Current Colloquia
2022-2023
August 26: Jason Hanna (Northern Illinois University)
3:30 PM, Hellems 199
"Convention, Adoption, and the Sources of Parental Obligation"
Ethicists disagree about how parents incur special obligations to their children and even about who qualifies as a parent. Nonetheless, many seem to agree that adoptive parents voluntarily accept, or agree to fulfill, the obligations conventionally attached to their role. Such “conventionalist views” of adoptive parenthood face unappreciated challenges, however. In particular, it is unclear who accepts or “takes up” the quasi-agreements through which adoptive parents supposedly acquire their obligations, and it is likewise unclear why adoptive parents are bound by conventions that they may explicitly disavow. I argue that these problems should lead us to explore an alternative view: the custodial theory. The custodial theory holds that people acquire parental obligations by taking custody of children, thereby preventing others from raising them. The custodial theory appeals to a more general moral principle: if one’s control of others prevents them from receiving aid or support from third parties, one typically acquires special obligations to assist. After arguing that the custodial theory illuminates the content of adoptive parents’ duties, I show that it also helps account for the duties of biological parents.
September 16: Richard Fumerton (Iowa)
October 21: Eden Lin (Ohio State)
3:15 PM, Hellems 252
"The Value of Connection"
Many philosophers hold that some social condition, such as love or friendship, is among the basic goods that contribute to our well-being. I will argue that they are correct to posit such a basic good but mistaken about its nature.
December 2: Tyler Porter (Jentzsch Prize Winner)
January 27: Michael Della Rocca (Yale)
3:15 - 5:00 PM, Hellems 199
"The Original Sin of Analytical Philosophy”
This paper examines five crucial and influential episodes from early analytical philosophy in which Frege, Russell, Moore, and others play key roles. In each episode, the debate is, I argue, structurally analogous to the debate over Cartesian mind-body interaction. In particular, I argue that just as the Cartesian position in the interaction debate turns on whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the PSR) is rejected—Descartes, the great (as will become apparent) anti-rationalist, rejects the PSR in this case—so too the seminal positions taken up by these early analytical philosophers turn on the anti-rationalist denial of the PSR. Further and perhaps disturbingly, these seminal positions are thus as problematic as the problematic Cartesian position with regard to mind-body interaction.
February 10: Lauren Ross (Univ of California Irvine)
"Distinctions within Causation: Causal Diversity in the Life Sciences"
Abstract: While a significant amount of philosophical work has examined various definitions of causation, little attention has been paid to distinctions within causation or diverse types of causality within a definition. This talk provides an analysis of distinctions within causation with a focus on examples from the life sciences. I show how these distinctions can be captured with a framework that includes: an interventionist account, a specification of primary and secondary features of causation, and a three-part causal taxonomy. I use this to clarify how these distinctions differ from defining causation, how they capture a unique type of causal pluralism and complexity in the world, and why they are important for achieving causation-related goals, such as explanation, prediction, and control.
February 17: Shieva Kleinschmidt (USC) Cancelled - will be rescheduled
"Decompositional Plenitude"
Abstract: I will present and motivate a new form of plenitude, called "Decompositional Plenitude". Usually, when we think about how things divide into parts, we think that if an object is completely made of some parts, then any part of that object overlaps with those parts. To give an example: since a table is completely made of its two halves, then any bit of the table (like a random one of its atoms, or one of the table's legs, etc.) must overlap with at least one of those halves. If the halves make up the whole table, then we can't find any bit of the table that goes beyond them. But... I'm going to deny this general principle! I think sometimes an object can be a fusion of some xs, even though it has a part, y, with no parts in common with any of the xs. This view opens new options for the sort of metaphysics we may endorse in a wide range of areas. For instance, it provides us with new responses to the Problem of the Many and it helps us solve Russell’s Paradox of Propositions (and related paradoxes). More generally, it allows us to avoid having to select just one way things decompose among multiple, merely arbitrarily differing alternatives. And even more strikingly, it allows us to posit multiple decompositions in cases where those decompositions differ substantively, each capturing something important about the world. Plus, this view comes at minimal cost if we endorse a fusion-first mereology (i.e., one that takes fusion as primitive instead of parthood, proper parthood, or overlap.)
March 3: Ted Sider (Rutgers)
"3D in High-D"
Abstract: According to the high-dimensional approach to quantum mechanics (aka wavefunction realism), the fundamental space of our world has an unfathomably large number of dimensions. This account is empirically adequate only if the three-dimensional manifest image can somehow be recovered from high-dimensional reality. A proper understanding of inter-level metaphysics (aka metaphysical explanation, grounding, etc.) shows that the manifest image can indeed be recovered, and answers the most concerning objections to high-dimensionalism. But it also shows that high-dimensionalism has disturbing consequences about the objectivity of the manifest image.
April 21: Miranda Fricker (NYU)