Alabama Philosophical Society

48th Annual Conference
September 24-25, 2010

Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front Hotel
12 Via Luna Drive

Pensacola FL  35261
866-916-2999


Each of the non-plenary sessions offers three concurrent papers in different meeting rooms.
Unlike APA sessions, APS sessions do not have commentators.
So to accommodate the larger number of papers in a reasonable amount of time,
we have scheduled 40-minute sessions with a 10-minute break between sessions.
Presenters should do their best to finish within 25 minutes to allow time for discussion.

Paper titles are linked to abstracts.



Friday, September 24
8:00 a.m. +
Registration		 $40 registration fee payable at registration or to Allan Hillman during the conference (fee waived for emeriti and undergraduate students).
Coral ReefAquamarine IAquamarine 2
8:30-9:10 a.m.
Session 1 		Enrico Zoffoli (U. Arizona)
A Critique of Scanlon’s Non-Rejectability Requirement		Joseph Long (Florida State U.)
Why Not Non-Naturalism?		Kraig Martin (Baylor U.)
Epistemic Possibility and Closure of Inquiry
9:20-10:00 a.m.
Session 2 		John Park (Duke U.)
The Principle of Abstract Concepts		Kenneth Boyce (Notre Dame)
Aristotle’s Presentist Account of Change and the Charge of Circularity		Troy Nunley (Denver Seminary)
A Critique of Cartesian Knowability
10:10-10:50 a.m.
Session 3 		Dennis Sansom (Samford U.)
Truth and the World: Why Davidson is Right and Rorty is Wrong		Tully Borland (Ouachita Baptist U.)
Lebniz’s Criticism of Voluntarism: The Case Against Hobbes		Bob Fischer (U. Illinois - Chicago)
A Better Basis for Modal Skepticism
11:00-11:40 a.m.
Session 4 		Adam Podlaskowski (Fairmont State U.)
Phenomenal Intentionality and Thoughts about Logic		Allan Hillman (U. South Alabama)
Leibniz & Luther: the Non-Cognitive Aspect of Faith		Justin Matchulat (Purdue)
Degreed Virtue: A Defense of Virtue Ethics against the Situationist Challenge
11:40 a.m.-1:00 p.m.Break for Lunch
1:00-1:40 p.m.
Session 5 		Kevin Sharpe (Saint Cloud State U.)
Persons, Animals, and Persistence Conditions		Joshua Horn (U. Kentucky)
Optimization and Maximization: A Leibnizian Response to Rowe		Aaron Champene (Northeast Lakeview College)
Testimony as a Transmissive Source of Epistemic Justification
1:50-2:30 p.m.
Session 6 		Joseph Baltimore (West Virginia U.)
Careful, Physicalists: Mind-Body Supervenience Can Be Too Superduper		William Melanson (U. Nebraska - Omaha)
Locke on the Knowledge of Real Existence		Joshua Smith (Central Michigan U.)
Elimination and Closure
2:40-3:20 p.m.
Session 7 		Reshef Agam-Segal (Auburn U.)
Self-Legislation and Other Figurative Dramas		Thomas Metcalf (U. Colorado - Boulder)
Must Hypothetical Counterexamples be Possible?		Matthew Clemens (U. Connecticut)
Fictionalism and Mathematics
3:30-4:10 p.m.
Session 8 		Robert Schroer (Arkansas State U.)
Dispositional Properties and the Too Little Actuality Objection: A Response to Bird’s One-Two Punch		David Anderson and Joshua Watson (Purdue)
Appreciating the Mystery of Divine Foreknowledge		Eric Carter (North Carolina State U.)
Subjective Attitudes, Judge-Dependence, and Vagueness
4:20-5:00 p.m.
Session 9 		Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)
No Matter, No Master: Godwin’s Humean Anarchism		Adam Murray (U. Toronto)
Essence, Individuation, and Infinite Mode in the Ethics		Patrick Todd (U. California Riverside)
Soft Facts and Ontological Dependence
6:00-11:00 p.m.Reception (White Sands Room)


Saturday, September 25Coral ReefAquamarine 1Aquamarine 2
8:30-9:10 a.m.
Session 10 		J. Alden Stout (Utah Valley U.)
Hegelian Freedom and the Dichotomy between the Right and the Good		Andrew Bailey (Notre Dame)
A Priority Problem for the Constituent Solution		Nathaniel Coleman (U. Michigan)
The Political Power of Sexual Preference
9:20-10:00 a.m.
Session 11 		2010 Undergraduate Essay Prize Winner
Alex Whalen (U. South Alabama)
Luck and Intuition		Matt Jordan (Auburn - Montgomery)
Theistic Metaethics and the Art of Making Moral Judgments		Morgan Rempel (U. Southern Mississippi)
Nietzsche, Epicurus, and Suffering
10:10-10:50 a.m.
Session 10 (Plenary)		 Presidential Address
Nick Jones (U. Alabama Huntsville)
Approximate Truth and Self-Inconsistent Theories
11:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
Session 11 (Plenary) 		Keynote Address
John Heil (Washington U. St. Louis)
Business Lunch, Location TBA


Abstracts of Papers (alphabetical by Author)

Self-Legislation and Other Figurative Dramas, Friday, September 24, Session 7, Coral Reef, 2:40-3:20 p.m.
Reshef Agam-Segal (Auburn U.)

I elucidate a conception of the mind in which figurative ways of expression are sometimes essential to understanding the mind. My claim is that ideas like self- deception, self-control and self-legislation are best understood as secondary uses of language: figures of speech that do not have a literal equivalent, and are therefore essential.

Appreciating the Mystery of Divine Foreknowledge, Friday, September 24, Session 8, Aquamarine 1, 3:30-4:10 p.m.
David Anderson and Joshua Watson (Purdue)

The most prominent attempts to demonstrate the incompatibility between foreknowledge and libertarian freedom presuppose without explicit justification that certain models of foreknowledge are impossible. The failure to explicitly justify this assumption undermines the force of arguments for theological incompatibilism. We argue that our failure to clearly identify a possible way to foreknow future free choices does not provide good reason for denying that it is possible.

A Priority Problem for the Constituent Solution, Saturday, September 25, Session 10, Aquamarine 1, 8:30-9:10 a.m.
Andrew Bailey (Notre Dame)

Jeffrey Brower has recently offered a new solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics. In this paper, I highlight a problem for that solution; it runs afoul of a plausible priority principle.

Careful, Physicalists: Mind-Body Supervenience Can Be Too Superduper, Friday, September 24, Session 6, Coral Reef, 1:50-2:30 p.m.
Joseph Baltimore (West Virginia U.)

It has become evident that mind‐body supervenience, as merely specifying a covariance between mental and physical properties, is consistent with clearly non-physicalist views of the mental, such as emergentism. Consequently, there is a push in the physicalist camp for an ontologically more robust supervenience, a “superdupervenience,” that ensures the physicalistic acceptability of properties supervening on physical properties. Jessica Wilson claims that supervenience is made superduper by Condition on Causal Powers (CCP): Each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. Furthermore, according to Wilson, a wide variety of physicalist positions, both reductive and non- reductive, can be seen as relying on CCP to ensure the physicalistic acceptability of properties supervening on physical properties. I argue that imposing CCP on mind-body supervenience fails to ensure the physicalistic acceptability of mental properties. The problem, I contend, is that while CCP may guard against supervenient mental properties being insufficiently grounded in their physical bases it fails to guard against supervenient mental properties being too deeply grounded in their physical bases.

Lebniz’s Criticism of Voluntarism: The Case Against Hobbes, Friday, September 24, Session 3, Aquamarine 1, 10:10-10:50 a.m.
Tully Borland (Ouachita Baptist U.)

Theological voluntarism has traditionally had more support from people in the pews than from philosophers. Leibniz is no different in this regard; although chiefly known for his defense of God in light of evil, Leibniz was no supporter of voluntarism. This paper sketches some of Leibniz’s criticisms which warrant more attention than has been received in the literature on Leibniz. Since one of the people Leibniz thought merited the title of voluntarist was Thomas Hobbes, the paper first develops the voluntarist elements of Hobbes’ ethical theory.

Aristotle’s Presentist Account of Change and the Charge of Circularity, Friday, September 24, Session 2, Aquamarine 1, 9:20-10:00 a.m.
Kenneth Boyce (Notre Dame)

Various commentators have charged Aristotle’s discussion of time in Physics IV 10-14 with being illicitly circular. In this paper, I defend Aristotle’s account from such charges. I do so by arguing that those who make them fail to properly understand Aristotle’s aims. In particular, I argue that Aristotle is attempting to dissolve certain puzzles that arise for him because he holds a presentist view of time. I further argue that once Aristotle’s aims are properly understood, the charge that his account of time is illicitly circular is seen to be misplaced.

Subjective Attitudes, Judge-Dependence, and Vagueness, Friday, September 24, Session 8, Aquamarine 2, 3:30-4:10 p.m.
Eric Carter (North Carolina State U.)

Research shows not only that attitude ascriptions akin to ‘find’ require that a complement clause contains a judge-dependent term, but also that some vague terms are unacceptable under these attitude ascriptions, including paradigmatically vague terms such as ‘tall’ and ‘rich’. The latter result is unexpected, especially given other attempts to show that the semantic basis for vagueness is judge-dependence. On this view, a term is vague if that term’s extension varies with respect to germane facts about what humans judge. While I explore how we should resolve this conflict, I conclude that judge-dependence is an unlikely basis for vagueness.

Testimony as a Transmissive Source of Epistemic Justification, Friday, September 24, Session 5, Aquamarine 2, 1:00-1:40 p.m.
Aaron Champene (Northeast Lakeview College)

By means of two counterexamples, Jennifer Lackey (2008) has argued that the following thesis is false: For every speaker S and hearer H, H knows/justifiedly believes that p on the basis of S’s testimony that p only if S knows/justifiedly believes that p. I argue that even if Lackey’s counterexamples are successful, they do not show a more refined version of the principle to be mistaken. By drawing two distinctions – one between prima facie and ultima facie justification and one between justifiedly believing and being justified in believing – I defend the transmission of testimonial justification from Lackey’s examples.

Fictionalism and Mathematics, Friday, September 24, Session 7, Aquamarine 2, 2:40-3:20 p.m.
Matthew Clemens (U. Connecticut)

In this paper, I outline a new version of mathematical fictionalism as proposed by Otávio Bueno. I argue that, contra Bueno, this version of fictionalism fails to satisfy certain plausible desiderata for a theory of mathematics. Specifically, I argue that while Bueno’s fictionalist can explain the possibility of mathematical knowledge, and how reference to mathematical entities is achieved, it is not at all clear that she is able to explain the application of mathematics to science, provide a uniform semantics for mathematics and science, or take mathematical discourse literally. Accordingly, the case for Bueno-style fictionalism is weakened.

The Political Power of Sexual Preference, Saturday, September 25, Session 10, Aquamrine 2, 8:30-9:10 a.m.
Nathaniel Coleman (U. Michigan)

No abstract available.

A Better Basis for Modal Skepticism, Friday, September 24, Session 3, Aquamarine 2, 10:10-10:50 a.m.
Bob Fischer (U. Chicago - Illinois)

Peter van Inwagen is a modal skeptic. I think that modal skepticism is correct, but I don’t think that he puts it on a good foundation. After explaining why not, I sketch a better basis. I call it ‘abductivism’. I then show how abductivism secures one of the skeptical conclusions that van Inwagen wants: namely, that we aren’t in a position to know whether God could create a world sans gratuitous evils.

Keynote Address:
Saturday, September 25, Session 13 (Plenary), 11:00 a.m.-12:00 noon
John Heil (Washington U. St Louis)

No abstract available.

Leibniz & Luther: the Non-Cognitive Aspect of Faith, Friday, September 24, Session 4, Aquamarine 1, 11:00-11:40 a.m.
Allan Hillman (U. South Alabama)

Leibniz was a Lutheran. Yet, upon consideration of certain aspects of his philosophical theology, one might suspect that he was a Lutheran more in name than in intellectual practice. Clearly Leibniz was influenced by the Catholic tradition; this is beyond doubt. However, the extent to which Leibniz was influenced by his own Lutheran tradition – indeed, by Martin Luther himself – has yet to be satisfactorily explored. In this essay, the views of Luther and Leibniz on the non-cognitive component of faith are considered in some detail. According to Luther, the only non-cognitive aspect of faith worth favoring is trust (fiducia), since it is trust in God’s promise of mercy that warrants justification for the sinner. Leibniz, for his part, sides with the Thomistic tradition in emphasizing love (caritas) as the non-cognitive element of faith par excellence. I argue that Leibniz falls into a trap forewarned by Luther himself, even if Leibniz had systematic metaphysical reasons for his disagreement.

Optimization and Maximization: A Leibnizian Response to Rowe, Friday, September 24, Session 5, Aquamarine 1, 1:00-1:40 p.m.
Joshua Horn (U. Kentucky)

One of the most important ideas present in Leibniz’s vast philosophical corpus is that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Anyone that gives this thought even the most minimal attention in the writings of Leibniz will understand that the notion of “the best of all possible worlds&$#148; is a much more difficult metaphysical issue than Voltaire would have liked to admit. However, in the recent literature, it has been suggested that the view that this is the best of all possible worlds is in fact a plea for atheism. Specifically, William Rowe has argued that there can be no maximally perfect being. For if there were, then there would be a best world. And since there cannot be a best world due to an inherent logical contradiction, then there can be no maximally perfect being. The logical contradiction results in the concept of a “best possible world.” In short, Rowe reasons that there can be no “best” world, because for any world, God could have created a world better than it. This philosophical doctrine, the “no best world” thesis has similar intellectual roots as far back as Aquinas.
It is my goal in this paper to argue that Leibniz’s rich metaphysical system provides a possible solution to the logical paradox that both Aquinas and Rowe suggest. In short, there is a mistake in understanding Leibniz’s condition for the best possible world as one that can be “maximized” with particular qualities that would deem it to be the best. Instead, we should understand Leibniz’s concept of the best world as one that is the optimization of the world that is “richest in phenomena and simplest in hypotheses” as he tells us in the Discourse. More specifically, this paper will examine the relationship between the criteria for the best possible world not only in the Discourse, but also in Leibniz’s Theodicy, in an attempt to provide a satisfactory response from Leibniz’s mature period to the “no best world thesis” offered by Aquinas and defended by Rowe much later.

Presidential Address:
Approximate Truth and Self-Inconsistent Theories, Saturday, September 25, Session 12 (Plenary), 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Nick Jones (U. Alabama Huntsville)

No abstract available.

Theistic Metaethics and the Art of Making Moral Judgments, Saturday, September 25, Session 11, Aquamarine 1, 9:20-10:00 a.m.
Matt Jordan (Auburn - Montgomery)

Many philosophers who have discussed the relationship between God and morality have assumed that, if morality depends upon God, then divine command theory must be true. In this essay, I suggest that it would be fruitful for theists to focus on divine attitudes rather than divine commands. An attitude-based theistic metaethics avoids problems associated with the universalizability of moral judgments and the nature of the moral life: namely (on divine command theory), the implausible requirement that God must issue particular commands in all cases of moral conflict and the inexplicability of the practical need for persons to become skilled in moral judgment.

Why Not Non-Naturalism?, Friday, September 24, Session 1, Aquamarine 1, 8:30-9:10
Joseph Long (Florida State U.)

Ethical naturalists and non-naturalists disagree over whether moral properties are natural or non-natural. But there has been no satisfactory way to demarcate either natural or non-natural properties and thus no way to say precisely for what each side of the debate is arguing. Recently, David Copp posited an epistemic criterion for demarcating natural properties, which, Copp argues, shows that ethical naturalism is more attractive than ethical non-naturalism. I show that some versions of ethical supernaturalism imply that moral properties satisfy Copp’s criterion and conclude that Copp’s criterion thus fails to demarcate natural properties, which undercuts Copp’s argument for ethical naturalism’s attractiveness.

No Matter, No Master: Godwin’s Humean Anarchism, Friday, September 24, Session 9, Coral Reef, 4:20-5:00 p.m.
Roderick T. Long (Auburn U.)

William Godwin is often regarded as essentially a Berkeleyan in his metaphysics and a Rousseauvian in his social philosophy. I shall argue that in both metaphysics and social philosophy the influence on Godwin of David Hume is far more fundamental than is ordinarily recognised, and ultimately more decisive than that of Berkeley or Rousseau – though the relation is more one of Godwin’s creative repurposing of Hume’s ideas than of his passive receptivity to them.

Epistemic Possibility and Closure of Inquiry, Friday, September 24, Session 1, Aquamarine 2, 8:30-9:10 a.m.
Kraig Martin (Baylor U.)

I reject three accounts of what it means to say that an event or fact is epistemically possible. Keith DeRose, Michael Huemer, and Dougherty/Rysiew each argue for a specific account of epistemic possibility. I argue that each of these accounts is in conflict with the judgment intuitively rendered in some important counterexamples. Instead of trying to understand epistemic possibility in the manners suggested by these philosophers, I argue that we should employ the concept of closure of inquiry. I argue, roughly, that p is no longer epistemically possible for S when S is justified in closing inquiry concerning p.

Degreed Virtue: A Defense of Virtue Ethics against the Situationist Challenge , Friday, September 24, Session 4, Aquamarine 2, 11:00-11:40
Justin Matchulat (Purdue)

This paper addresses the situationalist critique of virtue ethics. I defend a rarity of virtue response to this critique, but blunt its tip by developing an account of degrees of virtue. On this account, full virtue will indeed be a statistical rarity, but lesser degrees of virtue more common. I argue for this degreed conception of virtue both on historical and systematic grounds: historically, I show that Aristotle and Aquinas thought of virtue as being the sort of property that admits of degrees; and systematically, I draw from recent work in metaphysics on dispositions that challenges a simple counterfactual account of dispositions, and allows for gradable dispositions.

Locke on the Knowledge of Real Existence, Friday, September 24, Session 6, Aquamarine 1, 1:50-2:30 p.m.
William Melanson (U. Nebraska - Omaha)

Locke’s view of the knowledge of real existence has been the source of much confusion and debate. This paper places Locke’s view of real existence within the larger framework of his view of knowledge and certainty. The paper begins by explicating Locke’s claim that all knowledge consists in the perception of agreement and disagreement of ideas. It is shown that given Locke’s unique understanding of the nature of perception, propositions, and truth, his claim regarding the nature of knowledge simply provides a way of understanding the commonsense view that knowledge is the holding of a proposition upon recognition of its truth. The paper then examines the specific nature of the agreement of real existence. It is argued that unlike the other sorts of agreement and disagreement, the agreement of real existence has its foundation outside of one’s ideas. It is then shown how intuition, demonstration, and sensation allow for the perception of such agreement. Having examined the central structure of Locke’s view, the paper then turns to Locke’s defense against the skeptic. It is shown how Locke initially seeks not to refute the skeptic, but simply to dismiss the need to answer the skeptic. Finally, the paper turns to examine Locke’s distinction between knowledge and judgment. It is shown that for Locke, knowledge requires only a certainty surpassing the empirical probability associated with judgment. As such, we can have certain knowledge of real existence even without absolute immunity from error.

Must Hypothetical Counterexamples be Possible?, Friday, September 24, Session 7, Aquamarine 1, 2:40-3:20 p.m.
Thomas Metcalf (U. Colorado - Boulder)

Hypothetical counterexamples are a mainstay in philosophical debate, perhaps the most common tactic in attempting to establish some philosophical position, across a wide range of subdisciplines. When tailoring these counterexamples, philosophers choose possible but usually non-actual situations. No one has seriously considered whether these counterexamples must actually be metaphysically possible situations, however. This paper argues that there is no theoretical reason to insist that counterexamples be possible, and speculates about some implications of this conclusion for various debates within philosophy, briefly that this discovery will be a boon to particularists in normative areas of philosophy.

Essence, Individuation, and Infinite Mode in the Ethics, Friday, September 24, Session 9, Aquamarine 1, 4:20-5:00 p.m.
Adam Murray (U. Toronto)

Spinoza discusses the individuation of finite, extended physical bodies immediately following IIP13 in his Ethics. As the scholium to IIP13 indicates, Spinoza’s main concern in this section is to explain how one mind can be more excellent or real than another. That Spinoza proceeds in this manner is understandable, given his doctrine of the parallelism of the attributes. But nowhere does Spinoza offer a complementary account of the individuation of finite ideas. In the first half of this essay, after presenting Spinoza’s theory of the individuation of finite extended bodies, I develop such an account. I then turn, in the remaining two sections, to the broader question of how the relationship between Spinoza’s “immediate” and “mediate” infinite modes of thought and extension ought to be understood, in light of his theory of the individuation of finite extended and thinking modes.

A Critique of Cartesian Knowability, Friday, September 24, Session 2, Aquamarine 2, 9:20-10:00 a.m.
Troy Nunley (Denver Seminary)

Frederick Fitch has provided a proof which seems to demonstrate that if all truths are knowable then all truths are known. In response, some defenders of the view that truth is essentially knowable have sought to avoid this result by restricting the claim that all truths are known in some principled fashion. Neil Tennant has proposed a restriction according to which only “Cartesian” truths are knowable. His opponents, most notably Timothy Williamson, have alleged that the restriction is too strong and trivializes antirealism, effectively reducing it to the uninteresting claim that knowable truths can be known. This article reformulates and defends Williamson’s objection. Additionally, it investigates Tennant’s most recent formulation of “Cartesianhood” and his contention that it avoids these sorts of objections altogether. It will be shown that the new formulation faces the same criticism and apparent trivialization as previous versions.

The Principle of Abstract Concepts, Friday, September 24, Session 2, Coral Reef, 9:20-10:00 a.m.
John Park (Duke U.)

In this paper, I introduce and motivate a new principle called the Principle of Abstract Concepts (PAC). It states that any proposed psychological concept structure for any abstract concept AC cannot be based only on non-AC or concrete concept empirical findings. They must at least in part be based on experimental data for AC. I then illustrate the importance and non-triviality of PAC by examining four instances, such as with mathematical and moral concepts, where concept theorists have violated PAC. Finally, I discuss the impact PAC has on future research in cognitive science.

Phenomenal Intentionality and Thoughts about Logic, Friday, September 24, Session 4, Coral Reef, 11:00-11:40 a.m.
Adam Podlaskowski (Fairmont State U.)

In this conference paper, the increasingly popular thesis that phenomenology is the source of original intentionality is challenged. Specifically, it is argued that a global version of the thesis cannot explain the manner in which thoughts about logic and mathematics acquire determinate content. The case made here raises broader doubts about the manner in which phenomenology might play relate to intentionality.

Nietzsche, Epicurus, and Suffering, Saturday, September 25, Session 11, Coral Reef, 9:20-10:00
Morgan Rempel (U. Southern Mississippi)

One of the more interesting aspects of Nietzsche’s musings on Epicurus and Epicureanism is his tendency to associate both with suffering. My paper examines a number of Nietzsche’s references to Epicurus and Epicureanism, paying particular attention to his recurring suggestion that both the foundation of this philosophy and its special appeal have much to do with the mitigation of suffering. I also examine Nietzsche’s unusual suggestion that Epicureanism and Christianity have much in common. While Nietzsche is sympathetic to Epicurus and appreciates the therapeutic appeal of Epicureanism, my paper goes on to point out several fundamental ways this ancient philosophy is markedly un-Nietzschean in its character and goals.

Truth and the World: Why Davidson is Right and Rorty is Wrong, Friday, September 24, Session 3, Coral Reef, 10:00-10:50 a.m.
Dennis Sansom (Samford U.)

Richard Rorty thinks he has the same agenda as Donald Davidson. He’s wrong. Though Rorty contends truth as only metaphor liberates us, he actually undercuts a rich interpretative ability. Davidson’s agenda provides ways to explore this ability by elucidating the conditions that reside in the makeup of successful communication and in which truth claims are made about the world. Thus, Davidson and Rorty have different agenda, and Davidson’s offers more promise for philosophy to help explain what we seem to know – we can communicate truthfully about the world.

Dispositional Properties and the Too Little Actuality Objection: A Response to Bird’s One-Two Punch, Friday, September 24, Session 8, Coral Reef, 3:30-4:10
Robert Schroer (Arkansas State U.)

Alexander Bird has delivered a one-two punch in favor of Dispositional Monism (DM), the theory that all properties are dispositional. With his first punch, Bird develops a reply to the popular regress argument against DM. With his second punch, he argues that the general concern that dispositional properties have “too little reality” should actually be leveled against the opponents of DM. In response, I identify a version of the regress argument to which no defender of DM can respond. This argument highlights a feature of categorical properties – a feature ignored by Bird – that gives them more reality than dispositional properties.

Persons, Animals, and Persistence Conditions, Friday, September 24, Session 5, Coral Reef, 1:00-1:40 p.m.
Kevin Sharpe (Saint Cloud State U.)

Animalism is the view that human persons, such as you and I, are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. While so much may seem obvious, some opponents of animalism object that it is inconsistent with any plausible account of the persistence conditions of persons. The idea, in brief, is that the persistence conditions of persons differ from those of animals. Since nothing can have different persistence conditions than itself, it follows that human persons are not animals. In this paper, I show why this argument fails.

Elimination and Closure, Friday, September 24, Session 6, Aquamarine 2, 1:50-2:30
Joshua Smith (Central Michigan U.)

Jonathan Schaffer (2001) offers what he calls “missed clues cases” to show that David Lewis’s (1996) relevant alternatives analysis of knowledge fails. Anthony Brueckner (2003) argues that Schaffer’s cases show that Lewis’s account fails because it does not require one to have a belief in order to know. Yet, a slight modification to Schaffer’s cases shows that Lewis’s account of elimination is the culprit. But there’s a fix, which is an important step to better understanding elimination. Surprisingly, once the fix is in place and the notion of elimination developed a little further, problems crop up for the idea that knowledge is closed under known entailment.

Hegelian Freedom and the Dichotomy between the Right and the Good, Saturday, September 25, Session 10, Coral Reef, 8:30-9:10 a.m.
J. Alden Stout (Utah Valley U.)

Rawls’ dichotomy between ‘the Right’ (deontic obligations) and ‘the Good’ (valuable states of affairs) has been influential in political philosophy since the publication of A Theory of Justice. Drawing on Hegel’s conception of freedom and political legitimacy, I argue that Rawls’ dichotomy between ‘the Right’ and ‘the Good’ need not be considered fundamental to one’s political theory. Specifically, Hegel’s theory of freedom and political legitimacy provides undercutting objections to implicit assumptions that Rawls draws upon in drawing the distinction between ‘the Right’ and ‘the Good.’

Soft Facts and Ontological Dependence, Friday, September 24, Session 9, Aquamarine 2, 4:20-5:00 p.m.
Patrick Todd (U. California Riverside)

Perhaps the main reply to the argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom is ‘Ockhamism’. Ockhamists distinguish between certain sorts of facts about the past: ‘hard facts’ and ’soft facts’. According to the Ockhamist, once we see that God’s past beliefs about our future free decisions are merely ’soft’ facts about the past, no threat remains to freedom. Though a substantial literature arose in connection with this distinction, it remains notoriously vexed. It is time, I believe, to revisit these issues. I argue that the attempts to analyze the hard/soft fact distinction got off on fundamentally the wrong track. The centrally important feature of soft facts is that they (in some sense) depend on the future. I argue that the literature on the distinction has failed to capture the sense of dependence at stake, and gesture towards what an adequate account will really look like.

2010 Undergraduate Prize Essay:
Luck and Intuition, Saturday, September 25, Session 11, Coral Reef, 9:20-10:00 a.m.
Alex Whalen (U. South Alabama)

Lucky events surround our everyday lives, but only a certain variety of luck, called epistemic luck, interferes with knowledge. Because epistemic luck is parasitic on the notion of luck simpliciter, we need a principled account of luck. In this essay, I will discuss two promising theories of luck simpliciter: one from E. J. Coffman, and one from Duncan Pritchard. I will argue that neither account is helpful beyond what we already intuitively believe about an event’s luckiness. I will then use this result to show how many of our ordinary beliefs could be classified as epistemically lucky.

A Critique of Scanlon’s Non-Rejectability Requirement, Friday, September 25, Session 1, Coral Reef, 8:30-9:10 a.m.
Enrico Zoffoli (U. Arizona)

The thesis I defend in this paper is simple: I argue that a moral principle is valid only if it is reasonable to accept it. Now despite its intuitive plausibility, some philosophers resist this view. In particular, Thomas Scanlon claims that moral principles need not be positively accepted. Rather, in order for a moral principle to be valid, it is sufficient that, negatively, it not be reasonable to reject that principle. In this paper I argue that this is an error. In part (1) I lay the basis for my argument by introducing both the distinction between positive and negative conceptions and two possible interpretations of Scanlon’s negative conception. In part (2) I argue that the first interpretation, which I call the no reasonable objection thesis, presupposes a morally problematic separation between reasons for acceptance and reasons for rejection. In parts (3) and (4) I try to show that the second interpretation, which I call the inconclusiveness thesis, is open to the charge of relying on an ad ignorantiam fallacy. Part (5) concludes.




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