Jesse Hill “On Luck and Probability”
Luck plays a central role in epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, and free will, but despite its predominance little work has been done trying to figure out what luck is. Sometimes luck is left as a primitive, undefined notion. Other times it is defined merely as the absence of control or as the negation of moral responsibility. Given luck’s importance, this is inadequate. However, philosophers are starting to turn their attention to the concept. There are currently three types of theories of luck: probability, modal, and control based accounts. My focus in this paper is on luck’s relation to probability. The probability account, which is championed by Nicholas Rescher in Luck: The brilliant randomness of everyday life (1995) and again in “The Machinations of Luck” (2014), holds that an event is a matter of luck if it is significant (good or bad) and befalls someone purely by chance. The problem with Rescher’s account lies in its probability condition. There are three common philosophical interpretations of probability: objective, epistemic, and referential, but when applied to cases none of these accounts is able to fully capture our intuitions about luck. There is more to luck than significance factored by probability—notions of control, independent of probability, also influence our ascriptions of luck.
Joi Jones “Love and Memory”
I advocate that the concept of “love” can be understood naturalistically, metaphorically and metaphysically. In this paper I will argue that the meaning of “love” is our own mental projection of the psychological attachment model experienced as infants, transferred to the process of remembering. My argument hinges on the representation of the striving of the ‘self’ to constantly establish identity through its attachment to memory and to ‘object permanence.’ Love equates memory and memory equates love.
Celine Geday “Fictional Truth Conditions for an Expressivist Semantics of Slurs”
I will describe Jeshion’s component account of slurs, which she calls a hybrid account. Then, I’ll bring up a problem with a facet of her account, namely, the truth-conditional component of her account. This problem can also be seen through Christopher Hom and Robert May’s critiques of what they call “identity expressivism” in (Hom and May, 2015). I will suggest that Hom and May’s fictionalist account of the truth conditions of slurs gets these truth conditions intuitively correct. But, I’ll also argue that expressivism is the best way to account for the offensiveness of slurs because it takes into account the affect that racist, bigoted, or homophobic speakers have when using slurs. Hence, I’ll suggest that Jeshion’s account can be supplemented by Hom and May’s fictional truth conditions. I show the possible compatibilities and problems with an expressivist account that is modified with fictional truth conditions, and why expressivism is a preferable semantics of slurs.
Jarred Snodgrass "The Inadequacy of Gautherian Contractualism: Why David Gauthier’s Theory of Compliance Does Not Comply”
In his book Morals by Agreement, David Gauthier builds a case for a contractualist moral theory by advancing a theory of compliance, whereby rational individuals will form a disposition, or intention, to adhere to moral agreements because of the received cooperative benefits. The aim of this paper is to show that Gauthier’s theory of compliance lacks sufficient warrant to ensure compliance, and as a result, is unsuccessful. My procedure will be as follows. First, I will outline the essential features of Gauthier’s contractualism as well as explain the issue of compliance. Second, I will present Gauthier’s theory and argument for the rationality of compliance. Third, I will demonstrate that the focus Gauthier places on human being’s abilities to identify dispositions is insufficient in its endeavor to rule out deception as a rational choice. Fourth and finally, I will argue that due to the limited knowledge human beings have of the future and the fluidity of their preferences, compliance is not always the rational choice.
Keynote: Donald Hubin
Analytic Philosophy as Conceptual Engineering:
Some Case Studies from Ethics
More than our colleagues in other disciplines, we philosophers have concerned ourselves with the very nature of the enterprise in which we are engaged. “What is philosophy?” is a substantive philosophical question, and one to which different answers have been proposed. Given the breadth of philosophy, both in subject matter and methodology, it is unlikely that any simple answer to the question will be satisfactory. But one very illuminating way to look at the enterprise of, at least, analytic philosophy is as one of “conceptual engineering”. Concepts are tools and tools are designed to solve problems. What problems we are concerned to solve and what count as a satisfactory solutions depend not only on our values and goals, but on the natural, social, and technological environment in which we find ourselves. Concepts that are serviceable in some contexts lead to error when we confront novel circumstances. And, so, our concepts need to be continuously re-engineered to address our changing circumstances and goals. The task of re-engineering concepts is highly distributed—it is certainly not confined to philosophers—and it is often done unreflectively. Analytic philosophers, though, are quite consciously and reflectively engaged in an enterprise that is best thought of as conceptual engineering: honing and rebuilding our concepts to address our changing circumstances. Examples from moral philosophy of this sort of conceptual engineering will be explored in support of this thesis.
Marcus Hunt “Conciliationism and the Philosophy of ‘As If’”
Conciliationism is the doctrine which advises doxastic revision in cases of reasonable disagreement between peers. Some criticisms of conciliationism are ranged against the reasoning which leads to it. My concern in this essay is with two criticisms regarding its consequences. The first is that conciliationism is destructive of inquiry because it seems to pose an “ought implies can” problem for the enterprise of seeking justified beliefs in the areas of philosophy and social science. The second is that that doxastic revision of the numerous intellectual commitments we hold is too counter-intuitive and revisionary. Although I endorse the adoxicism that conciliationism entreats, my intention in this paper is not to defend conciliationism but to draw a new approach toward reasonable disagreement from the examination of these two criticisms. I suggest that the doxastic revision which conciliationism requires of us is consistent with our maintaining a propositional attitude other than belief towards our intellectual commitments. I suggest that we ought to relate to them as fictions, and that this move entirely avoids the two noted criticisms. Since fictions are ways of structuring enquiry, rather than affirmations about the world, they are non-rivalrous. In part 1 I will briefly characterize conciliationism, reasonable disagreement, and epistemic peerhood. In part 2 I explain the two criticisms of conciliationism. In part 3 I explain Hans Vaihinger’s account of fictions and how it relates to conciliationism. In part 4 I show how fictionalization of our intellectual commitments avoids the two criticisms.
Matthew Delhey “Is Hegel’s Hope for Machine Automation Consistent with his Social Theory?”
There is an apparent contradiction in Hegel’s discussion of labor within civil society. On the one hand, Hegel posits machine automation as the solution to the problems of abstract labor. On the other hand, Hegel argues that laboring successfully within civil society is necessary for the kind of subject-formation or Bildung required for the achievement of truly free and ethical living. Hegel seems to be in a bind: he must hope for the elimination of labor whilst while simultaneously clinging to its necessity. I argue that Hegel’s hope for machine automation as presented in the Philosophy of Right is ultimately consistent with Hegel’s wider theory of subject-formation in ethical life. I first sketch the role of labor within the wider context of the Philosophy of Right. I then lay out the problems of abstract labor Hegel identifies. Next, I treat Hegel’s response to these problems and his emphasis on the subject-forming role of labor. I conclude that Hegel’s views are consistent if we correctly interpret ethical subject-formation as arising from only certain kinds of labor such as the universal labor performed by civil servants.
Kelly Swope “On Tragedy and Revolution in Aristotle’s Poetics and Politics”
Scholars analyzing the political elements of Aristotle’s Poetics, wherein Aristotle offers his theory of tragic drama, have tended to focus on tragedy as a public performance art in ancient Athens. However, Aristotle himself, while he does make mention of the public performance of tragic dramas, finds the political element of tragedy in the literary form itself, rather than in the live performance. The structure of the tragic plot in particular, I argue, informs Aristotle’s understanding of its political purport. My thesis takes its cue from Aristotle’s assertion in the Poetics that “plot is the life and soul of tragedy.” I attempt to show how this assertion is as much a comment about the nature of political action in the city as it is about the essence of tragic drama. For support, I turn to a dramatic work that figures prominently in the development of Aristotle’s theory of tragedy, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, noting how its political insights get articulated through the formal structure of its plot. Then, taking what I learn from Sophocles, I turn to Aristotle’s Politics, comparing the structure of the tragic plot to the structure of political revolutions. My aim by the end is to have shown that the study of tragic poetry, for Aristotle and for those studying his philosophy, must be viewed as a branch of political science in its own right.
Michael Ball-Blakley “Self-Respect and General Difference Principle”
In this project I consider the relationship between social bases of self-respect (hereafter “self-respect”) and various intersecting inequalities. I begin by discussing self-respect, articulating how it is undermined through different work-related compensatory inequalities. These include indirect compensatory goods (income, wealth, and leisure time) and direct compensatory goods (prestige, autonomy, and satisfaction of the Aristotelian Principle). In response to recent work by Richard Penny and Cynthia Stark, I argue that economic inequalities do not necessarily undermine self-respect. Rather, self-respect is primarily threatened when indirect and direct compensatory inequalities are connected. Accordingly, taking the general version of John Rawls’s difference principle (which, in addition to wealth and income, includes self-respect), I argue that justice requires an inverse compensatory scheme. Inequalities in direct compensatory goods are only justified if they are compensated for through a corresponding increase in indirect compensatory goods. Work that is not intrinsically desirable (involving less direct compensation) is only voluntarily undertaken, and compatible with self-respect, with greater indirect compensation. This illustrates why we ought to focus on the general version of the difference principle. Wealth and income are not the only, or even most important, forms of inequality. Self-respect and the direct compensatory goods play a significant role in peoples lives, their life plans, and the way in which the benefits and burdens of cooperation are distributed. To merely focus on wealth and income, thereby permitting the traditional correlation between the two types of compensatory goods to persist, exacerbates the inequalities of the least-advantaged, violating the general difference principle.
Keynote: Diane Perpich
Challenging the Primacy of the Individual:
Phenomenological Contributions to Social Ontology
The field of social ontology asks how the social world or social reality is made. Central to it have been figures like John Searle and Philip Petit who argue for a methodological and substantive individualism, viz., they contend that only individual intentionality is needed for an adequately robust account of how we engage jointly in social activities or otherwise interact socially with one another. This paper considers a central challenge to that view employing conceptions of the social instituted within the phenomenological tradition. I contend that a phenomenological approach permits a focus on the intersubjective, embodied, and lived realities of subjects who do not need a bridge over to the social world but arise from it.