Friday, 7:00 P.M., 114 Furman Hall, followed by a spirited reception

Sessions: Saturday, Furman Hall
9:00 am through 5:00 pm
November 2

 

9:05-10:00am

Furman 007
Joseph Blado (University of Notre Dame)
Against Explanatory Orthodoxy: All Predictions are Explanations

Commentator: Travis Tanner (Austin Peay State University)
Furman 109
Brian Ribeiro (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga)
How Can a Skeptic Write a Book?
Commentator: Lucien Manning Garrett (The University of Memphis, Jackson)
Furman 132
Scott Aiken (Vanderbilt University)
Deep Disagreements and Pragmatic Reasons for Optimism?
Furman 209
Sung Jun Han (Vanderbilt University)
Beyond Electoral Accountability: Solutions for Effective Lottocratic Governance
Commentator: Adam Lake (Brown University)
Furman 217
Haodong Lyu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Trapped in the Present: The Unreasonable Self-Blame in Grief and Other Places
Commentator: Bahar Mirteymouri (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 311
Shramana Pramanik (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Solidarity as a collective “Power” to Yield Social Change
Commentator: Jack Meyer (Vanderbilt University)

10:05-11:00am

Furman 007
Kiet Nguyen (Franklin and Marshall)
The Paradox of Fiction?
Commentator: Ethan Mills (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga)
Furman 109
Charles Cardwell (Pellissippi State Community College)
Reality, the Ego-centric Predicament, and the Linguistic Constraint
Commentator: Hashem Ramadan (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Furman 132
Gregory Bock (University of Texas at Tyler)
Forgetting Not Forgiving: Nietzsche’s Remedy for the Poison of Resentment
Commentator: Peiying Yang (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 209
Judith Carlisle (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
How Does the Body Keep the Score? Shadow Theories in Clinical Psychology
Commentator: Kristin Boyce (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 217
Noel Boyle (Belmont University)
Severe Cognitive Impairment and the Metaphysics of Personhood: Building on Kittay’s Response to McMahan
Commentator: Matthew Baddorf (Walters State Community College)
Furman 226
Jude Galbraith (Texas A&M International University)
Scientific receptivity vs. scientific discrimination: implications for public trust
Commentator: Malin Sjoedin Bergstroem (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 311
Leonard Kahn (Loyola University New Orleans)
Humanitarian Military Intervention and the Requirement of Consent
Commentator: Kerry Clark (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

11:05-12:00am

Furman 007
Peiying Yang (Vanderbilt University)
Remembering as a “We”: Jane Addams’s Ethics of Memory
Commentator: William Moix (Binghamton University)
Furman 109
Hunter Kallay (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Categorical Programming: How Kant Might Solve Ethical Bias and Prevent AI-Driven Atrocities
Commentator: Leonard Kahn (Loyola University New Orleans)
Furman 132
Lucia Schwarz (Tulane University)
Towards a Better Theory of Reasons
Commentator: Comment: Joshua Uterstaedt (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 209
Anna Brinkerhoff (Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec)
Not So Irrelevant: The Epistemic Significance of Social Identity
Alision Emery (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 217
Junlin Chen (Vanderbilt University)
Towards a Good Theory of Conceivability
Commentator: Dario Vaccaro (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Furman 226
Oluwaseun D. Sanwoolu (University of Kansas)
Reason Without Goodwill: A Kantian Challenge to AI as Moral Agents
Commentator: Ismail Kurun (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 311
L. E. Walker (Washington University in St. Louis)
Are We Experts at Social Categorization?
Commentator: Brandon Underwood (Vanderbilt University)

12:05-12:10pm

Tennessee Philosophical Association Business Meeting
Furman 109
Everyone is welcome!

LUNCH -- On your own.

1:35-2:30pm

Furman 007
John Mancini (University of Virginia)
Individual Judgments and Self-Refutation in Plato’s Theaetetus
Commentator: Alice Grosu (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 109
Paul A. Macdonald Jr. (United States Air Force Academy)
Wisdom as the Highest Epistemic Good
Commentator: Dakota Layton (University of Alabama in Huntsville)
Furman 132
Brant Entrekin (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
The Heart of Discovery: Emotions in the Scientific Endeavor
Commentator: Alyssa Tudor (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 209
Adam Lake (Brown University)
Trial and Error: A Defense of Fallible Judicial Review
Commentator: James Phil Oliver (Middle Tennessee State University)
Furman 217
William Moix (Binghamton University)
Shoemaker’s Alien Case: A Reconstrual as Active Disregard
Commentator: Lucia Schwarz (Tulane University)
Furman 226
Linh Hoai Mac (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Two Senses of Characterization
Commentator: Junlin Chen (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 311
Allen Coates (East Tennessee State University)
Moral Worth and Moral Normativity
Commentator: Haodong Lyu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

2:35-3:30pm

Furman 007
Audrey Anton (Western Kentucky University)
Homonymously Human: Aristotle’s Brutish Character in his Ethics
Commentator: Noel Boyle (Belmont University)
Furman 109
Travis Tanner (Austin Peay State University)
How Good was Augustine’s Response to Skepticism in Contra Academicos?
Commentator: Scott Aikin (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 132
Dakota Layton (University of Alabama in Huntsville)
Truth-Decay and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Idea of Freedom for Excellence
Commentator: Paul A. Macdonald Jr. (United States Air Force Academy)
Furman 209
Tancredo Tivane (The University of Arkansas Fayetteville)
Black self-perception: A Fanonian and a DuBoisian Challenge to Anti-inequality Strategies
Commentator: L. E. Walker (Washington University in St. Louis)
Furman 217
Matthew Baddorf (Walters State Community College)
TMI Christology
Commentator: Katherine Martha (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 226
Ismail Kurun (Vanderbilt University)
Epistemology of Political Liberalism: A Case for Underdetermination
Commentator: Jude Galbraith (Texas A&M International University)
Furman 311
Robert Engelman (Vanderbilt University)
Actual Communication and the Critical Politics of Public Reason: Reading Kant with and against Arendt
Commentator: Matt Prater (Independent Scholar)

3:35-5:00pm

Furman 007
Jeremy Shipley (Volunteer State Community College)
Moral Consistency
Commentator: David Thorstad (Vanderbilt University)
Furman 109
Author-Meets-Critic
Matthew Congdon, Moral Articulation
Respondents: Linh Mac; Kristina Gehrmann; Michael Hopwood
Furman 132
Joshua Uterstaedt (Vanderbilt University)
Reconsidering Moral Encroachment as Solution for Doxastic Wronging
Commentator: Allen Coates (East Tennessee State University)
Furman 209
Author-Meets-Critic
Werner Stegmaier and Reinhard Mueller, What is Orientation?
Respondents: Peiying Yang, Molly Kelleher
Furman 217
Author-Meets-Critic
Joseph Stratmann, The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Ethics
Respondents: Emanuele Costa, Bahar Mirteymouri
Furman 311
Meredith Sheeks (University of North Carolina)
The Importance of Being Rude
Commentator: Robert Engelman (Vanderbilt University)

 

Authors and Abstracts

Scott Aiken (Vanderbilt University)
“Deep Disagreements and Pragmatic Reasons for Optimism”?

Audrey Anton (Western Kentucky University)
“Homonymously Human: Aristotle’s Brutish Character in his Ethics”
Aristotle juxtaposes the bad character, brutishness (θηριότης), with its “opposing” (ἐναντίος) good state, the godlike character. He writes, “if, as men say, surpassing virtue changes men into gods, the disposition opposed to brutishness will clearly be some quality more than human” (1145a23). Does Aristotle mean to imply that the brutish are less than human? I argue that the brutish must be sub-human, given Aristotle’s commitment to his function argument, his view of nature as a secondary substance, what it is for something to be “said of” a primary substance homonymously, and what a privation of a capacity is.

Matthew Baddorf (Walters State Community College)
“TMI Christology”
I introduce a new problem for traditional Christian Christologies. Christ is typically taken to be omniscient, and to have flourishing relationships with human beings. But there are some truths we ought not to know about each other, because knowledge prevents (or at least seriously hinders) flourishing relationships. This is an unappreciated problem for many Christological views. In a longer version of the paper I consider how various theologies could try to respond; here I simply explain the problem and consider why analogies to general problems about God and privacy are inapt.

Joseph Blado (University of Notre Dame)
“Against Explanatory Orthodoxy: All Predictions are Explanations”
Explanatory orthodoxy says that not all (accurate) predictions are explanations.  After all, using the relevant scientific laws, we can for example predict the height of a flagpole using its shadow length and predict a simple pendulum’s length using its period. But the shadow length of a flagpole hardly explains the flagpole’s height, and the simple pendulum’s period hardly explains its length. So, not all (accurate) predictions are explanations. This is a highly intuitive and plausible position. However, despite the orthodox position’s plausibility, this paper argues the reasons to believe this thesis are surprisingly not as compelling as they initially seem.

Gregory Bock (University of Texas at Tyler)
“Forgetting Not Forgiving: Nietzsche’s Remedy for the Poison of Resentment”
Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals is in the literary genre of genealogy, tracing the source and evolution of our current moral system to an ancient conflict between the powerful and the powerless, but as Robert C. Solomon explains, it is much more than a genealogy. It is also “a psychological hypothesis concerning the motives and mechanisms underlying that history and evolution.” Additionally, it is an attack on these motives and mechanisms and a lament of the loss of the old system of virtue associated with the powerful. One of these motives is ressentiment (resentment). Nietzsche speaks of resentment as a negative reactive attitude – hateful, vengeful, and venomous. It is a festering hostility experienced by the powerless, directed at those who oppress them. In this essay, I explore Nietzsche’s account of resentment and the corresponding virtue of forgetfulness.

Noel Boyle (Belmont University)
“Severe Cognitive Impairment and the Metaphysics of Personhood: Building on Kittay’s Response to McMahan”
Jeff McMahan’s The Ethics of Killing presents a compelling theory of moral personhood, carefully working through the implications regarding killing, in even the most philosophically and emotionally contested topics. In this paper, I expand on Eva Feder Kittay’s response to McMahan’s analysis severe cognitive impairment and moral personhood.

Anna Brinkerhoff (Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec)
“Not So Irrelevant: The Epistemic Significance of Social Identity”
Our social identity affects what we believe. But how should we evaluate this doxastic impact epistemically? Achieving a robust picture of the epistemic significance of social identity requires us to explore the understudied intersection of irrelevant influences and standpoint epistemology, which leads us to cases of double higher-order evidence. Reflecting on social identity through the lens of irrelevant influences gives us higher-order evidence of error, while reflecting through the lens of standpoint advantage gives us higher-order evidence of accuracy. I argue that to determine whether to worry or celebrate the doxastic impact of social identity, we must weigh the strength of each piece of higher-order evidence.

Charles Cardwell (Pellissippi State Community College)
“Reality, the Ego-centric Predicament, and the Linguistic Constraint”
Our human condition includes the apparent inability to get out of ourselves so that we might gain knowledge of an external world.  This “ego-centric predicament” clearly poses profound difficulties for epistemology.  Here, I suggest that epistemology is constrained not only by the ego-centric predicament, but also by a linguistic factor.  I suggest that the linguistic factor may offer a partial way out of the egocentric predicament, but that that way out works only if we accept an unusual notion of reality.

Judith Carlisle (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“How Does The Body Keep the Score? Shadow Theories in Clinical Psychology”
This paper examines the enduring popularity of repressed memories and traumatic amnesia, arguing that specific features of the DSM—(1) its lack of mechanistic theory and (2) its focus on interrater reliability—necessitate the use of “Shadow Theories.” These unofficial theories address explanatory gaps for clinicians, sometimes benignly but other times harmfully. When Shadow Theories lead to successful treatments, their persistence is reinforced as clinicians and patients become even more invested. I present a case study, in Bessel van der Kolk’s influential yet contested account of trauma and PTSD, that highlights the need to understand the emergence and persistence of these theories. This understanding is crucial for assessing whether their continued use is beneficial or requires revision and emphasizes the importance of fostering healthy relationships between clinicians and researchers.

Junlin Chen (Vanderbilt University)
“Towards a Good Theory of Conceivability”
Conceivability has played a crucial role in metaphysics, ever since Descartes famously used the conceivability argument to entail that mind and body can possibly be separated and are therefore metaphysically independent. Naturally, we want to check whether this is a rigorous strategy, and whether the concept of conceivability is well-defined. This paper tries to investigate if there is a good theory of conceivability (i.e. a definition of conceivability such that conceivability entails possibility). The paper begins by analyzing the problems a good theory must overcome, and then investigate some past theories of conceivability proposed by Yablo and Chalmers. By analyzing the difference between imaging and imagination, I wish to provide a more rigorous revision to Yablo and Chalmers’ theories.

Allen Coates (East Tennessee State University)
“Moral Worth and Moral Normativity”
An action has moral worth when you do it because it is right. This is widely understood as requiring either that being motivated by the judgment that it is right or by the reasons that make it right. But I will argue that you can be so motivated without treating your judgment or reasons as having moral normativity, in which case your action will still lack moral worth. So, for your action to have moral worth, you must not only act on moral judgments or reasons, but treat them as having morality’s characteristic normativity.

Robert Engelman (Vanderbilt University)
“Actual Communication and the Critical Politics of Public Reason: Reading Kant with and against Arendt”
My aim here is to clarify two features of Kant’s normative idea of public reasoning, or, the public use of reason: That its goods require us to actually communicate with others, and that it is a critical, political activity. My discussion will make numerous points of contact with Arendt’s reading of Kant as elaborated in her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy (1992 [1970/1982]). While Arendt, I will argue, rightly reads Kantian public reasoning as requiring actual communication, she wrongly dismisses it as nonpolitical; this dismissal, moreover, marks an internal tension in her reading.

Brant Entrekin (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“The Heart of Discovery: Emotions in the Scientific Endeavor”
The value-free ideal of science (VFI) claims that a necessary component of “good science” is for scientists to refrain from using contextual values while conducting scientific research. VFI has come been heavily criticized in the last few decades, but there is a dearth in the literature as to what exactly is meant by “values” in this context and how different kinds of values can/should be used in scientific research. Here, I explore the role that emotions can play in scientific research and how their use may aid us in preventing certain kinds of structural harms that scientific practice can perpetuate.

Jude Galbraith (Texas A&M International University)
“Scientific receptivity vs. scientific discrimination: implications for public trust”
There is a tension between two fundamental scientific norms: discrimination, the exclusion of unmeritorious ideas from science, and receptivity, or openness to diverse perspectives and methodologies. The balance struck between these norms can impact public trust in scientific institutions. Trust is eroded when there is inconsistency between how these norms are communicated to the public (typically, with greater emphasis on receptivity), and how they are practiced in private (often with greater focus on discrimination). The “Climategate” email leak illustrates this dynamic and shows how dissonance in norm communication undermines trust, even when actors do not technically breach acceptable practices.

Sung Jun Han (Vanderbilt University)
“Beyond Electoral Accountability: Solutions for Effective Lottocratic Governance”
his article critically engages with the accountability challenges of lottocracy, a democratic system where ordinary citizens, selected by lottery rather than election, wield legislative power. While Landa and Pevnick highlight the potential flaws of lottocracy, including the risks of wealthy and bureaucratic capture, this article argues that these concerns can be mitigated. It proposes a “Madisonian Lottocracy” model, which balances authority by filtering policy options rather than directly legislating, and emphasizes moderate social and legal sanctions as effective deterrents against personal corruption. By addressing these dilemmas, the article demonstrates that lottocracy remains a viable and innovative alternative to electoral representative democracy.

Leonard Kahn (Loyola University New Orleans)
“Humanitarian Military Intervention and the Requirement of Consent”
his paper examines the moral permissibility of humanitarian military interventions (HMIs) through the lens of the “Requirement of Consent” (ROC), which posits that such interventions are only permissible if the beneficiaries consent to them. Using thought experiments and historical cases like Operation Restore Hope and the Kosovo War Intervention, the paper argues that ROC, while demanding, can be met under certain conditions. It contends that paternalism and autonomy concerns are central to evaluating ROC’s applicability, and proposes that interventions can be permissible even without unanimous consent, provided they do not unjustifiably infringe on autonomy or act paternalistically.

Hunter Kallay (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“Categorical Programming: How Kant Might Solve Ethical Bias and Prevent AI-Driven Atrocities”
We have seen emerging visions for AI doctors, AI therapists, AI educators, AI-driven cars, and more. When we deploy these AI systems into decision-making roles within society, they inevitably face ethical decisions. The result of these decisions arises from the training data and safeguards of the foundational model. In this project, I explore four live options for safeguarding foundational AI models which power these AI agents, pinpointing issues of ethical bias and potential atrocities within current approaches. I then demonstrate how a general approach fulfilled by two formulations of Kant’s categorical imperative might solve current issues.

Ismail Kurun (Vanderbilt University)
“Epistemology of Political Liberalism: A Case for Underdetermination”
David Enoch (2017) has recently argued that the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism are controversial and indefensible. Enoch analyzed those commitments through the lenses of analytic epistemology. However, philosophy of science provides a more fruitful lens. I focus on the epistemological commitment of specifically political liberalism and argue that that commitment should be understood as the underdetermination thesis, which holds that the available evidence supports multiple, competing comprehensive doctrines and that therefore different people are justified in holding varying, competing doctrines. This thesis is defensible because it makes good sense of reasonable disagreement and is well-established in science.

Adam Lake (Brown University)
“Trial and Error: A Defense of Fallible Judicial Review”
Dialogic theories defend intermediate judicial review, where courts can strike down laws as unconstitutional, but legislators can override this decision. However, common Dialogic defenses collapse into arguments for either strong judicial review, where judges have final authority regarding constitutionality, or else no judicial review. I argue that intermediate judicial review is best understood as a mechanism to direct legislative attention to problems, even when judges make mistakes. Applying David Estlund’s Epistemic Proceduralist account of legitimacy, this argument can defend intermediate judicial review as legitimate. In contrast, strong judicial review is illegitimate due to relying on disputable assumptions about judicial competence.

Dakota Layton (University of Alabama in Huntsville)
“Truth-Decay and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Idea of Freedom for Excellence”
St. Thomas Aquinas’ idea of freedom for excellence is the view that human beings are free to the extent that they can pursue the true and the good and restricted in their freedom to the extent they cannot. Truth-decay is a phenomenon that can be characterized as a weakening of the sense of Truth. I will argue that truth-decay hinders our ability to pursue freedom for excellence, namely, because it undermines the core theological principle that grounds freedom for excellence: the idea of creatio (Creation).

Haodong Lyu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
“Trapped in the present: the unreasonable self-blame in grief and other places”
Sometimes, our practices of self-blame do not track blameworthiness. In this paper, I will illustrate such unreasonable self-blame with detailed examples and explain why it arises by appealing to one cognitive bias: the hot-cold empathy gap. This bias says that we tend to model the psychological states of our past selves as the states we are in now. Being influenced by the hot-cold empathy gap implies that the perspective from which we evaluate our past beliefs and actions is trapped in the present. It is from this perspective that we misperceive our past unblameworthy beliefs and actions as blameworthy.

Linh Hoai Mac (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“Two Senses of Characterization”
Philosophers often use the words “characterization” or “characterize” to introduce their conception of a certain term. While these words are ubiquitous, their meanings remain undertheorized. I posit that there are two distinct senses of characterization: (1) conception and (2) judgment. Furthermore, I argue for a distinction between characterizations as judgments and what I call basic descriptions. Finally, I conclude that this distinction is important for at least two topics in social epistemology: (i) the debate between non-reductionism and reductionism in the epistemology of testimony; and (ii) epistemic injustice.

Paul A. Macdonald Jr. (United States Air Force Academy)
“Wisdom as the Highest Epistemic Good”
The goal of this paper is to defend a certain view of wisdom as the highest epistemic good by way of critically evaluating Jason Baehr’s recent work on theoretical wisdom, or sophia.  Baehr intentionally broadens Aristotle’s view of sophia in order to make sophia domain-specific.  However, in doing so, he fails to recognize we still remain reliant on a conception of the person who is supremely wise.  On the view I defend, persons are theoretically wise to a greater degree, the more closely their respective epistemic standings approximate the epistemic standing of the person who is supremely wise.

William Moix (Binghamton University)
“Shoemaker’s Alien Case: A Reconstrual as Active Disregard”
Shoemaker does an insufficient job of proving his claim that “once [someone] becomes aware of my incapacity, he cannot intelligibly hold me accountable […]” and, further, “such an incapacity undermines the possibility of my expressing ill will in the sense warranting accountability-blame, namely, active disregard.” In providing Jose Medina’s work on epistemic responsibility, I believe it provides a framework for showing that relevant social ignorance can indeed be held responsible contra Shoemaker’s claim. Thus, I argue that Shoemaker’s claim that someone cannot be held accountable for disregarding demands that they see as non-reason-giving falls short, given the case he provides.

John Mancini (University of Virginia)
“Individual Judgments and Self-Refutation in Plato’s Theaetetus”
Protagoras’s relativist Measure Doctrine (MD) in Plato’s Theaetetus maintains, “[W]hat seems to each individual also is for that person” (Theaetetus, 170a4-5). Socrates’s attempt to prove MD self-refuting through his peritrope (171a7-c6) seems to inadvertently commit Protagoras to subjectivism rather than relativism. Many have attempted to soundly reconstruct the peritrope to refute that Socrates makes this error. Such reconstructions, however, fail to account for lines 171a2-4, which, I show, serves as the peritrope’s initial premise. They cannot, therefore, accurately portray the peritrope. I propose a reconstruction that accounts for 171a2-4 and thus shows how Plato truly saw the peritrope succeeding.

Kiet Nguyen (Franklin and Marshall)
“The Paradox of Fiction?”
This paper explores the ‘Paradox of Fiction’, a term coined and made popular by Colin Radford, which questions how we can experience genuine emotions in response to fictional entities we know do not exist. I argue that this paradox arises from a misunderstanding of how different parts of the brain process and give rise to emotional and rational thoughts. The primal brain, responsible for immediate emotional responses, does not distinguish between real and fictional stimuli, while the modern brain, which handles rational thought, can distinguish between them. This fact will be central in explaining why it is so natural for us to feel fear towards fictional things and why at the same time causes us confusion. By recognizing the separate functions of these brain regions, we can understand the apparent inconsistency and resolve the paradox.

Shramana Pramanik (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
“Solidarity as a collective “Power” to Yield Social Change”
Solidarity is often depicted as a socio-ethical concept. It is usually interpreted as a form of collaboration amongst different individuals of a society. Robin Zheng (2022) argued that solidarity can also be recognized as a form of ‘power’. Her analysis illustrates how solidarity can unite individuals from diverse backgrounds and foster collective resistance. However, her analysis fails to address cases where marginalized people face practical constraints in building collective resistance. I argue for an additional type of power which shall not only resolve the gap in her analysis but bolster it further.

Brian Ribeiro (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga)
“How Can a Skeptic Write a Book?”
In this short essay I will be using my title’s question as a way to explore some of the main themes and most intriguing new ideas in Mark Walker’s new book Outlines of Skeptical-Dogmatism: On Disbelieving our Philosophical Views. In Section 2 I will offer a sketch of Walker’s skeptical-dogmatist view. Then, in Section 3, I will lay out the “skeptic’s predicament.” Sections 4.1 and 4.2 each explore possible ways of escaping the skeptic’s predicament, viz. longshotting and dialogizing.  Section 5 offers brief concluding remarks.

Oluwaseun D. Sanwoolu (University of Kansas)
“Reason Without Goodwill: A Kantian Challenge to AI as Moral Agents”
Can AI Artifacts such as chatbots be moral agents? Considering how scholars have argued that AI could be programmed to adhere to moral rules, there is a need to examine this within the Kantian ethical framework. But this means we must examine concepts such as the goodwill, rational autonomy and freewill, I suggest that AI may function as social agents, as they cannot be true moral agents within Kant’s framework, as they inherently violate key Kantian principles, particularly the second maxim of the Categorical Imperative.

Lucia Schwarz (Tulane University)
“Towards a Better Theory of Reasons”
Value-based theories of reasons analyze reasons in terms of goodness. On one prominent version, reasons are facts that explain why it is good if an agent performs a certain action. While value-based theories of reasons have a lot going for them, they struggle with certain cases in which we have reasons to perform bad actions. To remedy this shortcoming, I propose the Better Theory of Reasons, according to which reasons are facts that increase the extent to which performing an action is better than not performing it.

Meredith Sheeks (University of North Carolina)
“The Importance of Being Rude”
This paper issues a caution against a pair of claims, which are beginning to go unquestioned in discussions about the potential moral significance of etiquette, manners, and civility in our social and political lives. The first claim is that we are morally required to express respect for one another, even in the absence of having respect for one another. The second is that etiquette is the only means of expressing respect to and for our fellows. I argue that neither of these claims is true, despite the fact that each claim carries with it an important, although less revisionary, insight.

Jeremy Shipley (Volunteer State Community College)
“Moral Consistency”
I want to describe a problem that emerges adopting what I’ll call “moral consistency principles” in ethics. The problem is very general, and I will try to show this by exploring the formal character of moral consistency norms. But the problem is also very concrete, as it arises in everyday moral discourse, which I will demonstrate with examples. The problem is that it may be impossible to be both morally consistent and morally reasonable. From demandingness objections to systematic moral theory to the ad hominem charges of hypocrisy in everyday moral discourse, this problem is pervasive. I offer no good solution.

Travis Tanner (Austin Peay State University)
“How Good was Augustine’s Response to Skepticism in Contra Academicos?”
Augustine’s response to skepticism in Contra Academicos is apparently weak. The problem is that Augustine’s narrow focus leaves the skeptic in possession of the field. However, I argue that Augustine’s reply also consists in what his chosen examples reveal about the defects in skeptical reasoning. Those defects are the privileging of the material world and empirical perception. In response, Augustine implies that one must pursue wisdom by focusing on purely intelligible contents via intellectual perception. Partly, this is a matter of embracing the examples he cites. Equally important is retraining oneself to focus on such intelligible contents via one’s intellect.

Tancredo Tivane (The University of Arkansas Fayetteville)
“Black self-perception: A Fanonian and a DuBoisian Challenge to Anti-inequality Strategies”
In this paper, I argue that the camps of proposals (i.e. race conscious, and race unconscious strategies) for addressing black-white economic inequalities and achievement gaps are incomplete because they are predicated on white perceptions of blackness and fail to address black self-perception. Drawing on Franz Fanon’s concept of white narcissism and black inferiority, as well as Du Bois’ notion of black double-consciousness, I argue that both camps presume the solution to the black-white economic disparity rests on whites ceasing discriminatory practices and opening doors of opportunity for blacks in their institutions. However, they ignore the burden black folks carry as a result of internalized stigma and the effects it has on the prospects of mobility even when opportunity is given.

Joshua Uterstaedt (Vanderbilt University)
“Reconsidering Moral Encroachment as Solution for Doxastic Wronging”
Rima Basu (2018) has proposed the doxastic wronging thesis—that believers can wrong others by virtue of their beliefs, regardless of any resulting actions. Doxastic wronging creates problems regarding conflict between normative domains, which Basu addresses through the moral encroachment thesis—that the moral stakes of a belief influence how much evidence is required to justify it. I evaluate moral encroachment and conclude that it both fails to solve and even multiplies the problems it targets. Accordingly, moral encroachment is an undesirable method for defending doxastic wronging, especially relative to its competitors.

L. E. Walker (Washington University in St. Louis)
“Are We Experts at Social Categorization?”
Human social categorization involves classifying individuals based on observable traits like clothing, age, race, and gender. While this process is fundamental to our interactions and perceptions, this paper explores the question of whether we are truly experts at it. I focus here on one method of perceptual expertise, categorical expertise. Categorical expertise refers to our ability to categorize accurately and specifically in a certain domain. This paper challenges the notion that humans are expert social categorizers by critiquing a prominent theory of expertise I will call the “downward shift” view.

Peiying Yang (Vanderbilt University)
“Remembering as a “We”: Jane Addams’s Ethics of Memory”
This paper rediscovers Jane Addams’s view of memory as an individual and social virtue that can be practiced through conscious narration and active listening, while reflecting on the challenges it might encounter today, namely that the narration of traumatic memories can fetishize the narrators and solidify existing stereotypes about them. These challenges can be resolved when this ethics of memory is located in Addams’s conception of social morality, which proposes a democratic union of a “we” by connecting the narrators and their audience through sympathy and imagination and by advocating a pragmatic meliorism that encourages collaborative re-narration.

Unable to Attend

Akshan deAlwis (Washington University, Saint Louis)
“So, You Think We Infer That? Complexity and Knowledge Acquired via Inference”
Philosophers have defended views where categories of knowledge that seem noninferential really are acquired via inference. Call any view like this inferentialist. Inferentialism faces the objection that it’s too demanding since agents (like us) have the relevant knowledge without performing the necessary inference. I argue that this objection fails. It relies on a view of doxastic justification where epistemic normativity and psychological processing must mirror each other. On the correct view, inferentialism (roughly) is not too demanding.

Edward (Ted) Mark (Loyola Marymount University)
“Transparency and the Normativity of Belief”
This paper presents a new account of transparent self-knowledge. I argue that our ability to self-ascribe beliefs via transparency derives from our proficiency with a truth-normed concept of belief. Insofar as our concept of belief is such that a belief in p is appropriate only if p is true, it follows that a self-ascription of the belief that p can be substituted for an assessment of the way one takes the world to be. I argue that the psychological transition at play in cases of transparency is a result of our practices surrounding a truth-normed concept of belief.