Chair: Shao-An Hsu, The Ohio State University

9:30 am

Donald Soles,  The Ohio State University
"Inquiry & the Value of Knowledge"

How does the value of knowledge illuminate the epistemic significance of inquiry? I argue that when we appreciate knowledge’s value, we’ll anticipate important normative roles for knowledge that extend to inquiry by mandating its closure. In light of these considerations, I argue that we should accept the Ignorance Norm of Inquiry (INI), which prohibits inquiring about the answer to a question while at the same time knowing the answer to that question. Moreover, when we understand the value of knowledge, we are left with important defensive resources that enable us to rebut challenges to INI that have recently been proposed.

Commentator: Benjamin Cordry, Lorain County Community College

10:45 am

Aaron R. Champene, St. Louis Community College
"Redundant Evidence"

The additivity of evidence principle maintains: If S acquires new evidence that supports p and S neither loses any previous evidence for p nor acquires any defeating evidence for p, then S becomes more justified in believing that p. In this paper, I argue against this principle by appealing to the possibility of redundant evidence—i.e., evidence that fails to justify. My argument is that evidence can fail to increase justification, just as counterevidence can fail to decrease justification. I consider two objections to my argument and respond to each.

Commentator: Christopher Pincock, The Ohio State University

Chair: Nathan Brant, Kent State University

9:30 am

Michael Wiitala, Cleveland State University
“What World is Timaeus’ Speech About?”

Commentators typically understand the world or cosmos Timaeus speaks of in the eponymous dialogue as the same world Aristotle aims to give a scientific account of in De Caelo and the Physics. Yet key claims that Timaeus and Aristotle make in framing their accounts of the world suggest this might not be the case. Aristotle is clear that he is pursuing a “science of nature,” while Timaeus, by contrast, says that he means to give a merely “likely account” (27d5-29d3) of a world that is “opined by opinion with sense perception devoid of reasoned discourse” (28a2-3) rather than grasped by intellection. This paper argues that it is a mistake to identify the world Timaeus intends to describe in his speech with the world studied by the natural sciences, ancient or modern.

Commentator: Errol Katayama, Ohio Northern University

10:45 am

Timothy (Tianrong) Lin, Kent State University
“Narrating the I & We: Authenticity between Narrative and Existentialism”

Contemporary pursuits of authenticity are commonly criticized as tending to a nihilistic solipsism and to be based on an atomistic conception of the self. In this paper, I trace the tension between conceptions of the individualistic, autonomous self and more relational, social selves through Sartre and Beauvoir’s accounts of authenticity and communitarian critiques of such authenticity. Communitarians such as Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre instead argue for a narrative self. By reinterpreting this debate in terms of a narrativist interpretation of Heidegger’s account of authenticity, I argue that communitarian commitments to a robust relational self are not incommensurable with the moral ideal of authentic self. A coherent human “self” is always gathered as a narrative structure that emerges dialogically out of social, shared narratives and at the same time is directed towards shared goods. To live authentically is thus to simultaneously pursue the coherence of one’s own narrative totality that is always already constituted by others and always co-constitutes a shared narrative community.

Commentator: Colin Smith, The Ohio State University

Chair: Darrin W. Snyder Belousek, Ohio Northern University

9:30 am

Katherine Ben-Ezra, The Ohio State University
“Poverty and Factory Farms: An Analysis of the Significant Moral Good of the Meat Industry”

This paper examines the soundness of the typical argument for ethical vegetarianism by assessing the important socio-economic and personal costs of maintaining a nutritious, enjoyable, and sustainable vegetarian diet. Accounting for these factors, I argue that the typical argument to prove meat eating to be impermissible actually fails to support this conclusion. Specifically, I argue that the downfall of the argument lies in a premise such as the one offered by Huemer in his Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism, “The meat industry inflicts a great deal of pain and suffering on animals for the sake of comparatively minor benefits” (Huemer 2019, 5). My goal is to revise this premise in order to form a more tenable case for ethical vegetarianism.

10:45 am

Haotian Wang, University of Chicago
“Re-evaluating Marx’s Social Ontology: An ‘Economic First’ Perspective”

In this paper, I will attempt to reconstruct a Marxian social ontology based on his critique of political economy. I will argue that Marx has developed a structural-functionalist theory of class in the sense that an economic agent is primarily determined by her characteristic economic function performed under the objective compulsion in capitalist societies. In the second part of this paper, I will, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, defend Marx against some popular Marxists, and justify why Marx’s social ontology provides us with a more powerful tool to analyze social and political conflicts in modern capitalist societies. In particular, I will argue the following four points: Firstly, Marx’s theory of class does not place any particular subject in a privileged epistemic position to understand the dynamics of the capitalist system. Secondly, Marx’s holistic and internally differentiated picture of class allows us to better grasp the complexity of class relations and dynamics of an advanced capitalist society. Thirdly, Marx emphasizes that class is not a self-ascriptive, immanent identity that should be recognized and celebrated, but a historical-structural position that can be understood ex post and abolished. Finally, Marx offers a political realist rather than moralist theoretical foundation for us to go behind capitalism.

Chair: Sara Ghaffari, Bowling Green State University

2:15 pm

Sofia Koukia, Binghamton University
“She Was Asking for it; Blame-Shifting and Guilt-Tripping”

Michelle Ciurria makes the claim that women have difficulty in expressing blame due to the existing epistemic biases and social asymmetries of power that harm their capacity as knowers. This observation is certainly accurate yet Ciurria does very little to explain (a) the mechanics of the phenomenon of marginalized women’s blame, and (b) the significance of taking note of this feminist concern in the current moral responsibility literature. In this paper, I intend to take up this exact task. Precisely, I want to argue, firstly, that the marginalization of women’s blame ought to be understood as a two-sided procedure that, in being characteristic of the current oppressive patriarchal structure, is characterized (i) by the proneness of women to absorbing guilt and taking up responsibility as well as (ii) by the proneness of men to shifting the blame and/or avoiding responsibility. Then, I intend to discuss how asymmetries in power relations with regards to gender translate to asymmetries in what we consider blameworthy, and, most importantly, argue that those asymmetries often remain invisible if we only examine responsibility asking the common questions of ‘could the agent have done otherwise” or “is this behavior indicative of her true self'' etc —a kind of ignorance that naturally raises issues of unfairness and/or inaccuracy.

Commentator: Seungsoo Lee, The Ohio State University

3:30 pm

Josiah Yates, Northwest Ohio Classical Academy
“Blame and Righteousness: a Phenomenological Examination”

From the phenomenon of “cancel culture” to issues with the religious treatment of the LGBTQ+ community, it should be clear that there are problems that manifest in blaming scenarios. Even if in some cases the perceived moral wrong is correct, the way in which the blaming encounter occurs–the way in which the wrongdoer is held accountable–matters. There seems to be something critical and important in the moral functioning of blame to clearly establish social norms and, at the same time, there seems to be something volatile and dangerous in blame, especially when it goes awry and exceeds what is appropriate to the encounter. In this work I examine how being in the mode of righteousness impacts the blamer in the blaming encounter. The mode of righteousness involves the processes of sin-recognition and purification. Blame in the mode of righteousness is emotional by nature, often tied to deeper ideological and religious commitments, and prone to extreme behavior. This examination reveals two key features relevant to unjustified blame: the closing of dialogue and the obscuring of the Other.

Commentator: Liz Rozenberg, The Ohio State University

Chair: Matthew Willis, The Ohio State University

2:15 pm

Eli Schantz, The Ohio State University
“Epistemic Harm”

Since its popularization in Miranda Fricker’s seminal book Epistemic Injustice, the notion of epistemic harm has become a valuable tool within social epistemology. But in spite of the many contexts in which this tool has been applied, the question of what epistemic harm is remains open. This paper addresses a foundational question in this dialectic, and asks: can the notion of epistemic harm, as it is developed and employed by Fricker, be accounted for by extant general theories of the metaphysics of harm? I argue, here, that it cannot. In Section I, I elaborate on three key desiderata which any account of epistemic harm, following Fricker, must achieve; and I show, in Section II, that these desiderata are incompatible with all predominant theories in the metaphysics of harm. In Section III, I elaborate on the trilemma which this result presents: we must hold either (i) that extant general accounts of harm are inadequate, (ii) that epistemic harm is not truly a species of harm, or (iii) that Fricker’s desiderata for epistemic harm are faulty. I present a brief argument in favor of (i), but conclude that significant work remains to be done in defense of this claim.

Commentator:

3:30 pm

Karl Palomino, Kent State University
“Anti-idealism as Ideology”

This paper argues that, in political philosophy, the charge of being ideological leveled against ideal theory also applies to a specific form of non-ideal theory: the anti-idealist variety, which maintains that ideal theorizing is inherently flawed and should be abandoned. The structure of the paper is as follows. First, I present Charles Mills’s argument for dismissing ideal theory as ideological. Second, I identify three core features of the anti-idealist stance: the dispensability of the ideal, political improvements grounded in internal normative standards, and an anti-utopian outlook. Third, I elucidate Rosa Luxemburg’s distinction between reform and revolution as political strategies that assert different goals. In the final section, I argue that anti-idealism itself risks becoming ideological. By rejecting ideal theory, anti-idealism risks grounding its analysis in unexamined normativity, incorporating core elements of the status quo as neutral, which leads to a short-range social criticism that reflects illicit social privileges. Furthermore, this reliance fosters a bias toward reformist rather than revolutionary changes, motivating political action that leaves core elements of the socio-political structure intact and allowing illicit social privileges to perpetuate.

Commentator: Amanda Goins, Ohio University