Spring 2021
February 18 – Francisco Gallegos, assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University
“Affective Injustice and Fundamental Affective Goods”
Affective injustice” has been defined as injustice suffered in one’s capacity as an affective (or emotional) being. In this talk, I examine several accounts of affective injustice that have been proposed by other theorists, and I diagnose a common source of problems faced by these accounts-namely, they avoid taking a stance on what it means for our emotional lives to go well or poorly. I then advocate for a new approach to understanding affective injustice that begins by determining which “affective goods” are fundamental.
March 11 – Nicholas Colgrove, teacher-scholar post-doctoral fellow of bioethics and philosophy, Wake Forest University
“Conscientious Objection and Epistemic Humility: Humility as a Reason for Compromise?”
Conscientious objectors include medical professionals who object on moral grounds to providing some service(s) to competent patients even when those services are legal, sought-after, and deemed to be medically appropriate. Whether or not conscientious objection should be permitted is widely debated, though in these debates, the virtue (and role) of epistemic humility is often misunderstood. Contrary to what others have said, I will argue that epistemic humility provides good reason for objectors and their critics to seek compromise, where objectors are permitted to refrain from providing objectionable services, though not in an unrestricted sense.
March 25 – Dana Howard, assistant professor, Ohio State University
“Putting Parents on a Pedestal: Testimony, Admiration, and Epistemic Justice”
Parents of children with disabilities often share their stories to attest to the positive impact parenting such a child has had on their lives. It is important to give due respect to such testimony, but what does due respect entail? This presentation critically examines one particular stance towards such parental testimony which I call the ‘Pedestal Perspective’: audiences may be tempted to interpret these positive views not as an adaptive preference, but rather as an outgrowth of the parents’ extraordinary virtuous character. That is, on the basis of this admiration, audiences may disregard the lessons that parents try to impart to others.
April 8 – Stavroula Glezakos, associate professor and associate chair in philosophy, Wake Forest University and Julie Tannenbaum, associate professor in philosophy, Pomona College
“Consenting to Sex”
This talk is drawn from our book project, which examines the phenomenon of women who do not want to have sex, but who, without threat or coercion, nevertheless willingly go along with a man’s request for, or initiation of, sex. There is ample evidence that this type of encounter is common among both college and post-college aged women. According to some accounts of sexual consent, these are cases of sexual wrongdoing, because the man did not secure the woman’s consent for doing sexual activity X, either because she was not enthusiastic or because her agreement was not explicit or sufficiently unambiguous. The fact that women themselves describe these encounters as consensual has led us to take a closer look at these accounts of sexual consent, and to raise some concerns about them.