Abstracts of papers

Intellectual Courage in the Face of Intractable Disagreement
Eric Sampson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Our moral, political, and religious beliefs are among the most important beliefs we have, yet they are also among the most controversial—even among excellent philosophers who have devoted their lives to investigating these matters. Doesn’t intellectual humility require, then, that we suspend judgment about these matters? I argue that the answer is “No, often it doesn’t” by giving an account of intellectual courage—an oft-neglected virtue of the mind that permits, and sometimes requires, taking intellectual risks for the sake of great moral and intellectual goods. I argue that, when it comes to these crucially important issues, suspension of judgment can sometimes constitute intellectual cowardice, not humility, and that taking a stand can be just what intellectual virtue requires.

Schelling’s Contribution to the Kant-Reinhold Controversy
Daniel J. Smith, The University of Memphis
Recent scholarship has stressed the importance of the early controversy about Kant’s conception of freedom for understanding both his account of radical evil, and its further development in Fichte and Schelling. Kant’s essay, on this reading, is a response to a criticism of his account of freedom, given its most famous expression by Reinhold (in the Eighth letter of volume two of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy). This paper examines Schelling’s intervention in this controversy, in the seventh part of his “General Overview of the Most Recent Philosophical Literature”, an essay which, I argue, represents his first attempt to grapple with the conjunction of freedom and evil that would later become the main theme of the Freiheitsschrift. In this text he acts as mediator between Kant and Reinhold, developing a position that attempts to preserve the all-important distinction between the intelligible and the empirical, which he thinks Reinhold has confused, while at the same time trying to explain our consciousness of the moral law and its transgression, which he thinks that Kant remains unable to do. He does this through an innovative reading of Kant which pits the pre-critical essay on “Negative Magnitudes” against the Metaphysics of Morals in order to develop the idea that there must be a positive opposition to the moral law if we are to have consciousness of it. I outline Schelling’s account of this “evil choice” [Böse Willkür] which he claims must appear as part of any ethical decision, and which explains the transition from the intelligible to the empirical, thus resolving the conflict between Kant and Reinhold. To conclude, I point to a passage each from the Freiheitsschrift and the Philosophy of Revelation, in order to indicate briefly how this theme will develop in Schelling’s later work.

Domestic Imperialism: The Reversal of Fanon
Frantz Fanon’s works have been invaluable in the analysis of colonies and the colonized subject’s mentality therein, but an analysis of the colonial power itself has been largely left to the wayside. The aim of this paper is to explicate a key element of Fanon’s theoretical framework, the metropolis/periphery dichotomy, then, using the writings of Huey P. Newton and Stokely Carmichael, among others, show its reversal within the colonial power. I will analyze this reversal in three ways: first, the reversal of the relationship between, and the roles of, the metropolis and periphery; second, the role of police and the differences between the colonial police and the police within the colonial power; and third, the modified role of prisons within the colonial power.

The Physicalist's Dilemma and the Burden of Proof
Michael Ebling, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Physicalism is the view that all of reality is fundamentally physical. In this essay, I argue that the need to define “physical” precisely puts physicalists at a dialectical disadvantage. I show that defining physicality in a way that both respects our common sense notion and renders key premises in arguments for physicalism plausible results in equivocation, which leaves the physicalist unable to overcome the burden of proof that a view like physicalism bears.

God, Animals, and Rights
Courtland Lewis, Owensboro Community and Technical College
The paper examines how we might make sense of animal rights in relation to God and humans. I begin by examining the idea that God is a speciesist, then develop four possible replies that suggest to two major implications: 1) God’s choice of humans is the result of some relational feature that God finds subjectively pleasing, rewarding, creative, etc.; and/or 2) God randomly picked humans out of all creation to be special. I conclude by examining these two implications, with the hope of creating a fruitful dialogue that promotes a clearer understanding of the rights of animals.

Innocent Until Proven Guilty: Thomas Reid on Perception & Trust of Epistemic Faculties
Charles Duke, Yale
In this paper, I offer a brief account and a defense of Thomas Reid’s theory of perception, giving specific attention to his “Innocent Until Proven Guilty” principle (hereinafter “IUPG”) of the reliability of perceptual faculties against (at least) two alternatives: (A1) Treating one’s faculties as guilty (i.e., unreliable) until proven innocent, and (A2) Preferentially ranking certain faculties as more reliable than others. I find the IUPG approach to the faculties—even perception—more persuasive than either of these alternatives.

Skeptical Fideism in Montaigne and Hume
Brian Ribeiro, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
In many places throughout his Essays, Montaigne practices the art of Pyrrhonizing doubt, and yet he finds that his faith is not dissolved in the acid bath of skeptical doubt.  For those familiar with Hume's philosophy, this situation—submersion in an acid bath of skeptical doubt, and yet some beliefs stand fast—is one Hume thinks we are in very frequently:  For Hume, many of our most fundamental commitments cannot be argumentatively defended or justified, yet they remain unshaken for us.  So, what would Hume say about Montaigne’s indefensible, unjustified faith?  In other words, on the issue of faith, is Hume a friend or a foe vis-à-vis Montaigne's skeptical fideism?  I offer both textual and biographical evidence for thinking the former may be the correct view.

Constructing Cosmopolis: Stoic Cosmopolitanism and the Imperialist Duty
Emerson R. Bodde, Vanderbilt
What is the properly Stoic relationship towards the foreigner? This paper attempts to articulate an answer to this question via an exploration of the contrasting accounts ancient Greek and Roman Stoics give for the problem of reconciling the moral cosmopolitanism dictated by our shared rationality and the conflicting particularist duties that are constitutive of actual rational beings. In his preservation of particularist duties, Cicero endorses imperialist warfare; this paper attempts to rebuff a reading of this fact as a reductio ad absurdum for the modern Stoic, instead showing a morally-plausible duty to wage imperialist warfare is entailed by Stoic cosmopolitanism.

Avoiding the Collapse of Substance Emergentism
Jannai Shields, Western Kentucky University
According to emergentist views of the mind, mental things arise out of, but are distinct from, realizing physical things. A recent challenge to emergentism argues that, because the physical realizers have the disposition to give rise to the emergent things under certain circumstances, the emergent things; distinctness is compromised and collapses into the realizing base. I will argue that collapse can only be avoided by strong, substance emergentism, according to which there are not just novel powers in cases of emergentism, but also novel substances. I suggest that these substances are physicalistically unacceptable in some ways, but acceptable in others.

Defending Against Fictionalist Meta-theology
Alec Michael, Washington University St. Louis
A parasite is an organism that survives at the expense of its host. Similarly, a parasitic theory is one that hijacks a host theory to survive on its merits. We should take precautions to protect our theories as we do ourselves. Currently, meta-theological theories are at risk of infection by fictionalism. The meta-theologian has access to two lines of defense: a priorism and intuitivism. Fictionalism is immune to both. The fictionalist wants to enjoy the benefits of religious community while retaining naturalism. So, fictionalists make the right linguistic moves, but without conviction. The fictionalist paves the way to atheistic meta-theology.

Does Pragmatist Metaphilosophical Anti-Skepticism Work?
Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt
Michael Hannon has recently (2019) given “a new apraxia” argument against skepticism.  Hannon’s case is that skepticism depends on a theory of knowledge that makes the concept “useless and uninteresting.” Three arguments rebutting Hannon’s metaphilosophical pragmatism are given that show that the concept of knowledge that makes skepticism plausible is both interesting and useful.

David Hume’s Nervous Breakdown and A Treatise on Human Nature
Jill Franks, Austin Peay State University
In the modern period, several philosophers who innovated changes on traditional ideas about the nature of reality had suffered some kind of shock or mental breakdown that led to their innovations. As a result of trying to conform his behavior to Stoical precepts of virtue, Hume suffered a nervous breakdown at age eighteen. The experience of his own warring emotions led directly to his belief that reason cannot and should not try to govern passions. A Treatise of Human Nature establishes that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.” This essay formulates biographical and theoretical connections.

Walter Benjamin and the Aestheticization of Electoral Politics
Robert Engelman, Vanderbilt
This paper uses Walter Benjamin’s account of the political consequences of perceptual and experiential transformations resulting from mechanical reproduction to illuminate the aesthetic character of electoral politics in the U.S. today. Forms of media through which we encounter political figures render an alienating form of distance, leading us to view them less as political representatives fighting for values, and more as aesthetic representations expressing values. This tendency, moreover, is reinforced not only by the fact that the media often focuses on political figures as ‘personalities’, but also by our readiness to be seduced by political ‘personalities’ appearing to be authentic.

Building the building facts: a new proposal
Jingsi Teng, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
If some facts are built out of other facts, what builds the building facts themselves? Karen Bennett argues that, for the building fact that A builds B, the building relation obtains in virtue of the initial point A. However, my aim in this paper is to demonstrate that A cannot fully complete the building relation, since A does not entail the implicit relation between A and B by itself. Instead, I introduce another ‘mechanistic fact’ that if A exists, then A builds B, to bridge the gap between the mere fact about A and the building fact A builds B.

No Subject? No Problem: An Essay on Death and Betrayal
Caroline Mobley, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Unlike Nagel, in his essay “Death,” I think a misfortune such as betrayal cannot happen to or be bad for a dead person because she doesn’t exist. I argue that what’s bad about betrayal is a change in what’s good about the relationship, which is indexed to time and must occur in an active relationship. Since a dead person cannot engage in relationships, she cannot be betrayed. If true, then we have a counterexample to Nagel’s position that misfortunes, such as betrayal and death, are not indexed to time. This conclusion undermines Nagel’s conclusion that death is bad for us.

Hume on the Transition from 'Is' to 'Ought'
Gregory Poore, Shorter University
Near the beginning of the third book of his Treatise, David Hume makes a one-paragraph “observation” on the common but unnoticed transition within moral systems from statements of what  is or is not to statements of what one ought or ought not to do. This is-ought paragraph represents one of the most controversial passages in Hume’s writings. I respond to four interpretations and show how sensitivity to its immediate context illuminates its meaning and renders it consistent with Hume’s moral philosophy.

Regimes of Truth in the Work of Michel Foucault
Robert Kippes, Volunteer State Community College
This paper explicates and further theorizes Michel Foucault’s concept of a regime of truth: an ordered apparatus that simultaneously marks out what is true and false while also receiving its raison d'être from the reality it inscribes. I demonstrate how the different uses of this concept intersect with one another across Foucault’s work so that the logic and force of a regime of truth can be better understood as a more comprehensive form of the famous concept of dispositif. Additionally, my claim is that it is not simply a methodological tool but also a transhistorical, ontological concept.

Pluralisms for Perjoratives: Prospects and Problems
David Miguel Gray, University of Memphis
Most theories of slurs claim that 1) there is a singular source of offense and 2) locate that source of offense either in the semantic, pragmatic, or sociolinguistic features of the slur. We explore the prospects of a pluralist theory with respect to slurs: a theory which allows for their to be multiple sources of offense. We argue that the only pluralist accounts on the market are unmotivated in that they still centralize a single source of derogatory force. We also present a substantial problem for adopting pluralism.

From Secularism to Evolutionary Platonism: A Shift in the Outlook of Thomas Nagel
William J. Meyer, Maryville College
This paper argues that there has been a notable shift in the philosophy of Thomas Nagel over the past few decades, namely, a shift from secularism to evolutionary Platonism. This change is evident in the shift between his view as articulated in What Does it All Mean? in 1987 and that which is later set forth in Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament in 2010. This paper begins by noting an important but often overlooked distinction between secular and secularistic (secularism) and then proceeds to set forth, analyze, and compare Nagel’s respective works cited above.

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