九色堂

Epistemology, Disagreement, and Love

Dr. Patrick Bondy | Epistemology, reasons, disagreement

• Epistemology鈥檚 Prime Evils

This papers identifies three related kinds of skeptical challenges to the possibility or the reality of human knowledge. These challenges all proceed by describing possible scenarios in which a powerful and deceptive entity, a philosophical demon, does its best to deceive its victims about some or all of the things that they think they know. The difficulty of ruling out the existence of this kind of deception poses a challenge to our claim to have knowledge of the world around us. What I call the "Prime Evils" are three philosophical demons that pose the most serious challenges to the possibility of knowledge. The paper describes a way to understand knowledge and justified belief that I think handles these demons well enough.

• Deeply Disagreeing with Myself: Synchronic Intrapersonal Deep Disagreement

Deep disagreements are normally deep-seated disagreements, that bottom out in conflicting fundamental frameworks for thinking about and acting in the world. Such disagreements are notoriously difficult to rationally resolve; and they are generally conceived as taking place between different people. This paper argues that deep disagreements with oneself are also possible; and that some resources for dealing with interpersonal deep disagreements might be applicable in the intrapersonal cases, too.

• The Epistemic Norm of Inference and Non-Epistemic Reasons for Belief

Some philosophers hold that only evidence (epistemic reasons) can count as a reason for holding a belief; others hold that practical considerations (non-epistemic reasons) can also be reasons for holding beliefs. For those who hold that there are non-epistemic reasons for belief, a puzzle arises: it seems that any good reason for belief should be able to be used as a premise in an argument for that belief; but non-epistemic reasons for a belief are clearly not good premises to use in an argument for that belief. This paper addresses this challenge, defending the existence of non-epistemic reasons for belief, and proposing a different understanding of the kind of argument in which non-epistemic reasons for belief appear.

Dr. Jeffrey Hershfield | Philosophy of Sex and Love, Philosophy of Language, Analytic Philosophy

• Declaration and Bestowal: A Love Story

Irving Singer has defended the thesis that the "fine gold thread" of love, its sine qua non, is the bestowal of value by the lover on the beloved, even in those cases where the love itself is grounded in a positive appraisal of the beloved's attributes. He suggests that bestowal is a matter of elevating the importance of the beloved and his or her needs and interests above their appraised merit. I argue that love's bestowal is principally effected through speech acts of the kind that John Searle refers to as _Status Function Declarations_, the very same linguistic mechanism by which, according to him, all of social or institutional reality is created. On this picture, the roles of lover and beloved are shown to be status functions constituted by a deontology that delineates the partiality of the former towards the latter.

Community Outreach

The Department of Philosophy takes seriously its mission to be an educational and cultural driver for the community at large. Here are a few highlights:

• Lifelong learning classes for seniors 65+
  • Women in Computing (Sterrett)
  • Philosophy of Humor (Castro)
  • What is Light? Art, Science and Life (Hepburn)
  • Science for Dummies: 2000 years of Science without Math(Hepburn)
  • How to Know You Know (Hepburn)
  • Ethics of Big Data and AI (Castro)

• Lectures, appearances, consultations
  • Scientific Method, consultant for Discover Magazine(Hepburn)
  • AI: Misconceptions, Limitations, Concerns, Humanist Society(Sterrett)
  • Ethics of AI, Wichita Advanced Learning Library (Castro)
  • Space Exploration: Flash Forward, The Space Show,Here WeAre,Planetary
  • Radio, Exploration Place鈥檚 Food TruckThursday, Humanist Society (Schwartz)

• Pre-Law Advising, Mentorship, and Community Liaising to build professional
• connections (Hershfield)