UAB Dept of Philosophy Newsletter

UAB Philosophy Newsletter December 2014, Issue 3

UAB Philosophy Newsletter meet the group

Join the Philosophy Club!

The Philosophy Club will have its first meeting of the spring semester Thursday, January 15th from 5-6PM in the Philosophy department’s library, room 425A in the Humanities Building. Everyone is welcome!

For more information about the Club and the what they did and discussed last semester, see page 5.

If you know of someone who would like to receive this newsletter, please provide us with his or her name and email address. If you have any news you would like to report, we would love to share it: philosophy@uab.edu

UAB Returns to National Championship of Ethics Bowl The UAB Ethics Bowl team competed in the Southeast Regional in Tampa, Florida and came in third of 22 teams, thus making the National Championship tournament of 32 teams in Costa Mesa, California on February 22, 2015. A different team of UAB undergraduates composed the UAB Bioethics Bowl Team, which competed at Loyola University in Chicago on April 4, 2014 and won 2 matches and lost 2 matches.

Twelve other UAB students accompanied the team to the National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference meeting at Loyola- Chicago at the same time. Several of the students on the team and attending NUBC were philosophy majors.

Dr. Meghan Sullivan In October, the Student Fellowship of Philosophy brought in a speaker, Dr. Meghan Sullivan (Rev. John A O’Brien Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame). She gave a talk titled “Time-Biases: How to Think Rationally about Your Past & Future.” Most of us care a great deal about when pains and pleasures will occur for us. Is it irrational to care less about pains and pleasures that are in your past? Dr. Sullivan discussed some arguments for thinking that it is irrational to discount the past. She also talked about how time-biases affect our judgments about why death is bad, whether the sunk cost fallacy is really a fallacy, and how much we really should be saving for retirement. The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A with students from around campus.

Dalai Lama His Holiness the Dalai Lama visited UAB on October 25-26. He hosted a dialogue focusing on Neuroplasticity and Healing on the 25th featuring UAB’s own prominent behavioral neuroscientist, Dr. Edward Taub. Also featured was Dr. Michael Merzenich of the University of California-San Francisco, and the event was moderated by Dr. Norman Doidge, renowned author of “The Brain That Changes Itself.” Drs. Merzenich and Taub both presented their research that illustrates the adaptability and plasticity of the brain, a subject that is of great interest to His Holiness, who had the opportunity to comment on each presentation. Dr. Merzenich discussed his research into how training interventions can allow older brains to function as younger brains might. Dr. Taub discussed his well-known Constraint-Induced therapy that helps recover function after brain injury, as in stroke.

His Holiness’s visit regarding philosophical thought and neuroscience corresponds with our Philosophy course offerings in the coming semester. Dr. Mary Whall will be teaching PHL 239, Classical Thought of India, China, and the West. Dr. Josh May will teach PHL 292/492, Neuroethics, and Dr. Abrams will teach PHL 372, Minds and Machines., which focuses on artificial intelligence and cognitive science.

Faculty Paper Presentations University at Buffalo’s Experimental Philosophy Conference September 19-20: Dr. Josh May presented The Death of the Doctrine of Double Effect addressing whether there is a moral difference between harming someone purposefully versus harming them as a side-effect.

Dr. May argued that there is not a significant moral difference between these two options exactly, but that they are quite close.

52nd Annual Alabama Philosophical Society meeting October 10-11: Philosophers from Alabama and beyond came to Pensacola, FL to present papers and give commentary, including UAB’s own Drs. Kevin McCain and Matt King. In his talk, titled, “Building Character,” Dr. King considered whether one’s character might not be a set of stable dispositions or traits, as many philosophers have thought, but instead constructed out of one’s responsible actions. In this way, our characters would be downstream of action: its product, rather than its cause. Dr. Eleonore Stump of St. Louis University delivered the keynote address, which concerned reductive laws in the sciences.

Keith Lehrer (1974) and Alvin Goldman (2011) have each argued that explanationist theories of epistemic justification cannot account for justified beliefs formed via deductive inferences.

Recently, Kevin McCain (2013; 2014) has defended explanationism by including relations of logical consequence as justifiers in his “Explanationist Evidentialism.” He argues that McCain’s concession to Lehrer and Goldman is unwarranted because their objections are not genuine problems for explanationism. Additionally, he argues that Explanationist Evidentialism can be modified so that it not only avoids conceding to Lehrer and Goldman, but about the future.

3rd Annual Southeastern Epistemology Conference October 25: Dr. Kevin McCain presented Explanationism, Perceptual Justification, and Defeat. It seems undeniable that there is information that, the possession of which, can lead to one’s otherwise innocent perceptual beliefs being unjustified, e.g. learning that one has been given an hallucinogenic drug. In light of this somewhat obvious fact, it is clear that any viable theory of perceptual justification must adequately account for the justificatory impact of such defeating evidence. Although the need to adequately account for defeat is widely acknowledged, in most cases “no defeater” conditions that are appended to theories of perceptual justification have the feel of ad hoc afterthoughts. Properly accounting for the role that defeat plays in perceptual justification, thus, poses a significant challenge. Consideration of this challenge reveals a theoretical advantage of explanationist theories of justification. Explanationist theories of justification can account for the impact that defeating evidence has on perceptual justification in a principled, non-ad hoc, manner while yielding intuitively correct results in important cases.

Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) conference November 6-9 in Chicago: PSA is an organization that promotes research, teaching, and discussion of philosophical issues concerning science. Since there are close connections between the history and philosophy of science, PSA meets together with the History of Science Society. Dr. Marshall Abrams presented Coherence, Muller’s Ratchet, and the Maintenance of Culture argueing that we can understand the structure of certain mathematical models in anthropology by comparing them to certain models in biology and models of justification in epistemology. He says, “The conference was great! I attended interesting talks and had very fruitful discussions with philosophers and scientists about biological mechanisms, the nature of biological fitness and natural selection, social and cultural change, and the epistemology of social and biological sciences—all of which will help my research and teaching.”

Big Idea Talks WHY WE’RE ALL SUCH TERRIBLE PEOPLE: Dr. Matt King

At the September Big Idea Talk, Dr. King rehearsed an argument that most individuals, at least in the industrialized western world, routinely act wrongly in going about their daily lives. In particular, since the morality of a choice depends in part on what your other options are, when we in the west elect to spend money on non-necessities, like bottled water or entertainment, instead of using that money to save lives elsewhere, we neglect something morally important for something trivial.

IS IT WRONG TO LIVE TO A HUNDRED?: Dr. Greg Pence

In November, Dr. Pence discussed just allocation of expensive medical resources at the end of life, and intergenerational justice, loom as two important issues for our times. Professor Pence argued that the the young are not obligated to become domestic or financial slaves so that senior citizens may enjoy an extra decade of life at marginal quality. It is saintly of them to so sacrifice, but if they do not, they are not bad people.

Join us for these upcoming Big Idea Talks:

February 12 @ 6PM Dr. Kevin McCain

April 8 @ 4PM Dr. Marjorie Price

Reasonable People Can Disagree...Right?

Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument

Philosophy Club The Philosophy Club held it’s first meeting of the fall semester September 2, 2014 and welcomed new members. We set a new record with 33 students in attendance!

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We’ve had many great philosophical discussions on a variety of topics, including:  the Turing Test and whether machines can think like humans  our moral obligations to non-human animals  whether anonymity should be allowed in various forums— particularly internet forums which post claims that could be damaging to someone’s reputation the relation between time and change—in particular discussion of Shoemaker’s frozen world example whether humans are inherently selfish, i.e. can we ever act in ways that are altruistic, and whether it is bad if humans are inherently selfish

Other events included: Movie & Discussion Night (Mr. Nobody)  Book Discussion: Q&A about the philosophical content of the book as well as the writing/ publishing process (Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification by Dr. Kevin McCain)  Brief overview of Buddhism by Dr. Mary Whall followed by q&a concerning the nature of Buddhist beliefs in preparation for the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to Birmingham  Guest lecture by Dr. Meghan Sullivan (University of Notre Dame) on Time-Biases (see page 2) and a follow-up meeting to discuss the issues raised in Dr. Sullivan’s talk on time-biases 

Alumni Updates Lillie Flowers (‘14), was recently hired as Court Case Manager for UAB’s Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities program.

Kevin Qiuchen Jiang (‘14), Outstanding UAB Philosophy Student in 2014, is progressing well through medical school.

John Bouldin (‘12) is enjoying his third year of medical school and plans to go into emergency medicine.

Roshan Patel (‘07) landed in Hematology and liver medicine at the medical center in San Francisco.

Rashmi Murthy (‘03) started in breast medical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center and is developing a clinical research focus in HER2-positive breast cancer.

David McNaron (‘78), aka “Pence’s 1st Philosophy Major,” is retiring after 30 years teaching Philosophy at Nova University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Majaliwa Mzombwe (‘14), says he is “oscillating between surviving and thriving” at Vanderbilt Medical School. (Maja always

had a way with words!)

AL.com (Birmingham News) hired Ian Hoppe (’13) to write a column about technology, Birmingham hipster life, and other cool things.

Tracy Chang Burton, MD (‘08) is now on the faculty in Pediatrics at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Matt Malone (‘05) lives in Nashville with is wife and two children wherre is is completing a pediatric critical care fellowship.

Nicole Mins (‘02) continues as a sleep physician at Carolinas Healthcare System in Charlotte, North Carolina and plays a mean game of Words With Friends.

Let us feature you! Please send updates (include gradution year) to philosophy@uab.edu, and we will include you in the next newsletter!

Who Has A Degree In

Philosophy?

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W e sC r a v e n Director

W e sA n d e r s o n Director

Civil Rights Activist

K e nF o l l e t t Author

Investor

P h i l i pG l a s s Composer

R i c k yG e r v a i s Actor

A l e xT r e b e k D a v i dF o s t e rW a l l a c e P e a r lS .

B u c k Game Show Host

D a v i dS o u t e r

P i e r r eT r u d e a u

Supreme Court Judge

Canadian Prime Minister

Novelist and Playwright

Artist

Civil Rights Activist

A u n gs a ns u uk Y iM a r yH i g g i n sC l a r k W a l l a c eS h a w n Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Novelist

Actor and Playwright

W i l l i a mB e n n e t t R o b e r tM c N a m a r a Pundit

Secretary of Defense

Nobel Prize-winning Novelist

A m yM a d i g a n Actress

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C h r i sH a r d w i c k R o b e r tM o t h e r w e l lS t o k e l yC a r m i c h a e l P h i lJ a c k s o n Comedian and TV Host

Novelist

S t e v eA l l e n Entertainer

Basketball Coach

M a t tG r o e n i n g “Simpsons” Creator

V a c l a vH a v e l President of Czechoslovakia

Essayist

Film Critic

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D o c t o r o w Novelist

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S t e p h e nB r e y e r Supreme Court Judge

A n g e l aD a v i s Civil Rights Activist

S u s a nS o n t a g Essayist

G e o r g eS o r o s Investor and Philanthropist

S t u d sT e r k e l S i m o n ed eB e a u v o i rA l e x a n d e rS o l z h e n i t s y n I r i sM u r d o c h Essayist

Feminist and Essayist

J u a nW i l l i a m s A l b e r tS c h w e i t z e r Journalist

P a t r i c kB u c h a n a n Political Columnist

Nobel Peace Prize Winner

L a r r yS a n g e r Co-Founder of Wikipedia

Nobel Prize-wining Novelist

U m b e r t oE c o Novelist and Essayist

P e t e rT h i e l Co-Founder of PayPal

Novelist and Essayist

J e a n P a u lS a r t r e Existentialist

C a r l yF i o r i n a CEO of Hewlett-Packard

E v e naL i t t l eP h i l o s o p h yH e l p s : W h oD i d n ' tF i n i s hT h e i rD e g r e e ?

H a r r i s o nF o r d Actor

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E l i o t Poet and Essayist

B r u c eL e e Actor

L a n aD e lR e i Musician

S t e p h e nC o l b e r t Comedian

M o b y Musician

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Poster by Catherine Nolan, 2014