ABSTRACT. Richard Rorty doesn’t explicitly address the topic of free speech, though he does claim that the First Amendment is “an admirable constitutional provision.” In this paper, I consider what a plausible position on hate speech and its regulation might be if we were to take Rorty’s pragmatism seriously.

ABSTRACT. An account for why we should look beyond prohibitions against slurs as the primary method for combating the use of slurs. Although prohibitions are an independently valuable method for addressing the use of slurs, the resources employed for prohibitions divert resources from effective means for addressing the use of slurs.

ABSTRACT. Jennifer Saul has explored the use of figleaves like “I’m just asking questions” in enabling the spread of increasingly blatant racist utterances. In this paper, I build on this work, exploring the role that figleaves play in the spread of misinformation.

ABSTRACT. We argue that legal proof is rational belief of guilt. A defendant should be found guilty iff it is rational to believe that the defendant is guilty. Our notion of rational belief implies a threshold view on which belief requires high credence, but mere statistical evidence doesn't engender belief.

ABSTRACT. Submitted as a 500 words abstract.

ABSTRACT. Does the law necessarily give its subjects reasons for action? Legal rationalism says it does. In this jointly written paper, we seek to vindicate legal rationalism by defending it from an objection that has been influential in recent years.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I present a new argument against the feasibility of making radio signals understood by aliens and show that it is different from typical Wittgensteinian arguments against alien contact. This new problem is a practical philosophy of mathematics problem that arises from the Drake Pictures strategy.

ABSTRACT. In a letter to Russell, Wittgenstein makes some remarks on his ‘N(ξ)’ notation which have been variously misunderstood. I explain how we can reconcile the remarks with the explicit account he gives of his notation in the Tractatus, and with the book’s approach to generality.

ABSTRACT. This is an abstract submission.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims at evaluating the following hypothesis: mathematical argumentation (including that of geometry) can represent the development of Sache selbst under the condition of the possibility to overcome the limits [Grenzen], but also the obstacles [Schranken] of mathematics.

ABSTRACT. Classical Indigenous philosophy is often thought to be irretrievable. This overlooks the role of oral traditions and European records as sources. Using these, the techniques used to recover the thought of Western philosophers can be applied to Indigenous thinkers. By reconstructing Kondiaronk's philosophy, I illustrate how this can be done.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I challenge Foucault’s reading of Adam Smith in his Birth of Biopolitics. I argue that Smith’s agents suffer from an aesthetic deception instead of the epistemic limitation Foucault proposes. Consequently, one does not find a homo economicus in Smith’s system; his agents are driven by aesthetics motives.

ABSTRACT. Heidegger affirme finalement que la tautologie est la voie d’accès à la vérité, bien qu’il ait préalablement aussi dit la même chose de l’homologie. Que veut donc dire cette primauté tardive de la tautologie sur l’homologie? Pour y répondre, il faut comprendre le changement de « cœur » de l’alètheia.

ABSTRACT. Many believe that our sexual orientations are innate, immutable characteristics that are hard-wired by our biology (Morandini et al. 2022). But scholars have shown that this view fosters pernicious ignorance (e.g. McIntosh 1968). I argue that the concept of generative entrenchment (Wimsatt 2007) can explain why the view persists nevertheless.

ABSTRACT. In this presentation, I provide a critical feminist account of the ethical and epistemic landscape within contemporary intersex medicine, and subsequently, the terrain for what counts as legitimate argumentation.

ABSTRACT. I aim to answer two questions. First, how can “victims of epistemology” achieve epistemic advantages? Second, whether a society with epistemic injustice is epistemically better than a society that isn’t. I propose a “more-knowledge” account for the first and clarify the epistemic goal of standpoint theory for the second.

ABSTRACT. I will define and critique Trudy Govier's conception of self-trust. Govier's self-trust requires that we see our motivations and competence in a positive light. I will argue that this is not necessary. Furthermore, I will derive my own account of self-trust.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I examine the problem of excessive self-trust. What does it mean to have too much self-trust? How and to whom is this harmful? Can self-trust be tuned appropriately? I answer these questions using the physician-patient encounter as an example, with a focus on some physicians’ excessive self-trust.

ABSTRACT. I give an account of an understudied kind of conspiracy theorist: those who claim to base their beliefs on firsthand experience or observations. I describe the epistemic forces involved in developing a conspiracist identity of this sort, appealing to the ways these conspiracists conceptualize themselves as knowers and epistemic agents.

ABSTRACT. Inferentialism about self-knowledge states that self-knowledge of one's attitudes is acquired through inferences. Inferentialists typically deny two further theses about such self-knowledge: that it is is exceptionally reliable and that it based on a special introspective method. I argue that Inferentialists ought not (and need not) make these further claims.

ABSTRACT. Kant asserts we have no direct duties to animals. Christine Korsgaard argues that this assertion is incoherent, since some Kantian duties to other human beings regard their animal nature. I argue that Kant’s assertion is coherent, as Kant implicitly distinguishes between two forms of animal nature: rational and nonrational.

ABSTRACT. A common complaint against consequentialist moral theories (specifically act-consequentialism) is that perfect adherents to these theories will be incapable of being good friends. I argue that Deontological theories fall prey to a similar complaint, and that adherence to any plausible deontological moral theory is incompatible with forming friendships.

ABSTRACT. I argue that the complex dynamics of contemporary social systems produce forms of systemic injustice that are not but should be accounted for in contemporary theories of social responsibility. In addition to injustices directly produced by agents or structural relations, disorganized groups of individuals can perpetuate systemic injustice.

ABSTRACT. The paper develops and defends the following simple argument for naïve humanism. It is fitting to love X if and only if X is loveable. All human beings are loveable. There is a constitutive connection between X’s being loveable and X’s being valuable. Therefore, all human beings have dignity.

ABSTRACT. We build a case for ontological pluralism by way of three contributions: (1) A useful definition of ‘way of being’. (2) A test for distinguishing ways of being from properties. And (3) an argument that there are features of entities that satisfy definition (1) and pass the test in (2).

ABSTRACT. Many metaphysicians today endorse Contingent Fundamentality, the view that if there are any ungrounded or fundamental facts, it is contingently true that they are fundamental. There are two further plausible claims that render all three jointly inconsistent. I explore rejecting Contingent Fundamentality to solve this puzzle.

ABSTRACT. I argue that because the B-theory of time is preferable to the C-theory, and because the B-theory is inconsistent with unified spacetime, we must reject that there is such a thing as unified spacetime. Instead, space and time must be treated as distinct phenomena - isotropic space and anisotropic time.

ABSTRACT. This paper analyzes the nature of conceptual art by considering Plato’s Theory of Forms that illuminates how the expression of ideas in conceptual art can contribute to its aesthetic quality. Conceptual art ’s character is paradox, emphasizing appreciators’ relationships to worldly affairs though it takes them beyond sensory experience.

ABSTRACT. We can enjoy complex fictions with rough heroes, but can we enjoy the rough heroes’ immorality itself? We can if we merely quasi-blame them. The best cases for aesthetic immoralism are cases where the gap between reality and fiction allows us to enjoy something we are otherwise forbidden from enjoying.

ABSTRACT. (Please see submitted file, as I chose to submit an abstract that is 500 words as opposed to a paper + a 50 word abstract. Thank you!)

ABSTRACT. This text box only allowed me to input 50 words, so I uploaded my abstract as a PDF further down in the application. Sorry for the inconvenience!

ABSTRACT. By considering two types of burden of proof, the burden of reason production and the risk of non-persuasion, I argue that when arguments touch on specific content, the identities and normative roles of certain participants lead to greater probative burden for them.

ABSTRACT. Responsibility gaps present a mismatch between the amount of responsibility one can properly attribute to someone on standard models and the amount one would otherwise desire to attribute. This work argues for praising/compensating those who fill gaps. Gap-fillers admirably bear costs they would not otherwise accrue for others’ benefit.

ABSTRACT. Parental rights to decide what is best for their families are (typically) seen as deserving of respect. Bioethicists have contested the need to respect such rights when they may harm children. This paper argues that the potential harms to parents of this presumption are underrecognized, and outlines such harms.

ABSTRACT. Christina Lafont argues that because the policy preferences of a deliberative mini-public will not correspond to the policy preferences of citizens in aggregate, that it is wrong to let a mini-public politically represent the whole public. In this paper, I will argue that this critique of political random selection fails.

ABSTRACT. N/A - Abstract-only submission

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I respond to the charge that a reconstructive approach to justice theorizing is incapable of accommodating abolitionist demands for emancipation by drawing on resources from the Marxian tradition, and, in particular, the concept of a social contradiction.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I develop a roughly Marxist account of artificial labour. I conclude that, for artificial labour to function in a way that is analogous to contemporary human labour, robots must engage in social reproduction, using their own labour to maintain or reproduce themselves into the future.