Essay Abstracts
Zack Beauchamp
Liberty and Egalitarianism
Brown University
G.A Cohen has argued that John Rawls’ acceptance of incentive-based economic
structures is inconsistent with Rawls’ difference principle, as any economic system based on
motivation by incentive will allow for some inequalities that do not maximally benefit the
least well off. Specifically, Cohen argues that incentive economics both rely on and
promulgate a social ethos that prioritizes self-interest and wealth acquisition over helping
others, a value structure which Cohen believes necessarily prevents the distribution of wealth
to be in the best interests of the least well off. This paper defends Rawls against Cohen’s
criticism, arguing that any attempt to replace the current incentive-based system with one
where people are motivated by a communal social ethos (Cohen’s solution) will either fail or
violate Rawls’ first principle of justice (that all citizens are entitled to a scheme of basic
liberties compatible will equal basic liberties for all citizens). The paper will then provide a
defense of prioritizing the first principle over the second, arguing that equal basic liberties
for all citizens are necessary in order to ensure any real egalitarian distribution of wealth.
Aims and Arguments in Kant’s Metaphysical
University of Pennsylvania
Expositions of Space and Time
Immanuel Kant intends his metaphysical expositions of space and time to support a
revolution in metaphysics and epistemology that is primarily aimed at establishing a
theoretical basis for human autonomy. I devote this paper primarily to making Kant's goals
explicit so that we can see exactly what he ultimately intends his expositions to support.
But I also evaluate the expositions more narrowly in relation to his precise metaphysical
aims. The expositions reveal that Kant's quest for freedom eclipses his quest for knowledge,
and that he purchases very little freedom at a very high price. The expositions are essential to
Kant's project (at least as he conceives it), and yet they spring largely from his
resourcefulness and strategic introspection rather than necessity. Moreover, the expositions
Joseph Billings
of space and time are supposed to deliver a sound basis for knowledge (a priori synthetic,
necessary judgments) where inductive inferences fail. But if Kant's freedom-preserving
expositions are correct, then he has actually given us a reason to rely more heavily (indeed
desperately) upon inductive inferences in the pursuit of knowledge, not a sound alternative.
Enoch Chan
Moral Consideration and Intentionality
Dartmouth College
Knobe’s influential experiments on the intentionality of side-effects have set the stage
for subsequent debates on intentional action. His experiments provide compelling empirical
evidence to counter the Simple View. By showing that the folk are more willing to say that a
side-effect was brought about intentionally when they regard that side-effect as morally
blameworthy, Knobe shows that intention is not the only criterion for intentional action.
I suspect that if the ascriber of intentionality is the agent himself, the moral
consideration that Knobe describes (that people are more willing to blame) will follow a
different pattern. To prove my point I conducted an experiment using Knobe’s Chairman
Experiment as my template.
My experiment has shown, firstly, that subjects are expected to ascribe intentionality
to side-effects very differently when they are themselves the agents, and, secondly, that the
role moral consideration plays on intentional action intuition is reduced after the subjects
acknowledge the agent’s possible mindset.
My experiment shows that the influence of moral consideration on intentional action
intuition is not necessary. Folk’s conception about intentionality, obviously troubled by
subjective feelings and misconceptions, does not tell us everything about the relation of
intention and intentional action.
Kimberly Chuang
Yi and Li in Confucian
California State University- LA
and Mencian Virtue Ethics
This essay will argue that the virtues of yi (righteousness) and li (behavioural norm) in
the ethical theories of Confucius and Mencius do not command the 'strict' normativity that
most are familiar with in an Aristotelian tradition. Instead, moral flexibility in Confucius and
context-sensitivity in Mencius are determinant of virtuous behaviour in ethically relevant
situations. To further contrast Aristotelian virtue ethics with Confucian and Mencian virtue
ethics, the paper will ascribe to Aristotelian virtue a 'transcendent' form of normativity that is
lacking in Confucian and Mencian virtue ethics. Likewise, the moral flexibility of Confucian
and Mencian virtue ethics is absent in Aristotelian virtue ethics. While acknowledging that
Confucian and Mencian moral traditions are subtly distinct from one another in both moral
development, as well as the determination of appropriate and virtuous behaviour, the paper
will nevertheless conclude that the Confucian and Mencian moral traditions are incompatible
with an Aristotelian moral tradition.
Elena Falloon
Are Deliberative Democrats Naïve About Power?
Dartmouth College
In the face of a public that has grown increasingly apathetic about democracy,
deliberative democrats such as Benjamin Barber, Bruce Ackerman, and James Fishkin
present a vision of democracy that is centered on engaged public discourse, rather than the
current vision, in which citizens only engage with government through voting. This paper
explores the reasoning behind their vision, and ultimately finds that their views, while
appealing, misunderstand the workings of power in a democracy.
Frankfurt’s Causal Theory of Action
University of Vermont
and Why it Falls Short
This paper is aimed at addressing J. David Velleman’s objections to Harry Frankfurt’s
“Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” Velleman claims that Frankfurt’s
account of action leaves action devoid of agency, an objection that threatens to unravel
Frankfurt’s conception of action. The goal of this essay is to revise Frankfurt’s conception of
the causation of action in such a way that it is secured from Velleman’s objection without
having to sacrifice its better aspects, specifically, its simplicity and its usefulness in
Garson Fields
evaluating the mental states that separate the agent from the non-agent.
Melissa Garland
The Price of Escaping the Vat
Spring Hill College
If the contents of mental states are determined by objects outside the mind, and it is not
possible to know with special authority those objects outside of minds, how can anyone
know what they think? Donald Davidson offers an alternative position about self-knowledge
that rejects externalism completely and suggests that philosophers abandon the dogma of
considering a belief as containing an 'object before the mind,' instead opting for a more fluid
conception. Akeel Bilgrami objects, saying that rejecting the dogma leaves us with the same
problem Putnam had originally – the problem of how we can know anything outside our
minds. His objection is ultimately unconvincing, and the following question is addressed:
What is the cost of abandoning externalism? The cost is confidence in knowing anything
about real people in the real world – confidence that life is more than a brain floating in a vat.
In "Brains in a vat," Putnam demonstrates that the implication of his Twin Earth example,
however counterintuitive, gets humanity out of the vat. While Davidson's alternative account
certainly is plausible, then, it may not be worth the price.
Joe Hedger
The Subject of Consciousness:
Arizona State University
An Unresolved Tension in Ned Block’s Theory
Ned Block's paper Consciousness, Accessibility, and the Mesh between Psychology and
Neuroscience, and his subsequent replies to commentators, seem undecided between holistic
and atomistic views of consciousness. This paper aims to resolve that tension. To do so it
offers an explicit definition of consciousness based in part on Block's notion of
phenomenology, Joseph Levine's notion of conscious access, and Thomas Nagel's notion of
"what it is like" to be conscious. The definition logically leads to the holistic view. As a
result, in Consciousness, Accessibility, and the Mesh between Psychology and Neuroscience,
Block implicitly assumes the holistic view. This paper also presents number of arguments in
support of this view, based upon philosophical reasoning, neuroscientific research,
evolutionary biology, and studies of cases such as the subject Zazetsky and persons with
identity disorders. In closing this paper considers the implications of this thesis on the
surest path to scientific understanding of consciousness. Neuroscientists should search for a
neural correlate of consciousness, including awareness of a subject, and not mere correlates
of individual mental states.
Jennifer S. Jhun
Perception and Its Lack of Content
Northwestern University
In philosophy of perception, it is commonly assumed that perceptual episodes have
intentional content. This paper provides a logical formulation of minimal intentionalism,
presupposed by most proponents of intentionalism but rarely argued for: that all perceptual
episodes have intrinsic, determinate intentional content, usually cashed out in terms of
accuracy conditions or conditions of satisfaction. This paper also provides a formalisation of
its strong counterpart, anti-intentionalism. By way of a thought experiment inspired by Anil
Gupta and Charles Travis, this paper challenges the minimal intentionalist thesis by
demonstrating that anti-intentionalism instead better accommodates the fact that we bear
upon our experiences background knowledge and beliefs.
James Kim
Criterian Account of Emotions
Dartmouth College
Any exploration into human nature will undoubtedly arrive at the subject of human
emotions. Though both Hobbes' and Freud's accounts of emotions fit quite nicely into their
respective views on human nature, they present emotions as goal-oriented phenomena.
This paper will explore the implausible consequences of holding a goal-oriented view on
emotions, especially when we attribute this view to children and infants. This paper will
also present Bernard Gert's criterian account of emotions as a basis for a proper account of
human emotions.
Sara Ludin
Go With the Flow of Empathy
Dartmouth College
David Hume’s sentimentalist moral theory provides the foundation of Michael Slote’s
virtue ethical account. In his 2007 article “Famine, Affluence, and Virtue,” Slote applies
his sentimentalist virtue theory to the moral challenge posed by Peter Singer in his seminal
1972 piece “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.” The beginning of this essay spells out the
Hume-Slote connection, paying special attention to sympathy and its partiality. The second
part compares the corrective mechanisms that Singer, Hume, and Slote each offer to deal
with the challenge of partialism. This leads to a discussion of moral obligation and
supererogation, which juxtaposes Singer’s strict threshold with Slote’s more fluid
understanding of moral duty. In the end, the paper concludes that Slote’s theory convincing,
due in large part to its meta-ethical implications.
Larry McGrath
Temporality and Agency as Eternal Recurrence
University of California-Berkeley
Despite over a century of critical scholarship, the notion of the eternal recurrence
arguably remains the most enigmatic of Nietzsche’s ideas. In its most straightforward
presentation, the thought of the eternal recurrence of the same inspires us to see that all
events than span our lives, and the world, have recurred and will continue to recur in an
endless cycle. Yet, true to the enigmatic nature of the idea itself, Nietzsche offers it as two
disparate formulations: an ethical imperative and a cosmological thesis. The first holds that
the eternal recurrence amounts to a thought experiment. It inspires us to assume a healthy
disposition toward the past, no longer viewing it as a burden that weighs upon our action, but
as a collection of events that eternally persist through the present. The second advances a
metaphysical thesis of the nature of cosmology, which holds that the structure of world
events follows an eternally recurring cycle.
Whereas the majority of critics dismiss the second formulation in order to preserve the
first, this essay argues that both are mutually co-dependent. The ethical formulation
establishes the conditions of subjective agency. These conditions depend upon the
cosmological formulation, which establishes the structure of temporality. Together, these
dual formulations situate the possibility of agency in time. Our actions depend upon our
temporal constitution.
Central to this reading of the eternal recurrence is a re-working of Nietzsche’s notion of
“cosmology.” Unlike critics who interpret Nietzsche’s account of cosmology as the sum total
of events that span the duration of time, this paper argues that Nietzsche is more concerned
with the nature of temporal duration as such. Temporality, for Nietzsche, constitutes the
permanence of the present moment – an event that summons the transformation of relations
of force that constitute all reality. In the concluding section, this paper advances the notion
that the cosmological formulation accounts for the movement of temporality as a rhythm to
which our agency conforms. It is the nature of this rhythmic movement that conditions the
possibility for human action.
Avi Miller
The Natural Constraint to Truth and Reality and its
Princeton University
Application Across Matrices
The aim of this paper is to attempt to reconcile two seemingly conflicting intuitions
regarding the nature of reality. The first is that the experience of ‘a brain in a vat’ cannot
represent reality. The second is that every person experiences the world differently; no two
people share the same reality or conception of the world.
The former implies that the there
is an objective reality whilst the latter puts that belief into question. The brain in a vat
intuition is further challenged when we consider its theological analogue. Would our ‘brain
in a vat’ experience still be unreal if God were the creator of the matrix rather than an evil
genius or complex machine? Many religious and theological perspectives cohere with such
a vat model and it would be strange to think that holding such religious views implicate a
disbelief in the reality of the world. In hopes of answering these questions, I will present an
argument for the unreality of vat experience which, unlike other arguments previously
offered, respects a broad and liberal notion of reality, one that allows for the possibility of
intersubjectivity within human experience. My purpose is not define reality or prove the
reality of any particular experience or matrix, but rather to define a limit concept of reality
and prove strictly that vat experiences cannot be real. I believe that such a limit concept
can be captured by introducing the natural-artificial distinction, although not without its own
set of complications and worries.
Daniel Moose
Alternate Possibilities, Considered Possibilities,
University of Arkansas
and Moral Responsibility
One of the simplest and most intuitive proposed necessary conditions for moral
responsibility is the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP), which states that a person is
morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. However,
this principle is easily defeated by Frankfurt-style counterexamples. John Martin Fischer
and Mark Ravizza describe a difference between regulative control, where all alternate
possibilities are available to an agent, and guidance control, where an agent is free to act only
with respect to some actions but is not free to act with respect to others. In this paper, I
attempt to develop a necessary condition for moral responsibility by revising PAP to address
the counterexamples that are brought against it. In the end, I put forth the Principle of All
Considered Possibilities (PACP), an intention-based condition that allows a person to be
morally responsible even when lacking alternate possibilities.
Bryan Norwood
Experiencing Complexity
Mississippi State University
Cognitive science and much of contemporary philosophy of mind are built around a
central hypothesis that Paul Thagard describes: “Thinking can best be understood in terms of
representational structure in the mind and computational procedures that operate on these
structures.” This mechanization of epistemology has not come without ontological
consequences. The de-emphasis of the subject in epistemic justification goes hand in hand
with an objectivist ontology of reductive physicalism. I argue that reduction is built on the
assumption of foundationalist epistemology and thus necessarily entails ontological
“properly basic” pieces that must be intuitively explained. Many attempts to answer the
reductive physicalist ontology, including non-reductive physicalism and emergentism, have
failed because they still work from the same assumption of reductive ontological levels that
imply an essentially foundationalist epistemology. I will attempt to illuminate the
explanatory problem of epistemic and ontological reductions through an aesthetic argument
that turns to Gestalt theory, painting, and the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. I conclude with a
suggestion that Merleau-Ponty’s robust ontology of the flesh is capable of replying to
reductivism and avoiding the pitfalls of non-reductive physicalism and emergentism.
Will Price
Dasein in Love: Embodiment and Being-With
Colby College
Although Heidegger finds that being-with-others is a fundamental mode of Dasein
which cannot be escaped from, he believes that to live an authentic existence—to be to one’s
ownmost potential—requires that the they of Mitsein be passed over and pushed into
insignificance, such that only the true and personal self confront the meaning of its own
being.
However, in examining the manner in which Dasein is in the world through its
embodiment, we find that to ask such a passing over of the they in reaching an authentic
understanding of ourselves is inconsistent, for if embodiment is a fundamental element of
Dasein then surely we can only exist to our ownmost potential as embodied Dasein. In
studying the way in which we are with others while embodied, it is found that such
bracketing away of the other is to deny what we are as embodied entities, and so it seems
rather inauthentic to simply forget them on our quest for authentic being towards our
ownmost possibility.
Grant J. Rozeboom
Freedom Beyond Restraint
University of Northern Iowa
Hannah Arendt developed an understanding of politics and freedom through her
consideration of ancient Greek culture and thought. In doing so, she rediscovered the
fundamental tension between activities of necessity (found in the household/oikos realm) and
freedom (found in the polis// public realm). She developed these categories through her
analysis of the American and French Revolutions, and forwarded a notion of freedom that
consists of public, joint action by citizens. Hanna Pitkin has criticized Arendt for ignoring the
plight of the poor in her political theory, but a careful examination of Arendt’s writings
reveals such criticisms to be unfounded. Additionally, the phenomenological analysis
undertaken by James Mensch offers a substantive line of reasoning for understanding
Arendtian citizenship and freedom, and is deficient only insofar as it retains a confusing
notion of private freedom. Arendt’s use of Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness provides an apt
alternative to Mensch’s use of private freedom, and ensures the preservation of a genuine and
secure public realm of freedom.
David Samra
Must the Cosmological Argument Depend
University of New Hampshire
on the Ontological Argument?
Is Kant’s criticism of the Cosmological Argument sound? This paper defends Kant from a
contemporary scholar William J. Forgie, who argues that Kant’s criticism only works against
a priori arguments such as the Ontological Argument and not a posteriori arguments such as
the Cosmological Argument. In doing so, it elucidates Kant’s views on the limitations of a
posteriori knowledge in order to counter Forgie’s claim that the CA can work independently
of any a priori knowledge.
Melissa Schumacher
Saints and Sensibility:
Northern Carolina State University
Hume on the Irrationality of Religious Belief
If one accepts Hume's concept of rationality, religious belief is seen to be irrational.
According to Hume, belief in the existence of anything, God included, is induced by
experience. However, in order for experiences to lead to rational belief, they must be either
direct sensory perceptions or valid analogical inferences from such perceptions. The a
posteriori evidence for God's existence - specifically miracles and various design arguments does not fit these criteria. A priori arguments for God's existence are ruled out on Hume's
view, because no amount of logical reasoning can prove the existence of something in the
real world. Therefore, anyone who is rational in Hume's sense of the word must reject
religious belief.
Laura Specker
Western and Japanese Understandings of Personhood:
Williams College
Throwing off the Mind-Body Distinction
This paper will look at the concept of ‘person’ through two lenses. The first lens is
that of Western philosophy through Kathleen Wilkes; the second is Japanese philosophy
through Yuasa Yasuo. Both philosophers’ efforts to ‘throw off the mind body distinction’ will
be compared and their theories streamlined.
Jane Tucker
The Duty to Care: On Friendship and White Lies
Dartmouth College
Most of us agree that lying is wrong, but would be lying if we claimed to always tell
the truth. Whether it be to conceal something, escape blame, or simply to avoid hurting
someone’s feelings, we tell lies all the time. This paper will concern itself with this third
motive for lying, which results in what we commonly refer to as the “white lie.” It will
attempt to provide a moral justification for what is widely considered to be a general societal
acceptance of white lies in the context of a particular type of relationship: that of friendship.
Within the context of friendship, white lies are told often and without a real sense of
moral compunction. To show why this is not only acceptable but in fact preferable given this
type of human relationship, this paper will address the definition of friendship, its
importance and value in our lives, and the duties we have toward our friends and toward the
maintenance of friendship.
Traditional deontological and consequentialist ethical theories fail to adequately
account for special duties arising from friendship and would not admit for the moral
permissibility of a lie based solely on this special type of relationship. In deontological
theories “tell the truth” is seen as among the most basic moral maxims. Some deontologists,
most notably Kant, do not admit the possibility that under particular circumstances lying may
be permissible and instead maintain, as Kant does, that, “to be truthful (honest) in all
declarations is…a sacred command of reason prescribing unconditionally”. i Some
deontological theories admit for some sorts of special duties that arise from certain
relationships (parent and child, for instance), though not of the particular type with which
this paper is concerned. Consequentialist theories, which view white lies as morally
acceptable due to their immediate consequences, also fall short. As this paper will show,
some white lies are not only morally permissible due to their intended effect, but morally
required given special duties that arise from particular relationships.
To do so, this paper will consider an alternative moral framework drawn from feminist
ethical theory, often referred to as “care” ethics. Through this framework we may reconcile
the sense of duty that we feel to tell white lies to our friends in particular circumstances with
our general perception that lying is wrong. Finally, it will consider the implications of
accepting such a framework as a guide for moral action.
Leo Ungar
Believing by Volition:
Princeton University
Is it Possible? Rational? Desirable?
To what extent can one choose what one believes? While current beliefs cannot be
determined volitionally, it is possible, through the techniques of acquiring evidence
asymmetrically and self-signaling, to greatly influence the beliefs of one's future self.
However, the beliefs gained from these two techniques are inherently not rational, which
may undermine their utility. The extent to which one should refrain from manipulation of
one's beliefs depends on how strongly one values one's faculty of reason in itself rather than
considering it as simply a means to achieve preferred consequences. But because reason can
have varying degrees, it seems that one can manipulate one's beliefs and incur a level of
irrationality without grave risk of compromising one's rationality more generally.
David Watson
On Normative Theory
Dartmouth College
This paper is an analysis of the normative scientific philosophy of Karl Popper, as
criticized by Thomas Kuhn and Hilary Putnam. The differences in the three thinkers’
philosophies are best understood when examined under the lens of the primary and auxiliary
questions of normative scientific philosophy. Through this analysis we find that Popper’s
falsificationism soundly answers the question of demarcation, but over-emphasizes the
implications of this discovery. Falsificationism is necessary to a complete normative theory,
but not sufficient. Popper’s philosophy does not include certain unavoidable elements of
science, largely due to his disinterest for descriptive analysis. A more historical, practical
approach to scientific philosophy, e.g. an approach of the sort adopted by Kuhn and Putnam,
adds valuable insights to a better normative understanding. “Good” science will inevitably
involve good theory and good practice; embracing one without the other amounts to
normative dogmatism. A synthesis of the best components of all three thinkers’ philosophies
is advanced in the paper’s conclusion, in which answers are offered to the auxiliary questions
of normative scientific philosophy. A more tentative response is sketched for the primary
question, with the understanding that anything more ambitious would be a dangerous
undertaking for science, as well as for the philosophy of science.
Ross Wolfe
Substance, Causation and
Penn State University
Free Will in Spinoza and Leibniz
The 17th-18th century continental debate over the possibility of rescuing the idea of free
will was largely a reaction to the conclusions reached by Spinoza in his work, The Ethics.
This paper examines the logic of Spinoza’s refutation of Providence and human free will, as
well as G.W. Leibniz’s critique of Spinoza’s refutation in Discourses on Metaphysics and the
Monadology. It finds the pertinent metaphysical issues for both thinkers to rest in the rational
ideas of Substance (as that upon which existence subsists) and Causation (along with
subordinate relations of Possibility/Actuality and Contingency/Necessity).
Spinoza’s argument against free will begins from a discussion of Substance,
circumscribed according to the widely-accepted philosophical definition of that time.
Spinoza demonstrates that only one Substance can rationally exist, because an absolutely
infinite Substance would have an infinity of attributions and modulations, which would
preclude the possibility of any other Substance existing without its attributes or modalities
conflicting with those belonging to the first Substance. He thus states that God (or Nature) is
the only Substance. All existence and existents subsist on the infinite modal emanations of
His attributes. The order of these emanations operates according to the rational principle of
Causation, which holds that a given antecedent (cause) necessarily produces a non-identical
subsequent (effect). Since Causation is thus based on an idea of Necessity, stretching
backwards toward the original self-causing cause, it follows that from the effects of the First
Cause no other sequence of events was ever actually possible. Therefore, even God could not
have had things be otherwise, since His emanations are themselves causally (thus necessarily)
determined.