Graduate Initiatives
Graduate Climate Survey
Every year, we issue a graduate student survey in order to track climate issues in the department. One important issue that has been identified was the way men and women were interacting when discussing/debating philosophical topics. In order to help make these dynamics more positive, and to give our graduate students experience in presenting papers, we began a symposia initiative (see below).
Graduate Student Symposia
As part of the initiative to create a constructive and inclusive environment with diverse perspectives, and to expose the graduate students to the wide range of work their colleagues are producing, the Diversity Committee has been hosting a series of graduate student symposia in which graduate students present their work to one another.
This is an opportunity for graduate students to practice presenting short papers, develop conference-appropriate questions and responses, and get feedback on works-in-progress. The symposia is organized as typical panel style presentations: 20 minutes for each talk, 10 minutes for individual Q&A after each talk, and a longer discussion period after all three talks have been presented.
Current Symposia, 2022-2023
OCTOBER 18, 2022
Alex Vrabely, Beyond Belief: Norms, Social Roles, and Synchronic Intrapersonal Disagreement
Darien Santmyer, A Conceptual Argument Against Motivational Internalism
Jashiel Resto Quiñones, Incompatibility, Incomparability, and Mutual Exclusivity: Speculations on Perfect Being Theology
Past Symposia
NOVEMBER 14, 2018
Samantha Seybold: Holdin' Out for a Hero(ine): Zootopia, Moana, and Disney's Reconstructed Postfeminist Princess.
Stephen Setman: Self-Control and its Motivational Basis.
Gillian Lee: The Intrinsic Probability of a Demon.
OCTOBER 3, 2018
Vince Jacobson: Fregean Non-Descriptivism about Names.
Perry Hendricks: Counterfactual Consensual Gratuitous Evil: A New Obstacle for Arguments from Evil.
November 17, 2017
Jim Elliot: A Better Route for Defining 'Religion' in a Multicultural World
Max Spears: Technological Topologies: The Techno-Space of Existence
Melanie Swan: Philosophy of Time and Philosophy of Physics in Quantum Gravity
October 17, 2017
Lacey Davidson: Activism and the Armchair: Why Philosophers Need Not Stay Out of Politics
Vince Jacobson: Another Impossible Standard: A Reply to Crisp's Defense of Internalism
Daniel Linford: Towards a Computational Model of Dogmatism in a Scientific Community
APRIL 5, 2017
Josh Folk: Was Leibniz a Hobbesian about Practical Reasons and Moral Obligation?
Stephen Setman: Intersubjective Inadequacy: Models of Communication and Experience in Habermas and Adorno
Reyes Espinoza: Making the Case for an Ethics of Tragic Uncertainty
March 8, 2017
Alex Gillham: The Value and Role of Knowledge in Epicurus' Good Life
Dan Linford: Quiet Dogmatism and Information Propagation in Scientific Communities
David Coss: Is Hume an Idealist?
February 2, 2017
Jim Elliott: It's Complicated: The Relationship between Faith and Intellectual Humility
Emily Plymesser: Guilt: A Product of Care and Contracts
Taylor Sutton - Malerogation: When Duty Requires the Morally Bad
October 26, 2016
Elaine Blum: Queer Epistemology
Brandon Rdzak: Who's Afraid of Modal Collapse?:A Defense of Spinoza's Necessitarianism
Alex Gillham: The Limits of Pleasure in Epicurus
March 26, 2016
Mallory Parker: Nichols' Challenge and the Dark Side of Reactive Attitudes: A Naturalistic Critique of Reactive Attitudes
Tiffany Montoya: Finding Consistency Between Social Ontology and Political Arrangements: A Critique of the Neoliberal Concept of Human
Brandon Rdzak: The Principle of Sufficient Reason: Some Modal Consideration