Fall 2021
September 16 – Nicholas Baima, assistant professor of philosophy, Florida Atlantic University
Location: Wake Forest University Benson 409
“Plato and the Impossibility of Divine Deception”
A common theological perspective holds that God does not deceive because lying is morally wrong. While Plato denies the possibility of divine deception in the Republic, his explanation does not appeal to the wrongness of lying. Indeed, Plato famously recommends the careful use of lies as a means of promoting justice. Given his endorsement of occasional lying, as well as his claim that humans should strive to emulate the gods, Plato’s suggestion that the gods never have reason to lie is puzzling. This talk will explain why I believe Platonic gods do not lie and what this says about our relationship with them and our fellow humans.
October 14 – Jonathan Dixon, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University
Location: Wake Forest University Benson 409
“DIsmissing Skepticism”
The Cartesian arguments for external world skepticism are usually considered to be significant for at least two reasons: they seem to present genuine paradoxes and that providing an adequate response to these arguments would reveal something epistemically important about knowledge, justification, and/or our epistemic position to the world. In this paper I show that these arguments are not significant in either of these ways because these arguments lead to a previously unrecognized self-undermining dilemma: they either lead to a reductio ad absurdum, or to avoid this reductio the skeptic must accept that these arguments are epistemically idle – they do not provide any support for external world skepticism. Either way, these Cartesian arguments provide no epistemic support for external world skepticism and they cannot legitimately threaten or even call into question our beliefs about the external world.
November 11 – Colleen Murphy, Roger and Stephany Joslin Professor of Law, Professor of Philosophy & Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Location: Z. Smith Reynolds Library, 4th Floor Auditorium
“Wild Transitional Justice”
Transitional justice refers to the process of dealing with widespread wrongdoing in order to transform political relationships between citizens and the state and to do justice to victims and perpetrators. Wild transitional justice refers to processes that are initiated and conducted by a variety of non-state actors including civil society, corporations, individuals, and possibly rebel groups. People’s tribunals and corporate reparations for slavery are two examples. This paper discusses (1) the features that distinguish such processes as transitional justice efforts and not vigilante justice or cancel culture; and (2) the distinctive questions of legitimate authority and efficacy such processes face.
November 18 – Tobias Flattery, part-time assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University
Location: Wake Forest University Benson Center 401C
“Do Robots Deserve Moral Rights? Even if Not, Should We Act Like They Do?”
Could robots deserve moral rights? That is, could robots ever be the kinds of things that morally matter? Technology ethicists are divided over this question. Some argue that robots just aren’t the kinds of things that could ever truly deserve moral rights. Others disagree, thinking robots do, or soon will, deserve moral rights. But a third group thinks we can ignore the debate about robots deserving moral rights, and yet, they think, we still ought to treat robots as if they deserve moral rights! I’ll explain why we should resist this third group’s argument, and why reflection on their argument has implications for moral education and robot design.