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23rd Annual Undergraduate Philosophy & Religion Conference
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Activities Room, Student Union Building
Hosted by the Truman State University Department of Philosophy & Religion
Henry Smits Lecture and Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Richard Fumerton
Department of Philosophy
University of Iowa
The subject of Dr. Fumerton’s talk is infinitism, which is a view about what makes us justified in holding certain beliefs. Here’s the abstract:
Questions concerning the structure of justification lie at the heart of epistemology. And it is to Peter Klein’s great credit that he has added to the traditional debates a new and interesting proposal for how to understand the structure of justification. The foundationalist is convinced that all justification terminates in a foundation of non-inferential justification. The coherentist is convinced that there is no escaping the “circle of belief” and the best we can do is maximize relations of coherence among our beliefs. Klein’s infinitist rejects the choices offered by these two views as a false dilemma. Against the coherentist, we should insist that to have justification for believing any proposition we must have the capacity to put forward non-circular reasons in support of the proposition, non-circular reasons in support of whatever reasons we appeal to, non-circular reasons in support of those reasons and so on, ad infinitum. The foundationalist’s fear that this puts too much strain on finite beings is, Klein, argues, misguided. In this paper I argue that the infinitist cannot avoid the foundationalist’s regress arguments. While I might concede that the infinitist has a plausible account of what it is for a belief to be defensible, it is not a plausible account of what it is for a belief to be justified.
The talk will be delivered during lunch at 12:00 p.m. in the Student Union Georgian Room C.
Conference Schedule
All talks, with the exception of the lunchtime keynote, will be held in the Student Union Activities Room.
9:00 a.m.
Dr. David Murphy
Welcome
9:05 a.m.
Josh Swindler
Missouri Western State University
The Virtuous Euthyphro Dilemma
In this article the author argues that the Euthyphro dilemma is applicable to contemporary virtue ethics, specifically Hursthouse’s theory. The dilemma is as follows; either this theory is based in agent-dependent concepts and thus is arbitrary, or it is based in agent- independent concepts and thus is not an example of virtue ethics. The author argues that this theory falls on the first horn. This paper is intended to indicate at least one of the reasons why virtue ethics as a whole has yet to make an adequate response to the charges of arbitrariness leveled by this dilemma and other critiques.
9:35 a.m.
Jessica Foster
Truman State University
Transhumanism and Christianity: Comparing Ray Kurzweil, Pelagius, and Augustine
Transhumanism is an increasingly popular ideology that suggests humanity will evolve to be radically more in the future than it is today, Transhumanism has complex implications for religion, especially Christianity. Here, leading transhumanist Ray Kurzweil’s thought will be compared and contrasted with that of Pelagius, a late fourth century Christian theologian who was later viewed as a heretic by most Christians, and Augustine, who stands as a giant in the tradition of Christian theology. Examining transhumanism’s interactions with heresy and classical orthodox theology within Christianity illuminates the relationship between transhumanism and religion and reveals incompatibility and deep similarity.
10:05 a.m.
Timothy Snediker
University of Central Arkansas
The Absence of Woman: Feminist Resistance in the Akedah
The biblical narrative of Abraham and Isaac has long been a challenging object of inquiry for philosophers and theologians—more recently, for feminists. This paper attempts a more precise formulation of the problematic of the Akedah with a view toward a better articulated hermeneutic regarding both the specific myth and resistance to patriarchal hegemony in general. Both Jacques Derrida’s writings on sacrifice and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theories of sexuation play a major role in the development of a feminist reading of the Akedah that seeks to deconstruct the supposed opposition between sacrifice and feminine liberation.
10:35-10:50 a.m.
Break
10:50 a.m.
Kevin Marren
Missouri State University
Phenomenology, Communication, Citation
When one writes or speaks, he usually intends to mean something but seldom questions whether his intentions as meant are communicated in their original purity or whether there is an inherent indeterminacy which limits his ability to ‘mean what he says.’ Using a Derridean reading of Husserl, we will come to better understand the status of communication and to possibly develop a new phenomenological account of communicative activity. Then, in order to demonstrate the implications of this new account, we will consider the practice of citation as an example, and reassess this practice in light of the potential indeterminacy within communication.
11:20 a.m.
Jacob Beard
Northwest Missouri State University
The Development of Phenomenological Methodology Under Edmund Husserl
Phenomenology… founded its philosophy on many concepts which stood against the understandings of many philosophers of the modern era…Although many of the foundational ideas which developed into the phenomenological method can be attributed to Franz Clemens von Brentano, it was Edmund Husserl who codified the first expressions of phenomenology as a philosophical school of thought. Therefore, in order to understand the phenomenological method, an analysis of the philosophy of Husserl is necessary.
11:50 a.m.
Break
12:00 p.m.
Lunch and Keynote Speaker:
Infinitism
Dr. Richard Fumerton, University of Iowa
Questions concerning the structure of justification lie at the heart of epistemology. And it is to Peter Klein’s great credit that he has added to the traditional debates a new and interesting proposal for how to understand the structure of justification. The foundationalist is convinced that all justification terminates in a foundation of non-inferential justification. The coherentist is convinced that there is no escaping the “circle of belief” and the best we can do is maximize relations of coherence among our beliefs. Klein’s infinitist rejects the choices offered by these two views as a false dilemma. Against the coherentist, we should insist that to have justification for believing any proposition we must have the capacity to put forward non-circular reasons in support of the proposition, non-circular reasons in support of whatever reasons we appeal to, non-circular reasons in support of those reasons and so on, ad infinitum. The foundationalist’s fear that this puts too much strain on finite beings is, Klein, argues, misguided. In this paper I argue that the infinitist cannot avoid the foundationalist’s regress arguments. While I might concede that the infinitist has a plausible account of what it is for a belief to be defensible, it is not a plausible account of what it is for a belief to be justified.
2:00 p.m.
Janey Dechow
University of Northern Iowa
From Leviathan to Dr. Frankenstein’s Creature: The Work that Monsters Do
Religion needs monsters and monsters need religion. An author who fashions a profound interpretation of the links between religion and monsters is Timothy K. Beal, who discusses many ways to relate these two seemingly opposing subjects. Beal explores four main categories of the role that monsters play in religion and the impact of religion on monsters: theodicy, the paradox aided by the concept of the uncanny, demonization and deification, and four tensions (order and chaos, orientation and disorientation, the self and the other, and a foundation and an abyss). Through analyzing these relationships between monsters and religion, Beal demonstrates a clear connection between them.
2:30 p.m.
Matthew J. Bailey
Northwest Missouri State University
Heideggerian Dasein as a Hypostatic Union
In many conflicting philosophical anthropologies, it appears that the person is a substantial reality unto itself; person is a concrete unit. Understanding persons in a concrete fashion will always lead to various problematics in that there is an unsurpassable rigid paradigm that, if surpassed, destroys one’s entire project. In order to rectify these problems, this paper offers up the novel notion that person can be understood as both a process and in the same fashion as that of the Christological person of Jesus Christ. In order to show how this process is experienced in the givenness of experience the paper will: 1) flesh out the Christological understanding of the hypostatic union, 2) incorporate Heidegger’s conception of Dasein, 3) Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of the positional and non-positional self will be elucidated, and 4) the various aforementioned components will come together to show how the hypostatic union is mirrored in the process of person as Dasein.
3:00-3:15 p.m.
Break
3:15 p.m.
Natalie Killion
Creighton University
An Internal Criticism of Christine Korsgaard’s The Sources of Normativity
In her book entitled The Sources of Normativity, Christine Korsgaard seeks to save Immanuel Kant from criticisms of empty formalism. Such charges accuse Kant’s categorical imperative of a failure to motivate action. To save Kant from the aforementioned criticisms, Korsgaard brings to light her notion of practical identity, which she believes is enough to motivate action. However, Korsgaard makes a claim that our identity with humanity is superior to our other practical identities. By doing this, I will argue that her notion of practical identities unravels and her attempt to save Kant from charges of empty formalism fails, as well.
3:45 p.m.
Spencer Graham
Knox College
Poetry and Power
A fundamental mistake related to the metaphysics of substance creates significant negative repercussions through its function as a reinforcement of, a support system for phallogocentric and heteronormative hegemony. Poetry, in its ability to use the sentence in conjunction with enjambment in lineation, is capable of subverting problematic grammatical relationships associated with the metaphysics of substance. Consequently, poetry provides a potentially effective remedy for the problem the metaphysics of substance poses. This paper explores the issue of the metaphysics of substance and illustrates its destructive capacity in an examination of Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character; through an analysis of one part of a poem by William Carlos Williams, this paper also explains how poetry indicates a solution to some of the problems the metaphysics of substance presents.
The Truman State University Philosophy and Religion Department wishes to thank the following individuals and organizations who have helped to make the conference possible:
Dr. Richard Fumerton
Dr. David Murphy
Kristin Flannigan
Samantha Wickam
Kara Boschert
David Clark
Sarah Agbehia
The SUB Staff
ITS
Sodexo
Center for Student Involvement
Residence Life
