Speaker Series

October 24 – Jack Kwong, professor of philosophy and religion, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

“The Nature of Despair”

The Problem of Despair has received much attention in the philosophy of hope. According to this problem, the Standard Account of hope, which claims that hoping for an outcome is a matter of desiring it and believing that its obtainment is possible, is flawed because its definition fails to rule out instances of despair: People who despair, the objection runs, also desire outcomes that they believe are obtainable. While there has been significant debate in the literature over how to define hope so as to distinguish it from despair, surprisingly little work by comparison has been done to shed light on the nature of despair. This paper will attempt to remedy this neglect. In particular, I will argue that the problem of despair rests on a confusion about the nature of hope and of despair. Once this confusion is clarified, we will see that the problem has an easy and elegant solution. We will also end up with a rather robust account of despair, which I argue satisfies a recently proposed list of desiderata of an adequate account of despair. I conclude by discussing some surprising implications of this account of despair.

November 21 – Samuel Reis-Dennis, assistant professor of philosophy, Rice University, Houston, TX

“Satisfaction”

Anger’s opponents tend to hold that anger responds to slights and aims at vengeful, leveling “payback.” It is “rationally resolved” when the wrongdoer suffers a sufficiently debasing amount of pain. Anger’s proponents, on the other hand, tend to moralize anger and its resolution. For these theorists, fitting anger responds to lack of respect or proper regard. It is resolved when we receive moral acknowledgment—not only of our status as moral equals, but of the pain and suffering the wrongdoer’s behavior caused. I argue that both of these dominant interpretations of anger are misguided. To make the case, I attempt to illuminate the range of methods by which anger can be rationally resolved. I focus especially on dueling and sex, two modes of anger-resolution that the standard views cannot explain and that implicate a notion of satisfaction. I argue that the satisfaction victims get from offenders in dueling and sex is a feeling of assurance that they need not feel the shame of lowliness and submission. I conclude that anger construes its subject as possessing a (violated) right against such shame, and any turn of events that makes the shame inappropriate can rationally resolve it.

September 28 – Luc Bovens – professor of philosophy, politics and economics, UNC Chapel Hill

“What is This Thing Called Love?”

What accounts for the constancy of love? What explains the pangs of love lost? How might one overcome the pangs of love lost? I try to offer answers to these question within feature-based, feature-free, and connection-based models of love and distinguish between reflectively endorsable and irreverent variants of these models. The talk builds on the material in Chapter 3 on Love in my book Coping: A Philosophical Guide (OpenBook Publishers, 2021).

October 19 – Sabeen Ahmed – assistant professor of philosophy and peace & conflict studies, Swarthmore College

“Empire of White Supremacy”

Given its resurgence in public discourse, the inconsistency of its deployment, and, most importantly, its status as the defining existential problem of modernity, the current ubiquity of the discourse of ‘white supremacy’ renders the term an especially urgent subject for philosophical interrogation. In lieu of liberal frameworks which would reduce white supremacism to a species of racism, however, I develop and deploy the lens of empire to reveal white supremacy as a historically-specific, racialized configuration of power.

November 9 – Carlos Sanchez – professor of philosophy, San Jose State University

“Accidentality, from Mexican Philosophy to the Aztecs and Back Again”

Central to Aztec/Nahuatl teaching is the reminder that “the earth is slippery.” This means to convey the notion that regardless of how stable you think you are, your stability depends on the earth itself–the earth on which you stand and which moves about the universe. If the earth is slick, slippery, shaky, and slipping about the darkness of space, then everything you know rests on an insecure foundation. The Aztecs insist that if the earth can fall from its orbit, so can you. This idea of an irremediable precariousness makes its way into Mexican existentialism, or Mexistentialism, 400 years later. Emilio Uranga calls it “accidentality.” This talk is primarily about accidentality and what it means for Uranga—how he thinks it defines the Mexican existential condition. In a secondary sense, the talk is also about existentialism and Mexistentialism, how they’re the same and how they are different. I make a point about decolonization, as well, although I will not insist on it.

January 19 – Matthew Shields – assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University

“Rationality, Bad Beliefs, and the Ends of Interpretation”

How can people hold beliefs that seem to fly in the face of the evidence? Two camps have emerged for answering this question: those who emphasize the flaws endemic to human cognition and those who treat these beliefs as products of our inevitable epistemic dependence, making them more rational than we might think. I argue that both camps have overlooked that we must often decide how we will interpret the agents we encounter who hold bad beliefs and that this recognition of our own interpretive agency can resolve much of the tension between the two camps and point to new directions for research.

Monday, February 13 – Jennifer Morton, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania

“Redefining Poverty: An Agential Theory”

Poverty has traditionally been conceived of as a state of deprivation. To be poor is to lack something essential to human flourishing. How that something is conceived—in terms of welfare, resources, or capabilities—and how it is measured—in absolute terms or relative to a social standard—has been the subject of much debate within development circles. In this paper, I put forward a theory of poverty rooted in the philosophy of action. I argue that to be poor is to be in a context in which an agent’s capacity for long-term deliberation and planning is systemically undermined by rational pressure to engage in efficient short-term deliberation. In other words, to be poor is to constantly turn one’s mind to the immediate satisfaction of current needs and desires at the expense of deliberating about the pursuit of long-term projects and ends one deeply values.

March 23 – Dr. Stephen Angle, Wesleyan University
Annenberg Forum (Carswell 111) at 6:00 p.m.

Wake Forest University Co-sponsors – Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, The Program for Leadership and Character, and Department of Philosophy

“A Confucian Guide to the Good Life”

Dr. Angle has studied Confucius for more than three decades and realized that Confucian insights and values made sense of his life, here and now. At its core, Confucianism describes a way for us to live and grow together in our world—a way characterized at its best by joy, beauty, and harmony. By drawing on the greats of the Confucian tradition as well as various modern thinkers, Dr. Angle will explain what Confucianism is and make a case that it is worth trying out today.

March 24 – 2nd Annual Braswell Philosophy Conference
Supported by the Wake Forest University Kevin H. Braswell Philosophy Society and the Department of Philosophy
Location: Wake Forest University Benson Center 401, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
This event is open to the public.

The Braswell Philosophy Society and Department of Philosophy at Wake Forest University is holding their 2^nd Annual Braswell Philosophy Conference.

The paper submission deadline is February 25 and the acceptance notification will be no later than March 13. Any paper pertaining to philosophy across a variety of disciplines including social and political issues, ethics, religion, metaphysics, legal or epistemology are welcome for submission. This paper can be a piece specifically created for this conference, or a paper you have already written and feel proud of.

If you’d like to know more about the conference and paper submission, please contact komoas19@wfu.edu.

March 30 – Leslie Francis, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Alfred C. Emery Endowed Professor of Law, and Adjunct Professor in Political Science and in Medicine at the University of Utah
James Steintrager Lecture in Political Philosophy and Jurisprudence
Location: Wake Forest University Tribble Hall DeTamble Auditorium A110

Supported by the Wake Forest University Department of Philosophy
Co-sponsors: Wake Forest University Center for Bioethics, Health and Society, the Wake Forest University Department of Politics and Politics and International Affairs, and the Wake Forest University Center School of Law Health Law and Policy Program

“States of Health: Federalism and Bioethics”

Far from settling the issues it raised, the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs to withdraw federal constitutional protection for reproductive liberty has intensified conflicts about federalism. States opposed to abortion rights are seeking to govern what their residents do out of state or what others can bring or send into the state. Abortion opponents are going to court to erect nationwide barriers to the most common method of early abortion, medication abortion. On the other side, states are enacting statutes to protect providers who offer abortion care and the patients they treat. Theories of federalism offer justifications for policy variations among states, including experimentation, political and cultural differences, and the benefits of locating decisions closer to the people they will affect. In this talk, I will argue that none of these justifications support the failures of some states to recognize rights that are appearing in the wake of Dobbs. Moreover, under non-ideal circumstances protection of the right to travel assumes critical importance.

April 20 – Alva Noë, Professor of Philosophy, Chair, University of California, Berkeley
Claude V. Roebuck Lecture in Philosophy

“Perception as a Relationship”

In this talk I will explore the idea that to perceive something is to enter into a relationship with it. Perception is a caring attitude, and love itself, an epistemic emotion, or so I will argue.

September 22 – Amie Thomasson – Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Dartmouth College

“What Can Philosophy Do?”

Philosophy has traditionally been presented as aiming to discover deep facts about what exists, or about what the world is really like. But today, those seem like projects better pursued by the natural sciences. So what (if anything) is left for philosophy to do? I will argue that we can do better by thinking of philosophy as addressing questions about what we should do, including how we should think or talk. On this way of reconceiving philosophy, the work of philosophy remains deep, interesting, and important–and capable of reshaping how we think and how we live.

October 6 – Alejandro Hortal -visiting assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University

“Virtue Nudges: Using Choice Architecture to Form Virtuous Citizens”

Nudges are policy interventions intended to change people’s behaviors and habits by organizing the choice environment. Nudges are used to boost vaccinations, increase contributions to retirement accounts, or improve healthy habits in citizens without limiting their choices (freedom). Due to their low cost and efficiency, many governments are implementing them. I argue that nudges also have the potential to form virtuous citizens in an Aristotelian sense. They do so by inculcating habits in people, respecting their freedom to choose while guaranteeing deliberation. Considering their affordability, potential effectiveness, and libertarian approach, governmental agencies and institutions should seek ways to use them in conjunction with educational interventions.

October 27 – Mark Murphy – Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. – Georgetown University

Guy T. and Clara Carswell Philosophy Lecture

“Why Does God Do What God Does?”

Many important arguments for or against theism assume that we can explain and predict God’s action – that we can know why God does what God does. How is this possible? A couple of popular answers appeal to God’s being morally perfect and God’s being maximally loving. I will reject these answers, offering instead a view of divine action based on God’s holiness.

November 10 – Cynthia Tessien – professor of practice, Dept. of Accountancy, Wake Forest University Undergraduate Program

Supported by the Braswell Philosophy Society

“Accounting, Business, and YOU”

What makes a business successful? Cash? Culture? Employees? Though these are good answers, none of these matter unless a business aligns with underlying moral values. Because of this, executives of a business need to make the right decisions and uphold the organizational and ethical values as well as theirs when it comes to hiring, firing, applying accounting treatments, etc. Only in this manner, can all customers, investors, vendors, employees be satisfied with the operation of a business.

November 17 (Talk at 5:15) – Amanda Corris – assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University

“Perceiving Wildness”

Experiencing the wildness of nature can be exhilarating, awe-inspiring, or even terrifying. But how might we characterize our perceptual experiences of wildness? How do the ways in which we perceive wildness shape our cognitive, psychological, and emotional states, and in virtue of what do we perceive wildness in these ways? In this talk, I argue that a key aspect of these experiences is perceiving wildness as being self-sustaining, conveying a sense of autonomy, relationality, and perhaps even selfhood.

February 16 – Meghan Sullivan, Wilsey Family Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
Location: Wake Forest University Benson Center 401B

“Love and Arbitrariness”

Should we have reasons for our preferences about other people? This talk will argue that we should, and then will do the heavy lifting of trying to identify what such reasons could be and how we might respond to them. The talk develops a specific kind of arbitrariness problem for love and friendship. Then it looks at four prominent theories of love and reasons and shows how they fail to adequately address the arbitrariness problem. The final part will introduce you to a new theory, agapism, and sketch its main commitments. I will suggest how it solves the arbitrariness problem.

March 24 – Win-chiat Lee, professor of philosophy and Tatum Family Faculty Fellow, Wake Forest University
Location: Wake Forest University Benson Center 410

“Human Rights and Nationality as the Right to Have Rights”

Human rights are rights we can claim as human beings, regardless of nationality. Hannah Arendt is skeptical of such rights. In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, she famously coins the term “the right to have rights” to refer to what is lost by racial and ethnic minorities when they become stateless as the result of racial or ethnic purity nationality laws, exposing them to perils such as persecution, slavery, and even extermination. Can human rights be claimed only when humanity becomes a state-like political community?

March 31 – Herman Rapaport, Reynolds Professor of English, Literature, Wake Forest University, will speak on his new book on Derrida (co-sponsored talk)
Location: Wake Forest University Tribble Hall DeTamble Auditorium (A110)

April 14 – Massimo Renzo, Yeoh Professor of Politics, Philosophy & Law, Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London
Location: Wake Forest University Benson 401A

“Breaking Bad. Autonomy, Wrongdoing and Meaning in Life”

Can there be value in autonomously choosing to pursue a life of wrongdoing? Most philosophers reject this view. I will try to defend it. I will also argue that adopting this view does not have any of the counterintuitive implications one might be tempted to associate with it.

April 24 – Braswell Philosophy Conference
Location: Wake Forest University Tribble Hall DeTamble Auditorium (A110) – Cancelled

The Braswell Philosophy Society and Philosophy Department at Wake Forest University is holding their 2^nd Annual Moral and Political Philosophy Conference Sunday, April 24, 2022. This event is open to the public.

The submission deadline has been pushed back to Saturday April 2nd! Any paper pertaining to philosophy across a variety of disciplines including social and political issues, ethics, religion, metaphysics, or epistemology are welcome for submission. This paper can be a piece specifically created for this conference, or a paper you have already written and feel proud of.

If you’d like to know more, all of the information about the conference and paper submissions can be found on the flyer attached below, or you can email the Braswell Vice President Kylie Yorke at yorkka19@wfu.edu.

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.

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.

September 17 – Professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko, University of Notre Dame

“Living a Good Life When Everything is Canceled”

Major changes can make it difficult to feel like we’re living good lives. This is especially true when the changes bring with them uncertainty about the future, or major disruption to our daily routines. On the other hand, there’s a tradition stretching to ancient philosophy that sees such moments as an opportunity to consider what matters most in life, and that provides us with tools and resources to navigate through them. In this talk we’ll look at some of this wisdom (from the stoics, virtue ethics, and others), and relate it to issues that impact us all even today.

This Zoom talk requires preregistration. Please visit the following address to complete this easy process. https://forms.gle/c3qVmxsUmf7a5CC57

October 5 – Brandon Warmke, assistant professor of philosophy, Bowling Green University

“Groundstanding Apart: How Status-Seeking Divides Us”

Moral grandstanding is the use of discussions about morality and politics for self-promotion. In this talk, I’ll explain why people grandstand, what it looks like, and drawing from new psychological research, I’ll argue that one of its negative effects is that it’s pushing Americans apart along ideological lines.

This Zoom talk requires preregistration. Please visit the following address to complete this easy process. https://forms.gle/5KvohLRMA65tdDRX9

October 22 – Emily Austin, associate professor of philosophy, and Bitove Family Faculty Fellow, Wake Forest University

“Pleasure and the Plague: An Epicurean Guide to Pandemic Living”

While Epicurus is not exactly a household name, the key starting points of his ethics need no explanation—pleasure feels good, while anxiety does not. As a committed hedonist, Epicurus thinks the only truly good thing is pleasure, and he thinks freedom from anxiety is itself the greatest pleasure. Our current moment, however, presents a serious threat to the entire Epicurean system, since pandemics are certainly unpleasant and seem to provoke anxiety in their very nature. In this talk, I show why the Epicureans might actually be best equipped to weather the storm of a pandemic and why their account is superior to philosophical systems that reject pleasure as a genuine source of value (e.g., Stoicism).

This Zoom talk requires preregistration. Please visit the following address to complete this easy process. https://forms.gle/r6uDqvD39NgW8Evp9.

November 19 – Jonathan Barker, visiting assistant professor of philosophy, Wake Forest University

“Naturalism and Debunking Arguments”

Debunking argumentsseek to undermine our justification for holding certain beliefs—ex. moral beliefs, religious beliefs, mathematical beliefs, and ordinary perceptual beliefs, among many others—by appealing to facts about their causal-historical origins. I introduce debunking arguments and explain their epistemological significance, using evolutionary debunking arguments in metaethics as a case study. I then argue that, contra the current orthodoxy, naturalists are in no better position to block the debunking threat than their non-naturalist counterparts.

This Zoom talk requires preregistration. Please visit the following address to complete this easy process. https://forms.gle/RyDMgASrmjc3GsbB6

January 30 – R. J. Snell, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy Program, Eastern University

“The Terrible Covenant of Sloth: Acedia and the Hatred of Being”

Can acedia, often translated as sloth, be understood not simply as a personal vice but as deeply informing our cultural moment? Sloth is a lack of magnanimity, a failure to desire and will the fullness of our good, a perverted humility which rejects the good as making too many claims on our freedom. Rather than being magnanimous or great-souled, we’d rather be free. Oddly, sloth is less about laziness than we might think, and even our addiction to work reveals our sloth, our impatience with limits, our odd lust for power, and our addiction to autonomy and freedom.

February 20 – Christopher Shields, George N. Shuster Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

“Good Bad Better Worse”

Here is a choice for you, supremely, multiply gifted student that you are. You might choose one of two careers: given your remarkable musical talents and your love of music, you might become a concertizing cellist; but given your shrewd legal mind and your passionate commitment to justice, you might become an eminent jurist. You realize that as a practical matter, you cannot do both at the level at which you might wish to do either; and you do not wish to do both sub-optimally. Your goal in life is to maximize value overall. Which do you choose? You reasonably see your choice as enhancing one of two values: you can augment the world’s beauty or you can augment the world’s justice. We will pursue two questions about this choice: First question: is justice worth more or less than beauty? Second question: does this first question make any sense?

March 3 – Lee Braver, professor of philosophy, University of South Florida

“How to Say the Same Thing: Heidegger’s Missing Language of Being”

Heidegger argues that language contains an interpretation that leads us to think inappropriately about reality and ourselves. He creates new terms and new ways of writing in order to express his views which conflict with this traditional interpretation. One of these ways is polysemy, the simultaneous use of multiple senses of a word or phrase. This feature of language is usually condemned by philosophers as a cause of confusion, but Heidegger uses it to express phenomena that elude normal ways of using language. Being has many ways to be which are simultaneously profoundly unified, a relationship he calls “the same.” Statements that hold multiple meanings within the same words can express this (and even embody it) in a way that clear-cut statements cannot. This has important ramifications, for Heidegger uses polysemy both to express obscure ideas, and as evidence and inspiration for some of these new ways to think about language, poetry, subjectivity, history, thinking, and technology. Understanding polysemy both helps us comprehend his difficult writing and illuminates some of the phenomena his writing addresses.

March 26 – Rescheduled for September – Meghan Sullivan, Rev. John A. O’Brien Collegiate Chair and professor of philosophy, University of Notre Dame

“The Love Imperative: A Defense”

We naturally think of love as discriminatory — you love your partner more than strangers, your friends more than your adversaries. Universal love, if we can even understand it, seems only like an option for saints or hippies…not a realistic ethical framework for most of us and not a normative ideal to evaluate our preferences against. I think this partiality assumption is unmotivated, and we should take more seriously the view that we ought (morally, rationally) to love everyone with dignity. In this paper, I’ll develop a secular case for the Love Imperative based on a long-standing arbitrariness problem for our preferences over people. I will defend it from some difficult objections, indicate how it stands as a viable alternative to other prominent normative accounts of love and friendship, and discuss the practical consequences of adopting the imperative.

April 2 – Rescheduled date TBA – Leslie Francis, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Alfred C. Emery Endowed Professor of Law, University of Utah
James Steintrager Lecture in Political Philosophy and Jurisprudence

“States of Health: Federalism and Bioethics”

April 16 – Rescheduled for November – Colleen Murphy, Professor in the College of Law and the Department of Philosophy and Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

October 3 – Julian Young, Honorary Research Associate, University of Auckland and Kenan Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Wake Forest University

“Scheler, Nietzsche, Christian Love and Ressentiment”

Christian morality, according to Nietzsche, is ‘slave morality’, the product of the ‘ressentiment’ of the slaves of the Roman Empire against their oppressive masters. The Catholic phenomenologist Max Scheler, argues that while Nietzsche is wrong about the morality of ‘Christian love’ he is right about something into which Christian morality can easily degenerate which he calls ‘modern morality’. I argue that while Scheler is not entirely right about modern morality, he is not entirely wrong either.

November 7 – Michelle Maiese, professor of philosophy, Emmanuel College

“Are Psychopaths Autonomous Agents?”

Two central conditions for autonomous agency that are highlighted by many existing accounts include (1) reasons-responsivity, and (2) authenticity. However, available evidence indicates that psychopaths are inadequately responsive to reasons, and also seem to lack a set of enduring concerns that might reveal which desires and attitudes are truly theirs. This renders them impulsive and also leads them to disregard the interests and concerns of others. Drawing from the enactivist approach in philosophy of mind, I will argue that both their prudential deficits and apparent moral failings result from a disruption to autonomous agency, and that this disruption is rooted, at a deeper level, in a lack of well-developed affective framing patterns.

November 20 – Eric Schwitzgebel, professor of philosophy, University of California, Riverside

“Aiming for Moral Mediocrity”

Most people aim to be about as morally good as their peers—not especially better, not especially worse. We do not aim to be good, or non-bad, or to act permissibly rather than impermissibly, by fixed moral standards. Rather, we notice the typical behavior of our peers, then calibrate toward so-so. This is a somewhat bad way to be, but it’s not a terribly bad way to be. We are somewhat morally criticizable for having low moral ambitions. Typical arguments defending the moral acceptability of low moral ambitions—the So-What-If-I’m-Not-a-Saint Excuse, the Fairness Objection, the Happy Coincidence Defense, and the claim that you’re already in The-Most-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot—do not survive critical scrutiny.

February 14 – Heather Battaly, professor of philosophy, University of Connecticut

“Can Closed-mindedness be an Intellectual Virtue?”

What is closed-mindedness? Is it always an intellectual vice? Could it be an intellectual virtue? This paper adopts a working analysis of closed-mindedness as an unwillingness or inability to engage seriously with relevant intellectual options. It argues that closed-mindedness is often an intellectual vice. But, in epistemically hostile environments, closed-mindedness will be an intellectual virtue.

March 21 – Sam Scheffler, professor of philosophy, New York University

“Temporal Neutrality and the Bias toward the Future”

Many philosophers have held that rationality requires one to have an equal concern for all parts of one’s life. In the view of these philosophers, temporal neutrality is a requirement of rationality. Yet Derek Parfit has argued that most of us are not, in fact, temporally neutral. We exhibit a robust bias toward the future. Parfit maintains that this bias is bad for us, and that our lives would go better if we were temporally neutral. Like other neutralists, he also believes that the bias is irrational, however widespread and robust it may be. My lecture will assess these criticisms and offer a qualified defense of the bias toward the future.

April 11 – Alexander Rosenberg, R. Taylor Cole Professor of Philosophy, Duke University

“Neuroscience and the Theory of Mind”

I argue that recent work in neuroscience shows that belief/desire psychology is completely groundless. It’s easy to see why our commitment to folk psychology (aka the theory of mind, TOM) is an evolutionary adaptation that is hard wired in human infants. Its explanatory and predictive weakness is equally easy to see. The explanation of why it is so weak is that the brain is not organized in anything like the way that the TOM requires. This is what Nobel Prize winning neuroscience reveals. I’ll sketch the details.

December 6 – Jessica Gordon-Roth, assistant professor of philosophy, University of Minnesota

“Recovering Early Modern Women Writers: Some Tensions”

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? In this talk, I argue that so often we treat early modern women philosophers’ texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of analytic philosophy, and in so doing, we may be setting up our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect.

September 20 – Erin Tarver, associate professor, Oxford College of Emory University

“The Moral Equivalent of Football”

There are ample reasons to be morally concerned about football. Yet from a pragmatic perspective, the declaration that football is morally indefensible is less than helpful. If we want to actually do something about it, we need a different ethical approach. In this paper, I argue that the problem Americans currently face with football is comparable to the problem that the pragmatist William James faced when attempting to advance the cause of pacifism against the intractable problem of war—and that we have much to learn from James’s response. James was prudent, I argue, to search for a “moral equivalent of war”: an alternative venue through which the virtues people associate with war can be cultivated without bloodshed. Yet, the sexism inherent in James’s specific approach to that “moral equivalent” was precisely what gave rise to football culture in America in the first place. If we are to find a moral equivalent of football, I will argue, we must remain open to the possibility that its virtues might be different in kind than the ones advocated by James or by his football-enthusiast contemporaries.

October 25 – Sonia Sikka, professor of philosophy, University of Ottawa

“Heidegger and the Question of Moral Relativism”

Heidegger’s affirmation of the historically situated character of all human thought, combined with his apparent rejection of universal or objective values, has occasioned the charge that his philosophy inevitably leads to moral relativism, offering no sure guidelines for ethical judgement and action. Such a charge is naturally made more urgent by Heidegger’s support for Nazism in the early 1930’s. I examine Heidegger’s position on this topic as a way of exploring the idea of “moral relativism” and the universalist alternatives against which it is usually defined. Agreeing with the interpretations of Julian Young and Frank Schalow, I argue that Heidegger is actually a kind of moral realist (for lack of a better term) who rejects the fact/value distinction, and I suggest that he offers a promising model for pursuing moral truth in a historically flexible and open-ended manner. Against defenders of moral universalism, moreover, I propose that no good purpose is served by insisting on timeless principles. I offer as an example the Kantian notion of persons as ends in themselves.

November 15 – Sara Protasi, assistant professor, University of Puget Sounda

“Class Envy or Righteous Indignation? Emotional Responses to Socioeconomic Inequality”

The accusation of being motivated by “class envy” is often hurled at defenders of egalitarian ideals, in both everyday politics and academic discussions. Yet, envy is still a neglected topic in political philosophy, notwithstanding the contemporary revival of political emotions. In this talk, I review the historical debate between egalitarians and conservatives: conservatives accuse egalitarians of being motivated by envy, while egalitarians deny the charge and further argue that their principles of justice can be justified on independent grounds. Both sides seem to agree that being motivated by envy is bad, and that envy can never be rationally or morally appropriate. Some recent contributions have advanced more nuanced views, such as that envy can play a legitimate motivating role to fight inequality, or can even be rationally appropriate in contexts of systemic injustice. While on the right track, these approaches rely mostly on philosophical sources and frameworks. An empirically-informed moral psychology can shed light on the nature of envy as a political emotion: I argue that certain varieties of envy can be productive and ethical reactions to inequality, but I also show that other emotions, such as resentment, indignation and admiration, might be more appropriate political tools in certain situations.

December 6 – Jessica Gordon-Roth, University of Minnesota

February 8 – Rachel Cristy, Princeton University

“Commanders and Scientific Laborers: Nietzsche on the Relationship Between Philosophy and Science”

Nietzsche’s attitude toward science in his later works is ambivalent: he makes approving remarks about its findings, rigorous methodology, and spirit of adventurousness and intellectual integrity; but he also points out its limitations, criticizes his contemporaries’ overvaluation of science, and rebukes scientists for encroaching onto the territory of philosophers. This raises the question: what does Nietzsche think the proper role of science is, and how should it interact with philosophy? I argue that, according to Nietzsche, philosophy is supposed to set goals for science. The distinctive task of philosophers is to “create values,” which involves two steps: (1) envisioning the ideals that human society should realize, and (2) turning those ideals into prescriptions for behavior and the organization of society. Philosophers need the help of scientists to proceed from step (1) to step (2), because scientists (social as well as natural) can tell them how various value systems affect the psychology and cultural achievements of their adherents. With a certain ideal for human life in mind, philosophers should delegate scientists to investigate what moral rules and social arrangements were in place when this ideal was most fully realized in the past, or to test hypotheses as to what ways of life might realize it in the future.

February 15 – Dimitris Apostolopoulos, University of Notre Dame

“From Kant to Hegel: Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenological Explanation”

It is often thought that phenomenology offers an explanation of the conditions for the possibility of conscious experience. While some commentators have stressed Merleau-Ponty’s transcendental commitments, a closer look at his view of phenomenology’s explanatory work shows that he rejects two key transcendental claims: that explanations should aim for completeness; and that they have a regressive structure. His hesitations about explanatory completeness are motivated by his sensitivity to the idealizing and transformative effects of phenomenological description. This bears directly on the philosophical adequacy of regressive models. If phenomenology is to make good on its philosophical goals, models that move from phenomena to their conditions of possibility are insufficient: explanation is better understood as a continuing critical reevaluation of the meaning of experience, and a willingness to reinvent the categories used to explain it. These commitments suggest that instead of Kant or Husserl, Merleau-Ponty is more proximate to Hegel’s view of philosophical methodology. This offers us an opportunity to rethink phenomenology’s conceptual lineage to German Idealism, and suggests the possibility of developing Merleau-Ponty’s incipient account into a systematic phenomenological alternative to existing models of explanation.

February 22 – Francisco Gallegos, Georgetown University

“Heidegger’s Hidden Theory of Moods: Overlooked insights in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics”

What lessons regarding the nature of affectivity can we extract from Heidegger’s analysis of boredom in Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics? In this talk, I argue that scholars have overlooked one of the most groundbreaking insights in this text: Heidegger’s analysis of boredom articulates the framework for a general account of moods as distinct from emotions, dispositions, and other affective phenomena. According to this account, moods disclose the situational context of our ongoing experience, thereby altering our experience of time, the “emotional accessibility” of the things we encounter, and the “normative grip” of our evaluative thoughts and perceptions.

March 15 – Jonathan Jacobs, associate professor of philosophy, Saint Louis University

“Those Who Heard Said it Thundered: A Silent God or a Silenced God?”

Many people find God to be absent or hidden from them. Philosophers have used this fact as an argument for the claim that God does not exist: If God were to exist, he would want us to know that he exists and to relate to Him and so he would give us sufficient evidence for His existence and love for us. But many people fail to see any evidence of God’s existence, through no fault of their own. But I will argue that the ways in which our social environments are structured might make it difficult to hear God. As a result, it is possible that God is not silent, but rather has been silenced.

March 22 – Carol Hay, associate professor of philosophy, UMass-Lowell

“Solidarity, Intersectionality, & Resisting Oppression”

Most of us are familiar with the idea that we should respect ourselves. I’ve argued that this duty of self-respect means that people who are oppressed have a duty to resist their oppression. But what happens when this duty of self-respecting resistance comes into conflict with other duties you have—say, the duty to cultivate solidarity with other members of your oppressed group? I’ll argue that in addition to its more familiar harms, oppression can harm you by imposing certain kinds of moral dilemmas, placing its victims in unfair situations where it’s impossible to fulfill their multiple competing commitments. Oppression has been famously described as like being caught in a birdcage, as being trapped, constrained, closed in on all sides. What I want to suggest is that in some cases oppression is better thought of as akin to a rack—a torture device that rips its victims apart by pulling their limbs in opposite directions.

April 12 – Alex Madva, assistant professor, Cal Poly Pomona

“Social Psychology, Social Experience, and the Nature of Contemporary Racial Bias”

Social psychologists often describe “implicit” racial biases as entirely unconscious. However, empirical evidence consistently suggests that individuals are aware of their implicit biases, albeit in partial, inarticulate, or even distorted ways. This evidence also demonstrates that different ways of interpreting implicit biases have radically different effects on how individuals think, feel, and act. This talk sketches how context, individual differences, and structural power relations influence the interpretation and effects of implicit bias, and explores our individual and collective responsibility for interpreting our biases as justly and accurately as possible. Along the way, I’ll also address questions about the cognitive structure of implicit biases and recent criticisms about popular ways of measuring them.

Hubert Dreyfus Memorial Conference – Sept. 22-24
All sessions will be held in Tribble Hall DeTamble Auditorium and open to the public.

Friday, Sept. 22

5:00-7:00 p.m. – Wayne Martin (Essex): ‘Fake News? Why is Dan Dennett Telling the Media that He Refuted Bert Dreyfus on AI?’ (Co-authored with Dylan Williams) Commentator: Taylor Carman (Barnard) Chair: Julian Young (Wake Forest)

In an interview with the BBC, broadcast on 4 April, 2017, Daniel Dennett told BBC reporter Jim Al-Khalili that he had, in his very first published paper, refuted Hubert Dreyfus’s claims about the limits of Artificial Intelligence, and that his refutation was subsequently vindicated by, inter alia, the 1997 victory of Deep Blue over Gary Kasparov. It was not the first time that Dennett had made such a claim. He also made it in a joint interview with Dreyfus on The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour in 1997, following the historic match. At that time, Bert insisted that Dennett was flatly misrepresenting his position. I propose to review the record to try to determine who was right—or if perhaps they were both wrong. What was the logical form of Bert’s argument in What Computers Can’t Do, and in his earlier paper on “Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence”? What was Dennett’s refutation in that early paper? And what did Dreyfus actually say about chess?

Saturday, Sept. 23

8:30-10:00 a.m. – David Cerbone (West Virginia) ‘Ground, Background, and Rough Ground: Dreyfus, Wittgenstein, and Phenomenology’ Commentator: Joseph Schear (Oxford) Chair: B Scot Rousse (Pluralistic Networks/Berkeley)

This paper critically examines Dreyfus’s preliminary and fundamental claims about our background understanding of being. Dreyfus ascribes to the background an explanatory role in our ability to make sense of things, while also characterizing it as largely inaccessible to reflective comprehension. Drawing primarily on some of Wittgenstein’s ideas about explanation and understanding, I offer a more deflationary conception of the background whose residual sense of mystery is largely an artefact of philosophically problematic ways of thinking about meaning.

10:15-11:45 a.m. – Eric Kaplan (CBS/The Big Bang Theory) ‘Faith and Existential Humorism as Contrasting Approaches to Life’ Commentator: B Scot Rousse (Pluralistic Networks/Berkeley) Chair: Edward Pile (Essex)

In this paper I look at Kierkegaard’s approach to comedy and faith as ways of living life as he presents them in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Taking Dreyfus’s account of Religiousness B as a starting out point, I look at Kierkegaard’s somewhat puzzling accounts of what he calls “existential humorism”. In a move that has attracted little notice Kierkegaard claims that existential humorism is the highest sphere of human existence except for Religiousness B. After contrasting Kierkegaard’s view of humor and irony with that of Jonathan Lear who, incorrectly in my view, takes Kierkegaard as an ally, I discuss Kierkegaard’s view of the “warrant” of comedy. I then lay out his argument for why existential humorism is the penultimate sphere of existence — that is, why it gets as close to faith as it is possible to go, but ultimately doesn’t succeed. This discussion turns out to be important to understanding what exactly Religiousness B is, how it works, and whether is possible to express it.

2:15 – 3:45 p.m. – Charles Spinosa (Vision Consulting) ‘Coping with Time in Organizations: Insights from Heidegger’ Commentator: Bill Blattner (Georgetown) Chair: Iain Thomson (New Mexico)

Conceptions of time and practices for managing time play an important role in both popular management literature and process organization studies. In popular literature, managers have too little time. In organization studies, managers have multiple time-reckoning practices and experiences of time. In response, we explicate and defend Heidegger’s account of primordial time to show the inauthenticity of living with either too little time or many alternative temporal structurings. People are true to primordial (kairotic) time when they face their existential death—the emerging practices that will make their lives meaningless—accept the past emotions that well up on that account and adjust themselves to accept the past and avoid existential death. They then do what is essential. Alternatively, taking over other temporal structurings amounts to living as another kind of self-interpreting being—an organization or a tribe—and is inauthentic. An episode from Steve Jobs’s career illustrates authentic Heideggerian time management.

4:00 – 5:30 p.m. – Iain Thomson (New Mexico) ‘Heidegger on Death’
Commentator: Stephan Käufer (Franklin and Marshall) Chair: Charles Taylor (McGill)

I present a stream-lined and simplified version of the view I developed in “Death and Demise” for Wrathall’s Cambridge Companion to Being and Time. Explaining Heidegger’s phenomenology of death, I both distinguish it from and connect it to ordinary demise, and say a bit about how the view developed in Heidegger’s thinking.

5:45 – 7:15 p.m. – Mark Wrathall (Oxford) and Patrick Londen (Riverside) ‘Maximal Grip: Dreyfusian Phenomenology and the Space of Motivations’ Chair: David Cerbone (West Virginia)

We want to talk about how Bert Dreyfus shaped the development of a existential phenomenology in the English-speaking world, and we will focus on his appropriation of the idea of a maximal grip in Merleau-Ponty into a central insight into the structure of human existence.

Sunday Sept. 24

8:30 – 10:00 a.m. – Julian Young (Wake Forest) ‘Heidegger, Critical Theory, and the Critique of Technology’ Chair: John Richardson (NYU)

Superficially, there is a strong similarity between the critique of technology provided by Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas, on the one hand, and Heidegger on the other. The problem of technology, these critical theorists argue, is that the social technology of industrialized modernity has become so all-embracing as to imprison us in, as Weber called it, an ‘iron cage.’ This has reversed the master-slave relation between human being and machine. We are compelled to serve the interests of the economic machine rather than the machine serving ours. The task, then, is to re-establish human freedom by reversing the reversal.

Similarly, it seems, Heidegger argues that the effect of modern technology is to reduce us to ‘human resource’ and thereby deprive us of freedom. Whereas, however, the critical theorists’ ‘freedom’ is clearly ‘freedom of the will,’ Heidegger insists that the important freedom that we have lost has nothing to do with the will. It is, rather, freedom from the one-dimensionality of our technological disclosure of reality, freedom to stand in ‘the free.’ To become fully free in this sense is to become ‘open’ to the ‘wonder that a world worlds, that there is something rather than nothing, that there are things, and we are in their midst.’ To stand in the light of such wonder is, says Heidegger, to become the ‘guardian’ of all natural beings. Critical theory, by contrast, only cares about human beings. It is no accident that no environmental ethics has arisen from either Marxist or neo-Marxist thought.

10:15 – 11:45 a.m. – Taylor Carman (Barnard) ‘Husserl’s Internalism’ Commentator: Charles Siewert (Rice) Chair: Mark Wrathall (Oxford)

According to many scholars, especially those in the tradition of Hubert Dreyfus (myself included), Husserl was a Cartesian thinker committed to (a kind of) internalism, while Heidegger endorsed (a kind of) externalism. Steven Crowell, A. D. Smith, and Dan Zahavi have recently argued, on the contrary, that Husserl was no more an internalist than Heidegger and that Being and Time is best read as an extension or expansion rather than a wholesale repudiation of Husserl’s phenomenological project. Crowell, Smith, and Zahavi can argue as they do only by ignoring glaring textual evidence against their readings of Husserl, misunderstanding basic principles of Husserl’s phenomenology, and finally missing what is even at issue in characterizing Husserl’s theory as (a kind of) internalism. Not surprisingly, they fail to see what is innovative and important in Heidegger’s critique of Husserl.

October 26 – John Bowlin, Robert L. Stuart Professor of Philosophy and Christian Ethics, Princeton Theological Seminary

“Human Dignity and Freedom from Domination: a Thomistic Sketch”

Among Christian theologians and ethicists, human rights and human dignity have fallen on hard times. Talk of human rights, they say, encourages unwarranted self-regard. Talk of human dignity tends to be either too abstract and thus morally unhelpful or too determinate and thus exclusionary.

In this paper, I address these worries by considering Aquinas’s account of the natural law, of our status as persons subject to divine rule, of the fact that we are citizens to a sovereign not slaves to master. It’s this status—citizens of a divine commonwealth—that, for Thomas, accounts for our shared human dignity and gives it normative punch. By virtue of this political status, this dignity, we have a basic right not to be dominated, a right not to be subject to the arbitrary power of another. I conclude by highlighting the relevance of Thomas’s account for contemporary discourses of human dignity and human rights, both religious and secular.

November 2 – Angela Potochnik, associate professor, University of Cincinnati

“Idealization and the Aims of Science”

Idealizations are assumptions employed without regard to whether they are true and often with full knowledge that they are false. In this talk, I will outline the views set forth in my brand new book of the same name. I first motivate a strong view of idealizations’ centrality to science and diagnose the reason for that centrality. Then I reconsider the aims of science in light of idealization’s centrality. On the account I develop, science does not pursue truth directly, but instead aims to support human cognitive and practical ends. This has implications for philosophical accounts of scientific explanation, how we should think about the relationships among different fields of science, how social and political values influence science, and the nature of scientific knowledge.

November 30 – Anja Jauernig, associate professor of Philosophy, New York University

“Levels of Reality or How to be an Idealist and a Realist at the Same Time ”

Kant calls his ontological theory ‘transcendental idealism’, and presents as one of its central tenets that empirical objects, such as tables and cats, are not things in themselves but mere appearances. But he also expresses his allegiance to what he calls ‘empirical realism’, and asserts that empirical objects are empirically real. Some readers take this to show that by classifying empirical objects as transcendentally ideal Kant cannot mean that they are fully mind-dependent, or that their existence is mind-dependent, in a way comparable to Berkeley’s view. Rather, Kant’s idealism must be weaker, and should be understood as concerning only certain properties of empirical objects, which are otherwise mind-independent. On my view, this ‘tame’ reading of Kant is untenable; he is committed to a strong form of idealism, according to which empirical objects are mind-dependent with respect to all of their properties as well as their existence. The project for this talk is to explain how it is possible for Kant to be both an idealist in this strong sense and an empirical realist at the same time. The key to solving this puzzle lies in recognizing that he is committed to a tiered ontology that comprises different levels of reality.