Events and announcements

Title: Thinking Outside the Lunch Box

Abstract: Lunch was delicious but took hours. How can this be true? It seems to many that only food was delicious while only events can take hours, and that nothing can be both. This is one instance of the problem of copredication, where there are true sentences that seem to ascribe categorically incompatible properties. On our approach to the problem there are not such strong categorical constraints on property instantiation, i.e. properties are more versatile than is commonly supposed. In this talk I’ll sketch the problem of copredication, our approach, and then delve into the details of the lunch example. Our approach yields a metaphysics of lunch on which lunch is a meal that is not straightforwardly identified with either the event of eating lunch or the food eaten.

UVic Events Calendar listing

"Consideration Machines: Short Stories as Thought Experiments"

When we read works of literature, such as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, we learn; and we learn much like we do when performing a thought experiment.  But how we do so also differs.  Novels, for example, tend to be more complex than thought experiments, and they tend not to have an intended outcome.  These differences hinder certain explanations of how we learn from literature; specifically, they hinder those that appeal to thought experiments.  Can this hindrance be removed?  I argue that it cannot.  In particular, I consider a best case for hindrance-free explanation—namely, Anton Chekov's short story, “Gooseberries,'' interpreted by George Saunders as a "consideration machine”—and I argue that even in this best case the hindrance remains.  Finally, I explain how my argument supports a weak non-cognitivist account of how we ordinarily learn from works of literary fiction. 

"On Medals: Pinning Hope to the Battlefield"

An examination of the role hope that plays in establishing the resolve needed for members of an armed force to accomplish their most dangerous and difficult missions. We do not see these missions as supererogatory. The role of medals as gratitude for plain duty and recognition of valour is weaved into the argument to show that rituals and stories can provide the conditions needed to establish hope; hope can function as the resolve side of traditional military discipline, but in a way that respects members of the armed force as reasoners – as people entitled to dignity.

"No Inertia in Consciousness"

Sartre claims that there is no inertia in consciousness. Like many of his claims, this seems patently false. However, also like many of his claims, it can be interpreted in way in which it is both true and illuminating.  Consciousness, for Sartre, is the ability to “negate.”  As I will understand this, it includes the ability to entertain and answer questions.  Our “consciousness,” thus understood, will include our beliefs and intentions (regardless of whether we are aware of them “consciously”).  It is tempting to think of our beliefs and intentions as states of mind that are produced, at a time, by a discrete episode of mental activity, which then persist, in the mind, until revised or eliminated at some later point, by some later episode of mental activity—as if they were documents on computer.  So understood, belief and intention possess their own inertia, so to speak.   I will argue that this way of thinking about belief and intention badly distorts both our relation to them and our responsibility for them.  Rather than think of them as if they were items stored in memory on a computer—as something you might act upon intermittently to run, update, or delete—we should think of them instead as something more like our posture: they rely, at each moment, on our on-going activity, and so are, themselves, a kind of activity.  Thus understood, there is, in fact, no inertia in (this aspect of) consciousness.

"No Inertia in Consciousness"

Sartre claims that there is no inertia in consciousness. Like many of his claims, this seems patently false. However, also like many of his claims, it can be interpreted in way in which it is both true and illuminating.  Consciousness, for Sartre, is the ability to “negate.”  As I will understand this, it includes the ability to entertain and answer questions.  Our “consciousness,” thus understood, will include our beliefs and intentions (regardless of whether we are aware of them “consciously”).  It is tempting to think of our beliefs and intentions as states of mind that are produced, at a time, by a discrete episode of mental activity, which then persist, in the mind, until revised or eliminated at some later point, by some later episode of mental activity—as if they were documents on computer.  So understood, belief and intention possess their own inertia, so to speak.   I will argue that this way of thinking about belief and intention badly distorts both our relation to them and our responsibility for them.  Rather than think of them as if they were items stored in memory on a computer—as something you might act upon intermittently to run, update, or delete—we should think of them instead as something more like our posture: they rely, at each moment, on our on-going activity, and so are, themselves, a kind of activity.  Thus understood, there is, in fact, no inertia in (this aspect of) consciousness.

Moral Laws and Moral Supervenience

Moral Supervenience says that there can be no moral difference without a descriptive difference. This has been widely considered one of the least controversial principles in metaethics, even a conceptual truth. So it is surprising that some metaethicists now deny it. They think there are metaphysically contingent moral laws that help to ground particular moral facts, and that these moral laws can differ without any descriptive difference. The resulting position looks incompatible with Moral Supervenience. But whether it is depends on what we count as a moral difference and what we count as a descriptive difference. I will argue that differences in moral laws eo ipso entail descriptive differences, so there is no reason to question Moral Supervenience.

Mediated Testimony, or the Epistemology of Reporting the Words of Others (joint work with Maëlle Turbide)

In epistemology, the analysis of testimony has traditionally centered on the interplay between speaker and hearer. This focus overlooks the complexity of many real-world testimonial exchanges. This article introduces the role of the mediator, distinct from speaker and hearer, and at work in diverse testimonial settings (e.g., journalism, social media and search engines). Expanding beyond the conventional two-agent model, we propose a three-agent framework for mediated testimony, in which a mediator (M) in context (C) reports to the hearer (H) what the speaker (S) conveyed (p), accompanied by informational cues (I). Highlighting the potential pitfalls of mediated testimony, we explore its normative landscape, highlighting two principles: TRANSPARENT RELEVANCE and MEASURED GATEKEEPING.

On What There Is, Was, or Could Be

Past entities like Socrates, and possible entities like Pegasus, have so much going for them. They are (evidently) nameable, in the range of quantifiers ('some philosophers’ can include Socrates, 'some mythical creatures' can include Pegasus), and capable of standing in relations (you might admire them both). But—unlike Barack Obama—neither Socrates nor Pegasus exist. Socrates used to exist, but—sadly—he’s gone now. Pegasus could exist, but—spoiler alert!—he never actually existed. This is puzzling. For the orthodox view in metaphysics—developed especially by Quine—is that what can be named, quantified over, and involved in relations is precisely what exists. Indeed here lies the puzzle that Quine called “Plato’s beard”—how can we even coherently say that Pegasus does not exist, or deny the existence of anything we can name, if naming requires existence? Something must go. I offer a non-Quinean approach—novel as far as I know—with two main ingredients. First, it embraces a big constant “outer” domain including Socrates, Pegasus, and Obama alike. In every scenario, they are all available to be named, quantified over, and admired. Secondly, the approach brings in a view on tense and mood in natural language, on which ‘exists’ (/‘is’) is not a unit but a blend of at least three syntactically distinct elements: root-exist (/root-be), present tense, and indicative mood. I use this to provide a consistent way to untangle Plato’s beard, and to explain how Socrates merely existed (/was), and Pegasus merely could exist (/could be).

Cultural Appropriation and the Objectification of the Other

My talk aims to explain what is wrong with cultural appropriation. I argue that cultural appropriation is wrong because it objectifies the appropriatees (those from whom something is appropriated) as Other, which often operates by essentializing appropriatees. Drawing on thinkers in neo-Kantian and Marxist feminist philosophy, I discuss what it takes to objectify people as Other and how doing so depends on broader cultural practices. An important aim of the account is to capture both what is systemic and what is individual about cultural appropriation. As such, this view takes inspiration from, but runs counter to, existing accounts of cultural appropriation, which have largely to do with the appropriatees’ reactions or with oppression and harm.

Title: Cooperative Communication and Audience Tuning

Abstract: Cooperative impulses in communication sometimes stand in considerable tension with widespread assumptions in the epistemology of testimony. Not only may communicators’ attempts at relevance crowd out accuracy, but they may unintentionally tune the content and valence of their testimony to fit their audience’s preconceptions. These messages can then influence communicators’ own subsequent impressions and testimony on that topic. In tuning the message for their audience, they also tune themselves. This subtle collaboration on content and the two-way traffic between communicator and audience – the “saying is believing” effect, audience tuning, and the potential role of a sense of shared reality between communicator and audience in mediating them – provide an additional healthy complication to our understanding of what social epistemology ought to explain, as it moves, very unevenly, towards a non-ideal approach.

Title: Author-meets-critics on Barrett Emerick and Audrey Yap, Not Giving Up On People: A Feminist Case for Prison Abolition. Critics: Cindy Holder (Uvic Philosophy), Tamara Humphrey (UVic Sociology)

Abstract: In Not Giving Up on People, we make the case that prisons ought to be abolished by bringing theoretical arguments about personhood and moral repair into conversation with the work of activists and the experiences of incarcerated people. We argue that contemporary carceral systems in the United States and Canada fail to treat people as genuine moral agents in ways that also fail victims and their larger communities. Such carceral systems are a form of what we call “institutionalized moral abandonment”. We should instead create communities of moral solidarity. These offer opportunities for wrongdoers to make up for their wrongs. 

As part of this argument, our book directly addresses a paradigm cases of wrongdoing often used to justify carceral systems: rape. Carceral systems that treat perpetrators of sexual violence as irredeemable monsters both obscure the reality of sexual violence and are harmful to everyone involved.

As part of our proposed alternative to carceral systems we argue for an orientation towards justice that is grounded in moral repair. This incorporates elements of restorative justice, mutual aid, and harm reduction. Instead of a universal approach one-size-fits-all approach, we need multigenerational collective action that aims to build resilient communities that support the well-being of everyone.

Title: Causation and Questions Under Discussion

Abstract: Our causal talk exhibits a variety of contextually variant features, including causal selection (where speakers in different contexts may identify different events in the effect’s causal history as the cause), overcounting bias (when identifying one event in the causal history makes identifying certain others redundant) and causal gradation (where speakers identify some events as more of a cause than others). Some causal theorists dismiss such features as pragmatic artifacts easily detachable from the semantics of causal discourse, and so as irrelevant to causal theory building. Others, viewing these features as not easily detachable from the semantics of causal talk, and so as undermining the use of linguistic judgments for theory building, despair for causal theory. I will sketch a dynamic interpretation semantics to model these features, and respond to both dismissers and despairers.

Title: Toward a ‘Halfway Plausible Theory of Ethics’: Judgment in Arendt’s Critique of Kant’s Moral Philosophy

Abstract: Despite being indebted to Kant’s aesthetics and what she saw as its hidden political philosophy, Hannah Arendt was quite critical of his ethics. When her issues with Kant’s moral philosophy are discussed, the focus is usually on her claim that it is centered on the self and lacks concern for others and the world. But Arendt also claims that there is no room for judgment in the moral sphere. In this essay, I focus on this aspect of her critique, which has been neglected by commentators. Given Arendt’s turn to Kant’s third Critique and her insights into its conception of judgment, I argue that she ought not to have excluded judgment from the realm of morality. Further evidence for this is suggested by her remarks on the trial of Eichmann, where she seems to want to allow a place for judgment in moral reasoning. I conclude by showing that not only did Arendt wrestle with the question of the relationship between morality and judgment, but that her innovative reading of Kant’s theory of reflective judgment should have led her to afford it a prominent role in the practical domain. 

Title: What is it to Hold a Grudge?

Abstract: When we've been hurt, we might respond with a flash of anger, but we might instead simply withdraw and silently brood. Whereas most philosophical work on blame has focused on angry confrontation, in this talk I'm interested in exploring the nature and ethics of grudges— those potentially poisonous and seemingly permanent rifts in our relationships with others. Drawing on work from both philosophy and psychology, I'll try to find a place for grudges in existing theories of blame and forgiveness, and I'll ask whether they really deserve the bad press they always get.

Title: To Be Announced

Abstract:

Title: How to Think About Xenophobia and Racism

Abstract: When we look at the world today, we see a dramatic rise in nefarious forms of nationalism. These nefarious forms of nationalism are driven primarily by anti-immigrant sentiment and an undercurrent of White supremacy. There is a debate among academics and the public at large as to whether we should label such movements xenophobic or racist. Both sides of this debate make strong points. In this talk I consider both sides of the debate and offer a novel way to think about xenophobia and racism that does not miss nor minimize the role that race plays in nefarious forms of nationalism, but also does not overextend our shared conception of racism.

Title: Towards an Ethics of Vice

Abstract: The resurgence of virtue ethics both in recent academic philosophy and in the public square has not been matched by any corresponding consideration for virtue's shadow self -- vice, or bad character. This, I would argue, is a mistake, not to say a missed opportunity. In this talk I first sketch out the minimal components needed for a theory and ethics of vice. I then show how an engagement with the world's ethical traditions can help deepen our reflection on what is involved in ordinary people breaking bad: our becoming greedy, domineering, malicious, or just endlessly distracted.