79th Resolution

We the People of the Virginia Philosophical Association, gathered together this day in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of our nation’s capital, in order to form a more perfect association,

·         To establish fair relational equality in which we reconcile ourselves to accepting an imperfect form of liberal egalitarian relationships,

·         To free ourselves from traditional forms of morality through realizing that intuitions can provide but prima facie epistemic justification,

·         To embrace moral truths that are relational but “not that weird,”

·         To have rational beginnings of all of our intentional actions, concomitantly avoiding beliefs that would cause otherwise working marriages not to “work,” even though we are all philosophers and as such are predisposed to believe that philosophy has a moral license to advocate wrongful ideas,

·         To cultivate moral lives that reflect a richness that can be distinct from forming justified true beliefs,

·         To have moral perceptions that lead to moral understandings and to have moral a-liefs and u-liefs in addition to moral beliefs,

·         To be transparent to ourselves, avoiding  false beliefs about our own emotions and desires and about how we intend to act,

·         And to enjoy the vocation that we have chosen and to preserve that vocation as a lived reality, thus enabling us to work toward the amelioration of poverty, hunger, and “bad work” for those outside of our profession,

do ordain and establish this resolution for the 79th meeting of said association. This we do in convention by the unanimous consent of the philosophers present this twenty-seventh day of October in the Year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen, and of the independence of the Virginia Philosophical Association, the 79th.

In witness whereof we hereunto subscribe our names as individually and corporately grateful to Marymount University and to Dean Christina Clark for their exceedingly generous patronage to this association, enabling this current conference and providing both facilities and nourishment necessary to the carrying out of our important work. Concurrently we give thanks to the inestimable president of our society, Catherine Sutton, and to the only slightly more estimable vice president, Charles Repp, and to Adam Kovach, who holds no office in the Association but has worked tirelessly on our behalf, for the labor of love that they have undertaken in organizing this wonderfully refreshing occasion.

M. Jones, Secretary of the VPA

(Inspired by the preamble to the U.S. Constitution)