving life”. The interior of the lodge is likened to a mother’s womb, so that when a subject emerges after the ceremony, it is akin to being reborn. Inipi can be a standalone ceremony or in conjunction with other ceremonies. Next I discuss the performative nature of language, for example, in the inipi ceremony. As White Hat teaches, the heated stones in the center of the lodge are central to the energy a subject receives during the ceremony. Therefore, the stones must be addressed respectfully to receive good energy or life. In sum, in understanding who the stones are (as well as other elements in the lodge), and how they relate to humans, a subject participates well in the ceremony through her actions, which include the words she speaks. She is being a good relative, living harmoniously within creation.

Presenter: Eunhong Lee

Title: Can Leibniz Save MR?

Abstract: In this paper, I discuss whether Leibniz's position on freedom and contingency can save an agent's moral responsibility. There are some controversies, but Leibniz's position on freedom is often understood as compatibilism between determinism and freedom since he says that every event is determined but some acts are nonetheless free (LC V, 3). Leibniz also says that freedom consists in intelligence, spontaneity, and contingency. (T 288-90, 302). More specifically, Leibniz seems to allow for the ability to do otherwise, or leeway in action when looking into his theory of contingency. However, it is unclear whether the agent's moral responsibility can be saved and coherently understood with Leibniz's predicate-in-notion principle (PIN) and the principle of sufficient reason (PSR). I will examine Leibniz's predicate-in-notion principle and the principle of sufficient reason and maintain that it seems impossible for Leibniz to save the agent's moral responsibility in his position on freedom. I will show that an agent is not morally responsible for what she has done even if the following conditional sentence, "If an agent x could have done otherwise, the outcome would have been different," can be coherently understood as a true statement in Leibniz's theory.

Presenter: Erica Nicolas

Title: We Ride at Dawn! Or is it just me?

Abstract: Social movements are generally viewed as having a pretty transparent intention (e.g. the intention of the women's suffrage movement was to get women the right to vote). When it comes to analyzing the joint intentionality of groups of varying sizes, there are two approaches. One approach says that we out to treat groups as a special kind of agent (i.e. a single entity). The other approach, however, says that only individuals are agents, and not groups composed of individuals. Each approach might work for movements that are clear in their intention (e.g. the women's suffrage movement), but how do they deal with movements whose intention is not clear - those movements who have what I'm calling an 'opaque' intention. Moreover, how do they deal with movements that have conflicting intentions (if there are such movements)? In this talk I will discuss the leading theories of joint intentionality and how they handle transparent and opaque social movements. I contend that skepticism may well loom for joint intentionality; nonetheless, there might well be one view that survives said skepticism, just so long as the 'jointness' is held together by some basic unit(s) - but that's the part I'm still trying to work out!

Presenter: Janelle Gormley

Title: A Defense of Non-Ideal Friendship

Abstract: Friendship is obviously sometimes morally assessable, but it is controversial whether the nature of friendship itself incorporates such standards. Neo-Aristotelian’s typically think it does. In “The Vices of Friendship,” Pismenny and Brogaard argue that such Neo-Aristotelian commitments undermine the very goods that friendship provides. They claim that the Neo-Aristotelians are committed to five core motivational and affective features of friendship: (1) mutual admiration of character, (2) mutual love, (3) shared life, (4) role modeling, and (5) mutual criticism. Further, they suggest that neo-Aristotelian friendship is teleological, insofar as friendship itself is aimed at living a good life. Pismenny and Brogaard suggest these features commit NeoAristotelians to a disinterested form of love captured in the Robust Concern View (RBC): the lover is sufficiently moved “to promote the interests of another for her own sake,” without any self-regard (Pismenny and Brogaard 10). Furthermore, since the friendship is aimed at living a good life by developing a good character, it must include modeling good behavior and offering moral criticism, thus, teleological. Pismenny and Brogaard argue that the moralization of friendship misses what is important about friendship. Their complaint rests on an alternative conception of friendship which centers closeness, intimacy, identity, and trust. The account of disinterested love offered by the Neo-Aristotelians runs counter to what their alternative highlights, partiality. A separate background criticism is that in moralizing friendship, the friendship becomes too demanding. They fear that the activities aimed at generating good character undermines the friendship itself, allowing for one to lose friends instead of gain them. So, the Neo-Aristotelian account ought to be rejected in light of these worries. However, the rejection is grounded by an interpretation that the Neo-Aristotelian need not endorse. In this paper, I argue that the Neo-Aristotelians not only can capture the values of friendship, but more broadly, assuage worries about the demandingness of moral friendships by including the other forms of friendship, since friendship in general, is necessary for a good life.

Presenter: John Del Rosario

Title: Response to Katherine Dormandy's (2021) notion that Faith, in order to be excellent, must respect evidentialism

Abstract:I am developing this idea (very germinal, let me just preface that) of a partialist account of faith, one that would allow me to respond to Katherine Dormandy’s (2021) notion that faith, in order to be excellent, must respect evidentialism. Unpolished idea, but I could use some inputs/thoughts from the group

Presenter: Bjorn Flanagan

Title: Covering Values as Devaluing

Abstract: Ruth Chang has argued that there are no incommensurable "hard choices" and that the issue lies in there being an incomparability; her solution is that there are four evaluation relations instead of three. She accepts that there are better, worse, and equal but that there is a fourth relation, Chang argues that there is always a "covering value" that helps evaluate what our practical reason dictates as an appropriate choice. In this paper, I will focus on Chang's solution to hard choices and a problem that arises from the application of "covering values". My argument is that by using covering values to assess a hard choice, the competing values that the covering value assesses are devalued because the covering value becomes the object of evaluation by our practical reason. The utilization of a cover value leads to a problem that Thi Nguyen calls "value collapse" or "oversimplification of value capture".