November 5th, 2009

• Two Cheers for Affirmative Action

  3:30pm David Boonin, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will offer a talk titled, “Two Cheers for Affirmative Action.”

February 19th, 2010

• Immortality by John Martin Fischer (University of California Riverside)

  3:30pm I discuss various objections to the idea that embodied immortality could be desirable for human beings. I argue against the “immortality curmudgeons”, such as Heidegger and Bernard Williams, that such immortality could conceivably be attractive to human beings.
  
  THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

February 26th, 2010

• Berkeley and Reid on Acquired Perception by Rebecca Copenhaver (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30am

  A common view in psychology and philosophy holds that strictly speaking we see very little – we see only facing surface features like color, boundaries and illumination.  Everything else is filled in by the mind.  I think that this view is wrong.  I use George Berkeley and Thomas Reid to illustrate how this putatively common sense view is a piece of theory and a product of history.

  THIS EVEN IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

March 5th, 2010

• Plato on Ignorance as a Cognitive Power by Nick Smith (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm
  

March 12th, 2010

• Eudaimonia and Practical Wisdom by Joel Martinez (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm

March 19th, 2010

• Epistemic Norms In Light Of Doxastic Voluntarism by Alex von Stein (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm

April 9th, 2010

• Skilled Movement and Embodied Cognition by John Sutton (Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, Sidney, Australia)

  3:30pm

April 15th, 2010

• When Things Fall Apart: On The Insufficiency Of Virtue For Happiness by Emily Long (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm

• The Racist and the Existentialist: A Testimonial Account of the Basing Relation by Hannah Tierney (Lewis & Clark College)

  5:00pm

April 23rd, 2010

• Conscientiousness and Harmony by Rachana Kamtekar (University of Arizona)

  3:30pm

October 15th, 2010

• Reason and Evaluative Luck by Eddie Cushman (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm In his classic paper “Moral Luck,” Nagel argues that a dilemma is embedded in our common moral thought. On the one hand, there appears to be a deep form of incoherence in the thought that moral evaluations are applicable to an individual as a result of good or bad luck—that is, by virtue of factors that lie outside her control. On the other hand, if we deny that moral evaluations can apply to an individual by virtue of factors that lie outside of her control, then morality appears to evaporate. We are never suitable objects of moral evaluation.
  
  In this talk, I explore how these issues generalize to the epistemic domain. On the one hand, there seems to be some form of incoherence in the idea that evaluations of reasonability in belief are open to luck, though this is arguably the defining claim of a thoroughgoing externalism in epistemology. On the other hand, our concept of reasonable belief may be immune to luck only under a version of access internalism so strict as to have external world skepticism as a consequence. Thus, there is a genuine threat that Nagel’s dilemma is robust in the epistemic domain.
  
  I close by offering an explanation for these striking affinities. The problems of moral and epistemic luck are particular manifestations of more fundamental problem—the problem of evaluative luck. Though our evaluative concepts are heterogeneous and many of them remain unproblematically applicable on the basis of good or bad fortune, our concept of reasonability—applicable to both choice and belief—remains immune to luck.

October 21st, 2010

• so you DON’T want to go to grad school in philosophy?

  3:30pm Come find out about the many options, resources, and opportunities you have as a philosophy major to begin planning for a career right now.

October 28th, 2010

• So you think you want to go to law school from philosophy?

  3:30pm Come find out about how philosophy prepares you for law school, about how law school differs from philosophy, and about what careers you might seek with a law degree.

November 5th, 2010

• “Virtue Ethics” and the Problem of Advising Fools by Eric Brown (University of Washington at St. Louis)

  3:30pm “Virtue ethics” tells us to do what the virtuous person would do in our circumstances. But if we are not virtuous—if we are “fools”—then the virtuous person would not be in our circumstances. What, then, can virtue theory say to advise a fool about what to do? I quickly suggest reasons to be pessimistic about recent approaches to this problem, and then I turn to the ancients’ eudaimonism for a more a fresh alternative. The ancient Socratics, including especially the Stoics, counsel not causally promoting one’s virtue or trying to follow “v-rules” but approximating virtue. I argue that Stoic psychopathology offers considerable help in making sense of how fools might approximate virtue and how advisers might use Socratic eudaimonism’s conception of virtue to guide fools to the best action in their circumstances.

November 12th, 2010

• Moral Properties and Patterns: Some Problems for Particularism by Joel Martinez (Lewis & Clark College) and Sarah Raskoff (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm Moral particularism is the view that there are no justifiable moral principles. The particularist insists that the relationship between the descriptive and the evaluative is irreducibly complex: she denies that there is any non-trivial and explanatorily significant pattern to the way descriptive or natural properties determine supervening evaluative or moral properties. Hence, the particularist also denies that proper moral judgment consists in the application of general moral principles to particular cases because she doubts that there are any moral principles that are sufficiently precise and contentful to be action-guiding.  The foundation of moral particularism is a commitment to holism rather than atomism about moral reasons. Atomism about moral reasons is the view that “a feature that is a reason in one case will be a reason, with the same polarity, in any other” (Dancy, 2006).  In contrast, holism about moral reasons is the view that a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason or even a reason with the opposite polarity, in any other. Whether a particular feature is morally relevant, and if so, to what polarity, is not linked to the feature itself, but varies from situation to situation. The move from holism about moral reasons to particularism, then, is straightforward: if the very valence of moral-making features varies from case to case, then we have good reason to suspect that the moral landscape is not the sort of place that lends itself to exceptionless and explanatory codification. 
  
  In this paper, we briefly explain some of the more common objections to particularism.  We articulate a problem for the particularist, what we call “the application problem,” that has not been discussed in the literature.  In addition, we consider how some prominent particularists might respond.  We conclude by spelling out some lessons we have learned from investigating particularism.

December 3rd, 2010

• “Biting the Bullet: Levelling-Down and Radical Egalitarianism” by Alexander Sager (Portland State University)

  3:30pm Radical egalitarians advocate a moral standard under which people should not only enjoy equal rights, liberties, and opportunities, but also share approximately equal goods. Most philosophers who defend distributive justice reject radical egalitarianism in favour of a version of the difference principle or the doctrine of sufficiency. One reason for this rejection is the levelling-down objection. Radical egalitarianism is a comparative view: the goodness of a distribution depends partly on how much other people have. This has a counterintuitive implication. It is possible to achieve equality by levelling down – instead of improving the lot of the worst off, levelling down would involve taking goods away from people with more until everyone has an equal share. In this case equality is achieved in a way that harms the better-off people while appearing to benefit no one.
  
  I argue that radical egalitarians should not be daunted by the levelling-down objection. Drawing on an analysis of the moral emotions of sympathy and envy, I provide a number of examples in which levelling-down appears morally permissible and is perhaps even required. This provides grounds for a version of radical telic egalitarianism in which levelling-down sometimes results in outcomes that are better all-things considered.
  

January 31st, 2011

• “Analogy as the Core of Cognition” by Douglas Hofstadter (Indiana University)

  7:00pm Sponsored by the Pamplin Society of Lewis & Clark College

February 1st, 2011

• “Which is more important in poetry translation: content or form? A pro-forma reply to Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Strong Opinions’” by Douglas Hofstadter (Indiana University)

  3:30pm

March 4th, 2011

• “Living Behind the Wall: Plato’s Philosopher in an Unjust City” by Michelle Jenkins (Whitman College)

  3:30pm Unlike the philosopher in the Kallipolis of the Republic, the philosopher in non-ideal circumstances will live in a city run by unjust laws and surrounded by individuals who live guided by false beliefs and who pursue false goods. In this talk, I want to think about how Plato’s philosopher would act if faced with these circumstances. My investigation begins with a brief look at Plato’s philosopher more generally - who is he and what does he desire? I argue that, ultimately, the philosopher wants to become like god. But what does it mean to become like god? Figuring out the answer to this gets us to the heart of the question of how the philosopher in an unjust city will act. I argue that two popular interpretations - (1) that becoming like god involves withdrawing from the world and (2) that it involves attempting to morally improve the world - are both incorrect. So, if both of these interpretations are incorrect, what does it mean to say that the philosopher wants to become like god? I argue that becoming like god involves modeling ourselves after god’s order and coming to have (godlike) knowledge of what is valuable and not valuable. Thus the philosopher, in aiming to become like god, will put himself in order and will act so as to maintain that order and preserve his virtue. I caution against saying much more than this, though, since the details of the philosopher’s life will vary quite a bit, given the wide variety of circumstances into which he (or she) may be born. He may be commanded by the gods to be a moral exhorter (as was Socrates), he may be obligated to share in the rule of his city (as was the philosopher ruler), or lacking any external obligations, he may choose to live a private life, doing his best to keep away from the injustice of the majority. Without knowing the details of the philosopher’s life, we simply cannot say much about it, except that it will be a life that is ordered, virtuous, and as much like the god’s as a human life can be.

March 11th, 2011

• “Virtue and the Demands of Morality” by Joel Martinez (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm J.O.  Urmson (1958) recognized that merely providing a criterion of right action is insufficient for capturing common sense morality.  Providing a criterion of right action helps us give an account of 1) the permitted (actions that are neither right nor wrong), 2) the obligatory (actions that are wrong not to do), 3) the forbidden (actions that are wrong to do).  However, there is another class of actions that forms an important part of common sense morality that cannot be captured by the standard three-fold deontic classification.  That is, there are ways of behaving that are neither required nor prohibited, but in being laudable they are not merely permissible.  These are supererogatory actions; actions that go above and beyond the call of duty.
  
  Recently, there has been a discussion as to whether virtue ethics can capture the common sense notion of supererogation. In this paper, I argue that there is no compelling reason why virtue ethics ought to give an account of the supererogatory.   The argument that supports the claim that virtue ethics needs to account for the supererogatory rests on a fundamental confusion about the virtue ethical account of right action.  That is, philosophers who argue that virtue ethics ought to offer a virtue ethical account of supererogation mistakenly take the virtue ethical criterion of right action to tell us what our obligations are.   But, this is a mistake. It is an easy one to make, though, because so many prominent virtue ethicists have felt comfortable using deontic notions.  In this paper, I explain why this is a mistake and point the way to a better and more pure virtue ethical approach to understanding the actions of heroes and saints.  In the end, I think the virtue ethicist should jettison the notion of supererogation.  However, I think this is a small price to pay and it need not threaten the virtue ethical project of conceptualizing common sense morality.

March 17th, 2011

• Philosophy Extravaganza “What is Identity?”

  6:00pm This year, the Philosophy Extravaganza has chosen as its topic, “What is Identity?” The debate about identity has puzzled philosophers since the time of the ancient Greeks. Many philosophers are particularly interested in the subject of personal identity over time, but others are interested in identity generally, the criterion of identity, and the logic of identity. Certainly, philosophy is not the only discipline that encounters these questions. We would like to explore these deep issues of identity with an interdisciplinary discussion featuring: Ben David (Art History), Iva Stavrov (Math), John Holzwarth (Political Science), and Eddie Cushman (Philosophy).   Refreshments will be provided. 

April 1st, 2011

• “Moral Intuitionism, Experiments and Skeptical Arguments” by Mark van Roojen (University of Nebraska)

  3:30pm

April 4th, 2011

• “Art, Self, and Knowledge: ASK” by Keith Lehrer (University of Arizona)

  3:30pm

April 12th, 2011

• “Does Eudaimonism Rest on a Mistake?” by Frans Svensson (Uppsala University)

  3:30pm

April 15th, 2011

• “What Do You Give a God Who’s Already Got Everything? (Benevolence, Impassibility and Eudaimonism in Plato and Beyond)” by Keith McPartland (Williams College)

  3:30pm

September 2nd, 2011

• Socratic Aversion to Suffering Injusticen by Nicholas Smith and James Mire (Lewis & Clark College)

  3:30pm Socrates claims that he would rather that he neither suffer injustice, nor perform it. The notion that someone would have an aversion to suffering injustice seems so commonsense as to require no justification. Yet if Socrates accepts the thesis that virtue is sufficient for happiness (“no evil comes to a good man”), then it is hard to see why Socrates, being a good man, would have anything to fear from victimization. This paper aims to make these views consistent through a reinterpretation of several important Socratic positions, notably the relation between virtue and happiness, and Socrates’ moral psychology.

September 23rd, 2011

• “Gut Reactions” and Abstract Art by Jay Odenbaugh and Levi Tenen (Lewis & Clark)

  3:30pm - 5:00pm It is commonplace to claim that abstract, non-representational artworks such as Rothko’s No. 14 or Miles Davis’ Blue in Green express emotions like sadness. However, this seems problematic since expression generally requires a person doing the expressing. In this paper, we attempt to address this “missing person problem”. First, we present the problem of “abstract expression” and we articulate the various ways in which the concept of expression is used regarding persons and artworks. Second, we sketch our best understanding of what the emotions borrowing from the work of Jesse Prinz and Jenefer Robinson. Finally, combining both the conceptual clarification and work on emotion discussed above, we provide an account of how emotions can be expressed by abstract art.

September 30th, 2011

• German Idealism meets Indian Vedanta: A Comparison of Schelling and Hegel with Sankara and Ramanuja (plus Abhinavagupta)- Katherine Elise Barhydt and J.M. Fritzman (Lewis & Clark)

  3:30pm - 5:00pm We compare the German Idealism of Schelling and Hegel with the Indian Vedānta of Śaṅkarā and Rāmānuja, as well as Abhinavagupta’s Kaśmir Śaivism. We argue that only Hegel’s philosophy does not fail according to its own standard of success.

October 14th, 2011

• Superstrong Multimodality: A New Approach to Perceptual Experience- Rebecca Copenhaver and Bryce Dalbey (Lewis & Clark)

  3:30pm - 5:00pm We present a taxonomy of approaches and position to studying perceptual experience.  Perceptual experience has been studied primarily as a unimodal phenomenon: philosophers and cognitive scientists have approached each sense modality as isolated and encapsulated and as having unique, proprietary objects.  In addition, philosophers and cognitive scientists have focused almost exclusively on vision.  Recently, some have begun to study audition, olfaction, gustation, proprioception and other neglected sense modalities.  We argue that while this shift in attention is an advance, a more radical shift in methodology is called for: superstrong multimodality.  On this approach, there are no modally-specific, distinct, proprietary, invariant contents.  Rather, overall perceptual experience is the most basic form of content, and it cannot be specified in modally-specific terms.

October 21st, 2011

• Hume’s Sense of Probability- Don Garrett (New York University)

  3:30pm - 5:00pm “The imagination, according to my own confession, [is] the ultimate judge of all systems of philosophy.” So writes David Hume in A Treatise of Human Nature (T 1.4.4.1). But how can the imagination, of all things, be the ultimate judge of systems of philosophy? And how can Hume’s granting of this august judicial role to a faculty generally regarded as the source of whimsy and error be reconciled with his confidence, expressed in the Introduction to the Treatise,  that he is proposing in his own philosophy a “complete system” that is built on a “solid foundation” (T Intro. 6-7)? Those are the central questions that I propose to address. My answer to the first question will be that the Humean imagination serves as the ultimate judge of systems of philosophy chiefly by being, through what I will call its sense of probability, the sole judge of the probability that they are true. My answer to the second will be that, on Hume’s view, a system with sufficient probability of being true, as judged by the imagination, can properly be regarded as well-founded.
  
  I will begin by explaining Hume’s general approach to those abstract ideas that are derived from a sense—that is, what we would now be likely to call response-dependent concepts—and examining the applicability of that general approach to the specific abstract idea of probability. I will then set out what I take to be his general approach to normative ideas and examine the applicability of that approach to the specific abstract idea of probable truth. Combining the results of these two investigations will allow us to see his abstract idea of probable truth as a concept that is both response-dependent and epistemically normative. We will then be in a position to understand the imagination’s use of that concept in properly judging systems of philosophy—including, of course, Hume’s own system. I will conclude by drawing several consequences for Humean epistemology and its relation to skepticism.