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Philosophy Day! Symposium FA22

December 9, 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 5:15 pm

The biannual Philosophy Day! symposium will be held on Friday December 9th from 12:00pm–5:15pm in room LH–151. [If you would like to attend the dinner afterwards, please let organizer Nick Laskowski know aforehand so that he has an accurate headcount.]

Program:

12:00pm–12:05pm: Opening Remarks

12:05pm–12:45pm: Undergraduate Student Research Presentation
Silas Kim (Cal State Long Beach)
‘The special immunity thesis is not widely held: a critique of Brennan’s When All Else Fails
  • Abstract: In When All Else Fails, Jason Brennan argues against the thesis that government agents have ‘special immunity’ against morally permissible self-defense. Brennan names this thesis ‘the standard view’ and believes that, by arguing against the standard view, he is taking a controversial position. In opposing special immunity, Brennan argues for the moral parity thesis, which states that ‘democratic government agents, property, and agencies are as much legitimate targets of defensive deception, sabotage, or violence as civilians are’ (2018: 11). Furthermore, Brennan believes that his position has controversial implications if correct. I argue that Brennan is not taking a controversial position in opposing the special immunity thesis. Therefore, Brennan’s arguments for the moral parity thesis are not particularly interesting in the discussion of whether we ought to defend ourselves against government agents.

12:45pm–1:00pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A

1:00pm–1:45pm: Graduate Student Research Presentation
Chavva Olander (Cal State Long Beach)
‘Deciding under the influence: the relevance of perceived access to influential factors on our decisions’
  • Abstract: Free will experiments have sought to understand the phenomenology of agency in service of ascertaining whether people experience their decisions and actions in compatibilist or incompatibilist terms. However, emphases on the question of compatibility with determinism ignore certain subtleties in the phenomenology of agency by focusing on the possibility of its alignment with determinism over the contents of the experience itself. As such, experimental results suggest an alignment of experience with one theory or the other without a robust account of what the experience consists in. I revisit some free will experiments conducted by Eddy Nahmias et al. and Oisín Deery et al., and appeal to data gathered by Shaun Nichols, in order to account for a previously overlooked feature of agentive experience; I will argue that an agent’s perceived awareness of potential influences on decisions correlates with the experience of those decisions being ‘up to’ the agent.

1:45pm–2:00pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A

2:00pm–3:00pm: Faculty Speaker
Alysha Kassam (Cal State Long Beach)
‘Algorithmic racial discrimination: a social impact approach’
  • Abstract: This talk contributes to debates over algorithmic discrimination with particular attention to structural theories of racism and the problem of ‘proxy discrimination’, i.e., in which discriminatory effects that arise even when an algorithm has no information about socially sensitive characteristics such as race. How should a structural understanding of racism and oppression inform our understanding of algorithmic discrimination and its associated norms? In response to the problem of proxy discrimination, some have argued that existing norms of anti-discrimination, which often focus on reasons and intentions, are insufficient. In proposing new normative tools, some frame the problem of confronting algorithmic discrimination as one of improving algorithmic fairness. While there is debate over how to conceptualize what algorithmic fairness is, many proposals focus on fairness as a form of parity, aiming to equalize metrics between individuals or groups—looking, e.g., for equal rates of accurate and inaccurate predictions between one group and another. I argue that, from the perspective of structural theories, fairness-as-parity is inapt in algorithmic contexts. Instead, we should be considering social impact—particularly, whether uses of algorithms perpetuate or mitigate existing social stratification. This contribution thus offers a new understanding of what algorithmic racial discrimination is.

3:00pm–3:15pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A

3:15pm–5:15pm: Keynote Speaker
Dan Korman (University of California Santa Barbara)
‘On the metaphysics of race’
  • Abstract: Philosophers of race appeal to a wide variety of different factors in analyzing racial phenomena: ancestry, physical appearance, systems of privilege and oppression, shared ways of life, and so-called ‘racial essences’. My aim in this talk is to distinguish four importantly different questions about racial groups that one may be trying to answer in appealing to these factors. I’ll show that marking these distinctions proves fruitful, revealing ways of strengthening existing arguments for the non-existence of racial groups; new avenues for addressing various challenges to biological and social accounts of race; and a range of hybrid positions that have been largely overlooked in the literature.

6:00pm–8:00pm: Reception and Dinner
Speakers and participants invited!

Details

Date:
December 9, 2022
Time:
12:00 pm - 5:15 pm
Event Category:
Website:
https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/philosophy/event/philosophyday_fa22

Venue

LH–151
View Venue Website

Organizer

Nick Laskowski
Email
nicholas.laskowski@csulb.edu