Methods Conference Paper Abstracts

Unjust Laws (Katherine Brumund)

Do we have an obligation to follow unjust laws? My goal for this paper to to show that citizens do not have an obligation to follow unjust laws, but that we have a duty to break them to defend justice, which in turn gives legitimacy to modern political movements. In this paper, I examine arguments from Plato for following unjust laws, and arguments from John Rawls (in his theory of civil disobedience) for breaking unjust laws.

Compatibilism of Infallible Foreknowledge and Free Will (Catherine McNamara)

Free will and foreknowledge are both theological and philosophical ideas of high importance. Yet, it seems that we cannot accept one without creating problems for the other. In this paper, I attempt to find a solution to the issue of compatibilism of God’s infallible foreknowledge and free will. Through providing some background, I ultimately determine the theories of Luis de Molinia provide the most relatively satisfactory answer. I also express potential concerns with Molinism as well as a brief example of my own Molinist-inspired solution. system that sees punishment aimed at rehabilitation rather than retribution and explores what the structure of such a system should look like.

How I Died Killing My Younger Self. (Shanshan Wang)

The wish to undo the past visits our mind once a while. If we are constrained by modern technology, not seeing the time machine to be invented in the near future, is it still logically possible for us to change the past? G. C. Goddu saves the day, offering a non-linear model of time that allows us to undo the unsatisfactory past. It is comforting to finally get an argument answering yes while the question has been met with so many frustrating no’s. But the disappointment does not stop with Goddu’s new model of time, especially when changing the past is possible but killing yourself while changing the past is inevitable. I content that any self-destructive manner or events caused by the change of past that successfully kills the time traveler’s younger self leads to the death of the traveler herself. This paper explains why a time traveler cannot kill herself and live to tell the tale.

The Potion: Making Oneself Forget and Moral Repsonability (Arrman Kyaw)

Within reason, we generally excuse people that have committed morally objectionable acts if they “did not know” something that would have stopped them from acting. But should we also excuse those that “did not know” if they made themselves forget? Suppose you drink a miracle potion to make yourself forget that you carry a contagious disease. Are you morally responsible and at fault for infecting someone else after forgetting, or does ignorance excuse you? Are you then completely excused of moral responsibility? The goal of this dialogue is to prove that deliberately making oneself forget specific knowledge and forget making oneself forget – and certain alternatives addressed in the paper – will not completely excuse from moral responsibility and wrongness because acting towards forgetting attaches moral responsibility and wrongness to the actor. To that end, I provide partial but relevant insight about what excuses one of moral responsibility and what makes a specific person a specific person. I also address what implications and significance an answer to the main question posed would have on alcohol consumption when one “drinks to forget.”

Is Belief in The Christian God Justified? (Cameron Bonsell)

In this dialogue, I will discuss whether the belief in the Christian God is epistemically justified. Instead of trying to deduce the existence of God from propositional evidence, I will argue that evidentialist standard of epistemic justification which is commonly held needs to be revised. I will present instead, a version of epistemic justification similar to that of Alvin Plantinga. I will address critiques of this standard of justification, as well as some arguments against the possibility of the Christian God.

Proslogion: Objections (Jocelyne Rodriguez)

Can we prove the existence of God?  In the Proslogion,  Anselm of Canterbury introduces the ontological argument for the existence of God, which attempts to support the existence of God through reason by arguing that God must exist by definition. Anselm defines God as something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought and derives the conclusion that if God does not exist but we can think of something that exists, then God would not be that-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought which would imply a contradiction. Hence, God must exist by definition. In this paper, I discuss the objections presented against the argument by Gaunilo and Kant and present my own. I investigate the question of whether Anselm succeeds at providing an argument that helps make sense of popularly held religious beliefs from the time and whether it truly presents an argument capable of supporting itself.

Blame and Circumstances: Towards a Reassessment of Blameworthiness (Julian Scott)

The received view of blame has it that blame is just the moral assessment of an agent.  That blame is a response to a flaw in the agent.  But this view finds it difficult to accommodate the fact that natural blaming responses depend not only on the quality of the moral agent but also on the outcomes of action.  We are inclined to blame people when the consequences of their actions turn out poorly, but not when they turn out well.  The outcomes of action depends on a variety of what Thomas Nagel called “moral luck.”  This, Nagel proposed, presented a problem for responsibility theory.  I propose a new model that solves this problem.  If we take blame instead to be the assessment of an agent and a state of affairs, then the contrast between our intuitions about blame and theory are reconciled.  I will expand on this theory and provide some examples to establish it.  Then I will respond to a theoretical objection to my theory.  Last, I will devote two sections to responding to counterexamples to my theory.

Responsibility for Character (Krishna Lahiya)

A good moral education and a good upbringing play a key role in the Aristotelian conception of character and are necessary but not sufficient conditions for good character. Aristotle proposes a second stage of moral education in adulthood where we perform an action knowing its reasons and how it would affect our character; therefore, per Aristotle, we are co-causes of our character and are responsible in some way for our character. The following objection could be raised to holding people responsible for their character: if an individual with a bad upbringing chooses a bad moral exemplar from whom to learn virtue, they should not be held responsible at all for their character because their bad upbringing (which they could not affect) led to bad values which led them to choose a bad moral exemplar. They cannot, then, be held responsible at all for their actions. This paper argues that this objection is a misinterpretation of Aristotle and shows that all individuals can always be held causally responsible for their character, but not always morally responsible because of the conditions of avoidability and Strawsonian exempting conditions.

The Jewel of the Kingdom of Men (Molly Krulak)

If you want a topic that immediately divides a room, bring up the disagreement between the idea that humans have free will and that our actions are predetermined. This story takes a lighthearted romp through three of the arguments for determinism, and shows how they do not quite satisfy our hero, or the reader. Facing off against the causation-concerned Poieo, the moral conduct-confused Krites, and the calculating Episteme, one young boy refutes their arguments for a determined future.

Evaluating Robert Nozick’s ‘Experience Machine’ – would an artificial life of pleasure really be all that bad? (Marija Vidakovic)

Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine is one of the most famous arguments against hedonism concerning well being. Nozick concludes that if hedonism were correct, most people would choose to plug into the experience machine as described in his thought experiment. In this paper I will evaluate objections to hedonism raised by Nozick, and attempt to show that it does not successfully argue against at least a version of hedonism concerning well being.

A Critique of Charles Larmore’s Conception of Political Philosophy (Daniel Yoo)

Abstract: Charles Larmore advances a new conception of political philosophy in a 2012 article titled, "What is Political Philosophy?" At the heart of his article is the recognition that political philosophy must come to grips with history's clearest lesson about political life, that reasonable disagreement will always exist in civil society. I examine this new conception of political philosophy, but ultimately criticize Larmore on the grounds that his conception ends up being a roundabout way of endorsing political liberalism, which he explicitly denies. Larmore, I argue in my paper, is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps misguided in thinking that his new conception can be the groundwork of future political philosophy for philosophers who hold varying, not just liberal, positions.