Abstracts

Roy Sorensen, Washington University

Ockham’s Razor’s casts a long shadow over all things. My primary thesis is that it also looms over the framework in which they are situated. We ought to prefer a hypothesis that postulates less space. Smaller is better. (The same goes for time, modality, and absences.) Aesthetics is generally an ally of parsimony because simplicity tends to be beauty. But aesthetics also concerns the sublime. This taste for awe distracts us here because grand scales are sublime and small scales are ridiculous.

Deborah Perron Tollefsen, University of Memphis

The fact that we acquire a great deal of our beliefs and knowledge via the testimony of individuals is widely accepted by epistemologists. That we rely on groups for a great deal of our beliefs and knowledge, considerably less so. In this paper, I develop a non-summative account of group testimony and argue that even on a more conservative understanding of the nature of testimony (one involving epistemic responsibility) groups, rather than simply the individuals that comprise them, can be testifiers. We don’t simply rely on groups—we trust them. I end by considering the question of whether we should.

Steven Crowell, Rice University

In this paper I will sketch an approach to a problem that seems currently to be on the agenda of both analytical and phenomenological philosophy, though in quite different ways in each: What general philosophical framework best serves for understanding phenomena that involve normativity in their concept or constitution? Drawing on the life-sciences, for example, post-positivist philosophy of science has sought to reconfigure rationality in evolutionary and teleological terms, such that dichotomies between “fact” and “value” or between “genesis” and “validity” are called into question. In the phenomenological tradition — which I will here focus on for the most part — a similar appeal to the phenomenon of “life” and “nature” has emerged which seeks to overcome the supposed transcendental “idealism” (i.e., subjectivism) of its founder, Edmund Husserl, and the insufficient criticism of this transcendentalism in Martin Heidegger’s revision of phenomenology. After explaining the nature of this transcendentalism — in terms of the problem of what it is to be responsive to norms as norms — I will examine two recent attempts to provide a philosophy of life and nature without going through the “detour” of transcendental phenomenology (those of Renaud Barbaras and Gunther Figal) and will argue that they either fail, or else tacitly presuppose the standpoint of what Husserl called “transcendental life.” I thereby argue for the indispensability of a transcendental approach in philosophy. Though the issues can get technical, this paper is meant merely to introduce the problems, and I will try to proceed in such a way that deep knowledge of the phenomenological tradition is not required for their understanding.

Stephen Cade Hetherington, University of New South Wales

It has become routine for many epistemologists to espouse what they call anti-luck epistemology — modalised anti-luck epistemology. Gettier cases are often cited as notably fine examples of the need for that way of thinking, particularly when reflecting on the nature of knowledge. In this paper I derive a dilemma for anti-luck epistemology's favoured way of justifying or at least explicating the epistemological orthodoxy about Gettier cases and knowledge. Maybe that orthodoxy should be abolished, especially if the standard way of trying to explain or support it fails in that respect. Could Gettiered beliefs even be instances of knowledge?

Wendy Donner, Carleton University, Ottawa

The theoretical framework of the Art of Life is the foundation of Mill’s moral philosophy. In the Logic, Mill lays out the three departments of the Art of Life-- “Morality, Prudence or Policy, and Aesthetics; the Right, the Expedient, and the Beautiful or Noble”. Mill’s moral philosophy has a doctrine of Aesthetics and Virtue that compliments his theory of Morality. The distinction between Morality or Duty, on the one hand, and Nobility or Virtue, on the other, plays a crucial role in Mill’s theory. Understanding the framework of the Art of Life makes it apparent that much happiness depends upon the flourishing of wellbeing outside of the limited domain of Morality. However, the place of the domain of Virtue and Aesthetics is relatively neglected as an object of study and research. For example, there are important connections between Mill’s environmentalism and his views on aesthetic education.

In this paper I explore Mill’s views on virtue and aesthetics as it relates to his environmentalism to examine how it interacts with his liberalism and green commitments. I offer an interpretation of Mill’s environmentalism that looks at his stance on certain questions of economic growth and development ethics. Mill is well known for being an early critic of continual economic growth and for advocating in its place a stationary growth economy. Many of his reasons are the very reasons invoked by contemporary environmentalists who are alarmed at the environmental impact of continual and escalating economic growth on the environment. I want to place his environmentalism within this contemporary movement against excessive materialism and consumerism and in favour of a conception of the good life as concerned with a life that is “simple in means, rich in ends” in the words of deep ecologist Arne Naess, or “voluntary simplicity” in the words of ecofeminists Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies. It would seem that a life that is simple in means and rich in ends is very much in keeping with Mill’s notions of higher value virtuous activities and ends, with his love of natural beauty, and with his disdain for the excesses of materialism and consumerism. It also seems that many of Mill’s concerns echo and overlap with some principles and tenets of ecological feminism. Mill is widely acknowledged as being an early liberal feminist. His liberalism espouses a powerful critique of oppression and domination. In this paper I explore the prospects for including him as an early advocate of some of the commitments of contemporary ecofeminism.

Barbara Herman, University of California, Los Angeles

The cases are very well known. Lying to the murderer at the door. Harming one to save the lives of others. Torture and the ticking bomb. These are actions, even the contemplation of which seems to violate Kant's unbending view about the nature of our duties. Generations of Kant's friends have struggled with this feature of his ethics — his rigorism — seeking to reconcile a commitment to unconditional moral principle with the exceptions sane moral practice requires. I argue that the assumptions that set this program of worry in motion are mistaken. Kant does reject exceptions, but that doesn't make him a rigorist in any worrisome sense. I will make the case that Kant is right about exceptions: morality shouldn't countenance them, and it doesn't need to. It does have to handle the hard cases of terrorists and clever philosophers, but permitting exceptions to moral rules is the wrong way to go.

John Greco, The Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Chair in Philosophy, Saint Louis University

The first part of the paper looks at some analogies between virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. It also discusses two kinds of intellectual virtue, and various proposals regarding their place in epistemology. The second part of the paper defends a neo-Aristotelian account of understanding as knowledge of “causes,” and an analogous account of wisdom as understanding regarding the most important things. If this is right, then understanding and wisdom turn out to be varieties of knowledge. Finally, the neo-Aristotelian account of understanding is compared to Ernest Sosa's notion of Reflective Knowledge.

 

Steven Harvey, Bar-Ilan University; Visiting Professor, Johns Hopkins University

Aristotle’s Phronesis in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy  

Alfarabi, the early tenth-century inaugurator of the tradition of Aristotelian philosophy in Islam, knew Aristotle’s discussion of phronesis in the Nicomachean Ethics, book six, very well. Alfarabi presents in his various writings a rather consistent understanding of phronesis. Phronesis is the faculty or ability or virtue through which one deliberates well and deduces any good to be preferred and any evil to be avoided. Through it one deduces the virtuous acts that should be performed. Phronesis is what seizes upon what ought to be done so that happiness may be attained. While Alfarabi lists various kinds of phronesis, it is clear that he is most interested in the highest kind of phronesis, and it is the phronesis of the ruler and specifically the ruler of the religious community. Through phronesis he gives the laws and determines the opinions and activities in religion that make possible the well being of the city and the happiness of all its citizens. In view of the widespread availability of Alfarabi’s ethical and political writings and their influence on medieval Islamic thought, one could reasonably assume that his teaching on phronesis would have had a major impact on later Islamic thinkers. Amazingly, the Islamic philosophers after Alfarabi, including those who knew the Nicomachean Ethics well, showed little or no interest in phronesis.

It is well known that in the area of political philosophy, the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, Maimonides, was most influenced by Alfarabi. Yet one of the most surprising aspects of Maimonides’ ethical and political philosophy is the scarce attention he too gives to the concept of phronesis, so prominent in Alfarabi. Perhaps equally surprising is that few scholars have appreciated or even noted his silence. Of those scholars who have been aware of this, no one seems to have noticed the central importance of this term in Alfarabi, Maimonides’ main source for Aristotelian ethics. The radical contrast between the two thinkers’ treatment of phronesis is almost blinding, and begs for explanation. I will suggest that phronesis was much more important to Maimonides than has been hitherto realized and than the virtual absence of the term in his writings would suggest.