Philosophy Day SP13

CSULB PHILOSOPHY DAY SPRING 2013

FRIDAY, MAY 3rd AS 234

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

9:45 AM Coffee and Continental Breakfast
10:00 AM Dean’s Welcoming Remarks and Philosophy Chair’s Introduction
10:15 AM Chair: Stephanie Fleming (CSULB Undergraduate Student)
Speaker: Kevin Watson (CSULB Graduate Student) “Tracing and Offloading: a (Neo-Lockean) Reply to Johnston”
Comments: Daniel Schultz (CSULB Undergraduate Student)
11:20 AM Speaker: Amy Massoud (former CSULB Graduate Student; Current PhD Student Syracuse) “Moral Worth and Supererogation”
12:20 PM Lunch Provided at Conference Venue
1:30 PM Chair: Zien Halwani (CSULB Undergraduate Student)
Speaker: Dan Norton (CSULB Graduate Student) “The Foundations of Libertarian Free Will”
Comments: Michael Stebbins (CSULB Undergraduate Student)
2:35 PM Coffee Break
3:10 PM Speaker: Kristen Irwin (Assistant Professor, Biola University) “Reason in Bayle and Leibniz”
4:15 PM

Keynote Speaker: Aaron James (Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine)
Title: On the Philosophical Interest and Surprising Significance Of the Asshole”
Abstract: A certain theory of what it is to be an asshole has significant implications for at least three larger philosophical issues.  First, it suggests the plausibility of “cognitivist” analyses of all (or almost all) “foul language.”  This undercuts the relative appeal of “expressivism” where it had the best chance of being correct.  Second, the theory helps us see why a philosophical answer to the question, “Why be moral?,” is not beholden the moral skeptic.  When the moral skeptic is an asshole, you assuredly won’t persuade him from his own point of view, and so don’t have to for purposes of philosophical justification.  Third, the theory helps “internalism” about moral motivation, as against “externalist” views that urge the possibility of rationally coherent “amoralism.
5:30 PM Reception