Fall 2023 Faculty News & Accomplishments

Richard Winfield’s latest book, Rethinking the Arts After Hegel: From Architecture to Motion Pictures, will be published by Palgrave Macmillan this November.  

Early this year, assistant professor Jeremy Davis presented "When Might Using Algorithmic Systems be Morally Required?" at the Philosophy, AI, and Society Workshop at Stanford University, served as a a panelist on the ChatGPT Panel here at UGA, and presented "Unnecessary Risk to Soldiers and the Duty to Enhance" at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. He published "Should Algorithms that Predict Recidivism Have Access to Race?" in the American Philosophical Quarterly with co-author Duncan Purves of the University of Florida and served as co-author on a RAND report on ethical influence operations. Davis recently participated in the "Beyond the Ivory Tower" workshop at Northeastern University, which supports academics aiming to write for the public and he was accepted into UGA’s Service-Learning Fellows program to aid in the development of a course on "Criminal Justice Ethics. This summer, Davis presented "Cultural Tourism as Cultural Appropriation" at the North American Society for Social Philosophy conference in Portland, Oregon and in August he served as a panelist on UGA Libraries AI and Humanities panel, organized by Dr. Jamie Kreiner.

Distinguished Research Professor and Josiah Meigs Teaching Professor, Edward Halper has been editing the volume of selected papers from Symposium XIII of the International Plato Society, a conference that was held at UGA in August, 2022—the volume will appear from Nomos Press next year. He also published a paper “On the Principles of Reality” in the online journal Thaumàzein: Revisita di Filosofia and had another paper, “Xenophon's Socrates on Piety and Moderation” accepted for publication in a volume on Xenophon’s treatment of the virtues. He also delivered six different papers: “Metaphysics and the Problem of the One and the Many” at the Metaphysical Society of America annual meeting in Atlanta in March; “Is Freedom Good?” Freedom in Ancient Greek History, Literature, and Philosophy, Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies annual conference at the University of South Florida in Tampa in May; and in June he presented “Self-Understanding as Self-Relation: Hegel and Aristotle” at the Hegel Kongress, Internationale Hegel Vereinigung in Stuttgart, Germany; “Plotinus on Knowledge” at the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies annual conference in Catania, Sicily; “Tyranny and the Greek Political Ideal” at a conference on “The Moral Aspects of Tyranny: Xenophon and his Contemporaries on Good and Bad Government” in Bamberg, Germany;  and “Some Problems with Mathematical Forms” at the Plato Summer Seminar in Lanckorona, Poland.

Assistant Professor Youjin Kong’s article “Recreating Asian Identity: Yellow Peril, Model Minority, and Black and Asian Solidarities” appears in the October issue of APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies. In January, Kong presented “On the (Mis)Use of Intersectionality in AI Fairness Research” at the Philosophy, AI, and Society Workshop at Stanford University. In February, she presented two talks supported by the APA Philosophers of Color Assistance Fund, at the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting in Denver, Colorado:​ “Identity as a Fluid Process: A Non-Idealizing Ontology of Marginalized Identities” and “‘Sisters and Siblings in the Struggle’: Identity and Power in Black-Asian Feminist Solidarity.” In Spring 2023, Kong presented “What’s Philosophy of Race and Gender Got to Do With AI?” at the Utah Valley University Inclusive Knowledge Lecture Series, “Challenging Social Injustice through Philosophy of AI” at the Ethics of Technology Early-Career Group Lecture Series in Vienna, Austria, and “Challenging Social Injustice through Philosophy of AI” at the Seoul National University Institute of Philosophy Colloquium. Kong also kicked off the UGA Department of Philosophy’s annual Kleiner Lecture Series fall schedule with “What Does It Mean to Have a Social Identity as X? A Non-Idealizing Metaphysics of Social Identities” in September.  

Instructor Marianna Koshkaryan gave five invited lectures on Plato's Dialogues and Classical Greek Tragedy and Poetry at the Yerevan Academy for Linguistics and Philosophy, hosted by the American University of Armenia, supported by USC's Institute of Armenian Studies in August. She also recently joined the editorial board of the Bulletin of Yerevan University E: Philosophy, Psychology.

Department Head & Professor Aaron Meskin's essay, "An Aesthetics of (Popular) Music Radio" was published in July 2023 in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. In April, Meskin was the invited keynote speaker at a student conference on the philosophy of food at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. In July, he delivered a paper about the aesthetics of nightlife at the Rocky Mountain Division of the American Society of Aesthetics in Santa Fe, New Mexico and also spoke on a panel devoted to publishing in aesthetics. In August, he gave a paper about philosophical ideas in comics at a conference devoted to the philosophy of comics in Columbus, Ohio. Closer to home, Meskin spoke about artificial intelligence and the arts at the May meeting of the Athens Metal Arts Guild.

Dr Piers Stephens has completed a book chapter “Green Liberalism” for the forthcoming Edward Elgar Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, and also has a review of Sam Moore and Alex Roberts’ book The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right forthcoming in the journal Environmental Values, as well as a further review of Marnie Binder’s book A Pragmatist Philosophy of History forthcoming in The Pluralist. During the summer of 2023 Stephens gave two extended interviews to the Marshall McLuhan scholar Gerry Fialka on the YouTube channel I’m Probably Wrong About Everything, and in his role as editor of the journal Ethics & the Environment he recently oversaw a major expansion of its editorial board to greatly increase its diversity and representation outside North America. 

Sarah Wright has been very active internationally in recent months. In June, she organized and presented at the International Bled Epistemology Conference on Applied Epistemology: Virtue, Vice, and Bias in Slovenia. Wright presented the paper, Epistemic Reparations and Group Humility. In July, she served as a commentator at the 18^th annual Episteme conference at the Emerson on Hurumzi Hotel in Stone Town, Zanzibar. In September, she presented the paper “Epistemic Reparations as Restoring the Epistemic Relationship with Self” at the Epistemic Blame and Epistemic Reparations conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba.