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Philosophy Day SP25
Before the sun sets on the calendar year, please join us for some solidarity and endterm socializing at our biannual Philosophy Day! symposium, which will be held on Friday May 9th from 12:00pm–5:30pm in LA2–120.
Program:
12:00pm: Opening Remarks
‘Algorithmic opacity and the erosion of practical deliberation’
- Abstract: Typically, philosophers discussing normative problems associated with opacity focus on issues such as hidden biases, the right to explanation, the inability to secure recourse, or trust. This talk introduces an overlooked normative consequence of opacity: the harm it inflicts upon agents’ ability to meaningfully influence or alter outcomes in relation to opaque processes. When opacity is widespread and particularly severe—in credit scoring, hiring filters, admissions screens, performance dashboards, even dating algorithms—verdicts are issued without supplying intelligible reasons and agents cannot deliberate about how their choices bear on those outcomes. This condition leads to a form of ‘technological fatalism’, a state in which agents seemingly have little to no say regarding their future or the direction their lives take. Drawing on Aristotle’s concept of practical wisdom (phronesis), I argue that such opacity fundamentally undermines our capacity for meaningful agency. For Aristotle, practical deliberation (bouleusis) requires knowledge of particulars to identify the appropriate means to our ends. Without this knowledge, deliberation becomes impossible. This is precisely where algorithmic opacity creates harm: by making the connection between our actions and outcomes unintelligible, opaque systems effectively remove entire domains from our sphere of deliberative control.
12:45pm–1:00pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A
‘What value is unrecognized philosophy?’
- Abstract: One day, you finish the philosophy manuscript you’ve been working so hard on. You e-mail it off to a journal you hope will publish it, only for a demon to suddenly appear. The demon says, ‘I have good news and bad news. The good news is that your article will get published. The bad news is that no one will ever engage with it’. If this happened, how should you feel? I will argue that, were you trying to make a contribution to philosophy, then you should feel thwarted; not being engaged with means it isn’t a contribution. However, if you were trying to become a better philosopher, then you should not feel bad, because—to be a good philosopher—you don’t have to make a contribution to philosophy. My reasoning is as follows: philosophy’s telos is to achieve understanding of the answers to fundamental, characteristically philosophical questions: what can one know? How should one live? For what may one hope? One contributes to understanding, though, only if one’s work is engaged with by the philosophical community. By contrast, to be a good philosopher, one has to do things that are such that, if they were engaged with, then they would contribute to understanding. Thus, as long as you produce good work, you can still be a good philosopher, even if no one recognizes it.
2:15pm–2:30pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A
‘The strongest form of coherence’
- Abstract: Blanshard is widely held to have had a coherence theory of truth. I argue, however, that his theory of truth should be interpreted as an identity theory of truth. His theory that perceptions are a type of judgment, and that certain judgments are made true by their coherence with these perceptual judgments, dissolves the distinction between truth-bearer and truthmaker. Furthermore, Blanshard’s theory that ideas are in a teleological relationship with the objects they represent and his doctrine that a judgment is true to the degree that it approximates the ideal system also point to identity as the key relation. True judgments in Blanshard’s theory of truth are in fact coherent, but the strongest form of coherence is identity.
3:00pm–3:30pm: Socializing
‘Strangers to ourselves: Nietzsche, genealogy, and the tasks of philosophy’
- Abstract: Nietzsche opened the Preface to On the Genealogy of Morality with a compelling provocation: ‘we are’ he wrote, ‘unknown to ourselves’. As we take up the position of appearing as ‘strangers to ourselves’ (GM P 1), how can we trace the boundaries of this unknown land within, that which Freud called our ‘internal foreign territory’? If our joys and our jealousies, our satisfactions and our disappointments, obscure our history as they reproduce it, how might we come to navigate, even chart, this subterrain ground? Through readings from my forthcoming book, I will discuss Nietzsche’s greatest philosophical contribution: the practice of genealogy. This way of doing philosophy, I show, can illuminate the social and psychic conditions that keep us so stubbornly from fully knowing ourselves, while also providing us with clear pathways to becoming far less self-estranged.
4:45pm–5:00pm: Short Break / Spillover Q&A
‘Hume’s natural belief and the belief in God’
- Abstract: Commentators debate whether Hume regarded the belief in God as a natural belief. Some scholars have argued that he did, while others deny it. Disagreement mainly stems from how each scholar defines ‘natural belief’. The notion of natural belief was first invented by Norman Kemp Smith, and later scholars present alternative accounts of the criteria of natural belief. Though they appeal to passages in the Treatise and Enquiry, it is remarkable that most of them do not analyze the term ‘belief’ or differentiate it from ‘natural belief’. To rectify this, I will analyze Hume’s notion of belief and adjudicate the debate. I will argue that (1) natural beliefs are those that are necessary for people to subsist, and that (2) the belief in God is not natural because it is not necessarily required for our subsistence.
6:00pm–8:00pm: Reception and Dinner
Speakers and participants invited. [If attending, please let the organizers know aforehand so that they have an accurate headcount.]
Come join us and celebrate the many successes that our department has enjoyed this year. For example, Liz Sato won a highly competitive SU25 Research Assistantship as well as a major Fellowship from the Government of Japan. Daniel Luna, Travis Barnett, and Abel Peña are matriculating into the doctoral programs at Texas Austin (PHIL), Indiana (PHIL), and Arizona State (HPS), respectively. Travis was also lauded with a coveted spot on the OGS Dean’s list. Abel Peña received one of the AY24–25 Sally Casanova Predoctoral Fellowships, and he and Jason Rosencrantz were also awarded the Friends of Philosophy Scholarship. Thanks also outgoing SPA president Sam Parajuli, who also was awarded a fellowship to participate in epigenetics research at the the University of Chicago. Isaac Obert took first place in the Physical and Mathematical Sciences category of the 37th annual student research competition, and was also awarded the Whittington Scholarship. (Additional student accomplishments here.) Joe Gordon has continued to run the very successful Nietzsche Reading Group. Congratulations also to the distinguished undergrad and graduate students this year: Isaiah Navarro, Ara Tobias Armbruster Rosa, Jason Rosencrantz, and Toko Dougherty. Melissa Ramirez and Dr. Amanda Parris joined the faculty this year as new lecturers, and we are also excited to welcome ingoing SPA president Grant Lowell as well as our newest faculty member, Dr. Per-Erik Milam. Finally, several faculty have new research produced or in progress, too, including several new papers and book projects. Congratulations, all!