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Tennessee Philosophical Association
53rd Annual Meeting: Oct. 28-29, 2022
Vanderbilt University
Keynote Speaker
Gordon Hull, UNC Charlotte
How Epistemic Injustice can help us understand problems in AI
Abstract. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) systems increasingly purport to deliver knowledge about people and the world. Unfortunately, they also seem to frequently present results that repeat or magnify biased treatment of racial and other vulnerable minorities. This paper proposes that at least some of the problems with AI’s treatment of minorities can be captured by the concept of epistemic injustice. To substantiate this claim, I argue that (1) pretrial detention and physiognomic AI systems commit testimonial injustice because their target variables reflect inaccurate and unjust proxies for what they claim to measure; (2) classification systems, such as facial recognition, commit hermeneutic injustice because their classification taxonomies, almost no matter how they are derived, reflect and perpetuate racial and other stereotypes; and (3) epistemic injustice better explains what is going wrong in these types of situations than does the more common focus on procedural (un)fairness.
Sessions: Saturday, Furman Hall
9:00
am through 4:40 pm
9:00-9:55 a.m.
Author
Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy
Lindsey
Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt
University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007
Social-Epistemic
Problems with Intellectual Grandstanding
Lucy Vollbrecht,
Commentator: Zach Auwerda, The
Furman 209
The
Escaped Prisoner’s Story
Charles Cardwell,
Commentator: Courtland D. Lewis,
Furman 109
Living and
Gaming—Experimenting with Nguyen’s Account of Agency
Wangchen Zhou,
Commentator: Ryan Gabriel Windeknecht,
The University of Tennessee,
Furman 217
10:05-11:00 a.m.
Author
Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy (continued)
Lindsey
Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt
University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007
Humean
Collective Identity
Zachary Auwerda, The
Commentator: Jim Fieser, The
Furman 209
Disagreement
over the Beautiful Grounded in the
Commentator: Qingyang Cui,
Furman 109
Secularistic
But Not Secular? An Analysis of the Philosophy of William Connolly
Bill Meyer,
James Phil Oliver,
Furman 217
Pluralizing
Migrant Psychology: A Non-Homogenous View of Selfhood Across Borders
Ashleigh Morales, The
University of
Commentator: Daniel J. Smith,
Furman
132
11:05-11:10 a.m.
Business
Meeting: Elections for President
and Secretary; Furman 109
11:15-1:05 p.m.
Lunch: On your own (see insert in conference packet
for local eateries)
1:10-2:05 p.m.
Collateral Damage: Black Ideologies
Formed Post-Enslavement
Natalyah Davis, The
Commentator: Natalyah Davis, The University of Memphis
Furman 007
Always
Look on the Bright Side of Crisis
Courtland D. Lewis,
Commentator: Kelly Cunningham,
Furman 209
Metaphysical
Infinitism and Theoretical Virtue
William Welchance,
Commentator
Furman 109
The
Private Servant of the Public as a Privately Educated Public Servant: Foucault
and Habermas on the Role of the Public Intellectual
Bernardo Alba, The University
of
Commentator: Bill Meyer,
Furman 217
2:15-3:10 p.m.
Nature’s Revenge? On the Coronavirus
and Natural Evil
Daniel J. Smith, The
Commentator: Emanuele Costa,
Furman 007
Fallacy
Accusation and Meta-Argument
Scott Aikin,
Commentator: William Welchance,
Furman
The
Ascetic Ideal, the Threat of Nihilism, and How to Transcend
Qiuyue Chen, The
Commentator: Bernardo Alba, The
Furman 109
Revitalising
Baier: Trust Beyond Beliefs & Attitudes
Kelly Cunningham,
Commentator: Cheri Thomas,
Furman
Author Meets Critics – Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers
Brian Ribeiro, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Comments by Lucy Alsip Vollbrecht, Vanderbilt; Andrew Cling, University of
Alabama-Huntsville; Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt
Furman 209
Author Meets Critics – Aristotle’s Vices
Audrey Anton,
Comments by Dan Larkin, Georgia Southern University; Alyssa Lowery,
Furman 217
Abstracts of Papers
Always Look on the Bright Side of Crisis | Courtland D. Lewis
We should understand our
current social and political crisis as an opportunity to create a more peaceful
and flourishing future. By utilizing Black existentialist concepts about
Otherness, along with the argument for
politics as morality in action, we gain conceptual tools and practical insights
into how to we take the necessary first steps towards this goal. This will help
us reframe our current social and political crisis as a means to promote the
moral standing of all and to demand more from the political representatives who
and political processes that are supposed to work for
the people, not against them.
Democratic Confederalism and the Dialectics of
the Nation-State |
Hassan Ali
This paper will be exploring
G.W.F. Hegel’s argument that the nation state is the political structure that
can most fully act as a manifestation of the freedom of one’s community. In
order to outline Hegel’s argument, I will be exploring his account of abstract
right and morality in Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and how they are
each actualizations of freedom. From the discussions of abstract right and morality
Hegel then takes us to the realms of ethical life, where he provides his
account of the nation state and explains its potential for freedom. To provide a foil for Hegel’s account, I will examine the critique of
Hegel from political leader and philosopher Abdullah Öcalan, and present the
alternative political framework he provides, i.e., democratic confederalism.
Disagreement over the Beautiful Grounded in
the Ethical | Jennifer Lowell
This paper proposes that
conflicts over judgments of beauty are grounded in ethical opposition. Using
Cavell’s essay “Aesthetic Problems of Modern Philosophy” as a framework for examining judgments of the merely agreeable,
judgments of the beautiful, and factual judgments, as well as the kinds of
disagreement that are proper to each, this paper seeks to determine what makes
disagreements over judgments of beauty feel so intolerable and intractable to
conflicting judges. Ultimately, this paper proposes that conflicting senses of
ethos, i.e. one’s ethical values that correspond to what one holds to be a good
life, underlie judgments of beauty and influence even expert judges.
Fallacy Accusation and Meta-Argument | Scott Aikin
Meta-arguments are arguments
about arguments, and when one charges another with fallacious reasoning, one
takes on the burden of arguing about that argument. Further, fallacy accusations provide
meta-evidence about the arguers in the exchange and the quality of reasons overall. So there are both narrow and wide
meta-argumentative consequences of fallacy accusation.
Humean Collective Identity | Zachary Auwerda
Many contemporary philosophers
have argued for a reassessment of traditional
interpretations of Hume's skepticism. In these new interpretations, Hume is
only skeptical of our metaphysical accounts of causation, external objects, and
persons, but not necessarily skeptical of these entities themselves, that is,
of their real existence. In this paper, I draw on one specific entry into this
new interpretive strategy, offered by Corliss Swain (2006). Swain argues that,
analogously to causation, Hume is skeptical of our philosophical accounts of
identity but not identity itself. In fact, despite his skepticism, Hume offers
a positive account of how our minds unify perceptions into identities. My goal
is to extend this positive psychological account of identity to collective
identities such as teams, governments, or mobs. In other words, I aim to
provide a Humean answer to the question: What is our mind actually doing when
we perceive collective identities?
Living and Gaming— Experimenting with Nguyen’s
Account of Agency |
Wangchen Zhou
In this paper, I engage with C.
Thi Nguyen’s book Games: Agency as Art, investigating whether his
account of striving play and inverted motivational state could be expanded to a
gaming-view of life (GVL). After giving a description of GVL, I point out two
necessary conditions of striving play that GVL fails to fulfill. Specifically,
I argue that striving play requires (a). a contrast between the inner and the
outer agency and (b). a feasible exit option. I conclude by rejecting GVL;
alternatively, I urge us to preserve and celebrate the boundary between the
real and the fictional.
Metaphysical infinitism and theoretical virtue
| William Welchance
Philosophers like Jonathan
Schaffer, Ross Cameron, and Andrew Brenner claim that metaphysical
fundamentalism is more theoretically virtuous than metaphysical infinitism. I
maintain that they’re wrong. To show this, I first note that fundamentalists
and infinitists share an explanatory aim: to explain concrete existence in
general. On this basis, I argue (i) that there’s no reason to prefer the
fundamentalist's theoretical stipulations to the infinitist's, and (ii) that
metaphysicians have neglected an attractive theoretical virtue that infinitism
exhibits. I conclude that fundamentalism and infinitism are either on a par, or
infinitism is more theoretically virtuous.
Nature’s Revenge? On the Coronavirus and “Natural
Evil” | Daniel J. Smith
Through most of the history of
philosophy, philosophers used the concept of “evil” as their primary way of
making sense of phenomena like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. And yet, this
seems to many of us like a completely outdated way of speaking; an old problem
that has long ceased to be relevant to us. This paper explores the link between
“evil” and our current pandemic by attempting to characterise the break that
separates us from the early moderns, especially as it relates to the concept of
“nature”. From this historical reflection, it draws some conclusions for how we ought (not) to think about the virus, and
considers another possible use of the concept of “evil” that might be a better
fit for today.
Revitalising Baier: Trust Beyond Beliefs &
Attitudes | Kelly Cunningham
Annette Baier is widely
recognized as an influential figure in philosophical work on trust; yet most
citations of her work come from a handful of remarks in her essay, “Trust and
Antitrust.” In this paper, I aim to remedy this problem by engaging with some
of Baier’s less frequently cited reflections on trust. I argue attention to
Baier’s use of climate as a metaphor for trust
and her discussion of the connections between trust, perception, and language
can be used to develop a more comprehensive interpretation of Baier’s account
of trust—one that emphasizes the embodied experience of trust.
Secularistic But Not Secular? An Analysis of
the Philosophy of William Connolly | Bill Meyer
Johns Hopkins philosopher William Connolly critiques modern secular discourse.
Yet, his philosophy is still clearly secularistic. Thus, one must distinguish
between secular (secularity) and secularism (secularistic).
The former entails an affirmation of life in
the world, and a commitment to using reason and common experience as the basis
of validation within public discourse. The latter denotes a specific type of
worldview––one that affirms the meaning of existence as being wholly immanent
within the world. Connolly describes his own worldview as characterized by
“radical immanence.” This paper will describe, analyze, and assess his critique
of secularity and his secularistic outlook
Social-Epistemic Problems with Intellectual
Grandstanding |
Lucy Vollbrecht
Just as grandstanding occurs in
moral talk, as Justin Tosi and Brand Warmke theorize (2016; 2020), it occurs in
intellectual exchange. Call this intellectual
grandstanding. In this paper, I
develop a concept of intellectual grandstanding and critique its practice.
While the primary wrong in the former is moral,
the primary issue in its intellectual counter-part is epistemic. In what
follows, I’ll define intellectual grandstanding as parallel, but distinct from
moral grandstanding. Next I’ll enumerate a field guide for identifying instances of intellectual
grandstanding in the wild. Finally, I’ll suggest we think of intellectual
grandstanding as a kind of progressor’s temptation.
The Ascetic Ideal, the Threat of Nihilism, and
How to Transcend |
Qiuyue Chen
My paper is intrigued by the
idea that in the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche criticizes almost
everything and categorizes them as life-denying without answering questions
like what kind of world he has in mind that is life-affirming, how we should
respond to this situation, and how we lead our lives under this frame. With
these questions in mind, I finally developed my paper focusing on
"self-creation" as a possible "solution" to the world that
he criticized with emphasis on exploring what the concept of self-creation in
Nietzsche's work is, what’s the "self" and his metaphysical views
indicated in his works.
The Broken World: A Reflection on Gabriel
Marcel’s Philosophy |
Francis Chigozie
In the world religious
intolerance, wars, killings, human rights abuse, kidnapping, banditry,
political instability, corruption, dehumanization has become the new normal in
human coexistence. This paper has two major objectives; firstly to examine
Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy with a view to restore human dignity. Secondly, it
intends to expose some issues that are detrimental to human coexistence in the
society. It further focuses on the development of individual concrete
existence, the restoration of mutual respect and trust in human relationships,
and man's dignity through Gabriel Marcel’s philosophy.
The Escaped Prisoner’s Story |