At our Holiday Party in December, we celebrated a year of research, with dozens of papers and several books published. We are very proud of the year we have had as a department -- full of exciting colloquia, productive contributions to the field, and strong intellectual community.
We began the new year with an all-department meeting. The highlight was the announcement of the winners of our T-shirt competition. The winners were Tzvetan and Victor for the most dramatic location, and Akiva and Effi Stern for the most energy and enthusiasm. All other entrants received honorable mentions.
Nina Van Rooy will be a commentator at the symposium on Scientific Explanation at the APA Pacific!
Caleb Hazelwood has received the 2024 Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentoring. He is among the 11 faculty and students to receive a Dean's Award from the Graduate School this year. There will be a ceremony and reception held on March 28th at 5:00pm in the Karsh Alumni Center. The Graduate School invites faculty, staff, and students from the department to join in this celebration.
A paper by Gunnar Babcock and Dan McShea, "Goal Directedness and the Field Concept," has been published in the Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association.
Thomas Carnes wrote a discussion note that was published online by Res Publica, entitled "Violence Against Persons, Political Commitment, and Civil Disobedience: A Reply to Adams." This is one of two such discussion notes Thomas wrote before arriving at Duke that have been accepted for publication, with another, entitled "Privileged Citizens and the Right to Riot: A Reply to Pasternak," forthcoming in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. These are part of a broader project Thomas is pursuing on the nature and ethics of political rioting.
This month, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong received two new grants on consciousness. One is for an experiment that will investigate the relation between attention and consciousness. The other is for a conference on tests of consciousness in animals, humans, and AI. Walter plans to teach a graduate seminar in the spring of 2025 on consciousness that will culminate in meeting the conference speakers.
Also, Walter's new book with Jana Schaich Borg and Vincent Conitzer on Moral AI and How We Get There will be published on February 8th by Penguin. "Science & Society" will host a panel on the book at 5:00 pm on February 15th in Love Auditorium in LSRC with a reception following.
Kevin Richardson gave a commentary on Charlotte Witt's latest book, Social Goodness, at an "Author Meets Critic" session.
Matthew Adler gave a talk, "Person-Affecting Consequentialism and Claims," in a PPE session on "Claims, Chances, and Outcomes."
Botian Liu gave a presentation titled "Understanding Mengzi’s Perspective on Reason and Emotion from the Inside Out" at a session of the Association of Chinese Philosophers in America. The topic of the session was "Perception, Knowledge, and Action in Chinese Philosophy."
Ásta chaired an "Author Meets Critics" session. The session's focus was a recent book by Åsa Burman, titled "Nonideal Social Ontology."
Katherine Brading and Duke alumna Qiu Lin (Simon Fraser University) participated in an invited symposium on Émilie Du Châtelet.
Laura Soter's paper, "Rethinking Doxastic (In)Voluntarism," won the 2023 William James Prize!
Here she is celebrating after a successful presentation.
This month I have some unsought advice for Andrew concerning the difference between an encyclopedia and a Ding-an-sichlopedia. The latter is a distant relation of the ‘immanuel’, defined by the 2008 edition of the Philosophical Lexicon as “immanuel, n. (from im-, not, + manual, guide or rulebook) A set of instructions for doing something that kant (q.v.) be done.” (where ‘kant’ is defined: “The modal status of knowing things an sich.”) An encyclopedia like the SEP can get you from one entry to another, but only the SDP can get you to the transcendental ground of the very possibility of the internet. The SDP is none other than the form of human cognition itself.
If you have a question for Tayfun for the next newsletter, please send it to tayfun.gur@duke.edu... though you may get some advice even if you don't.
Department of Philosophy