Author: Brereton, Ajalon

Lewis Gordon: The Chronical of Higher Education

Check out Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon in a recent article published on The Chronicle of Higher Education titled “A Philosopher Laughs at Death — and the Public Listens.” Gordon discusses the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his impact on society today.

**Excerpt from article**

Martin Heidegger exemplifies values suitable for people so enwrapped in themselves that they treat their own death as the end of the world,” he told me. “We really don’t need Heidegger today. We didn’t need him then, in his rector lectures at Freiburg in 1933, with his callous investment in cruel charismatic leadership as a form of salvation. Indeed, I would go so far as to argue we never needed him. We need people who transcend self-absorption, psychotic and sociopathic indifference to the suffering of others, and delusions of importance from societal systems designed to support their limited relationship to reality. We need compassion, courage — something Heidegger lacked — and a clear understanding of institutions of power.

 

Ayanna De’Vante Spencer: Believing Black Girl Survivors?

Check out Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Ayanna De'Vante Spencer, in The Review's recent articled titled "Believing Black Girl Survivors?" Spencer addresses unjust treatment of Black female survivors, incorporating the justice system and criminalizing survivors over supporting them. 

Tracy Llanera: “Yes, You Do Deserve a Little Treat”

Check out Assistant Professor Tracy Llanera's recent article in The New York Times, "Yes, You Do Deserve a Little Treat"

*Excerpt*

Tracy Llanera, 35, a philosophy professor at the University of Connecticut who studies nihilism, said that this treat-forward approach is one way people are reclaiming some of the freedom and stability that has been lost since early 2020.

“In the Covid pandemic, the thing that confirms that you’re suffering from existential nihilism is the lack of control,” Ms. Llanera said.

Amid these feelings of ongoing helplessness and grief, she said, people try to find consistent and reliable pleasures.

“Something about treat culture is that you’re always regularly going to get the treat,” she added. “You can depend on that, at least. There’s a guarantee that this small little ritual that you have every week will at least satiate something in you.”

Ayanna De’Vante Spencer: Inclusive Knowledge Theory & Activism

Check out UVU Philosophy Department’s new series, Inclusive Knowledge: Theory & Activism, where Assistant Professor Ayanna De’Vante Spencer will be giving a keynote lecture titled “Beyond Believing Survivors: Epistemic Oppression and the Criminalization of Black Girl Survivors in the US” on Tuesday, March 29th at 2:30 PM.

Mengyu Hu: “Truthmaking in a Realist Fashion”

Check out graduate student Mengyu Hu’s recent article in The Asian Journal of Philosophy, “Truthmaking in a Realist Fashion.”

Abstract

A large part of Asay’s book, A Theory of Truthmaking, is dedicated to show the benefit of applying the truthmaking method to various debates in philosophy. In this paper, I will focus on Asay’s discussion of realism in chapter 8, where he aims to define “realism” in terms of truthmaking and proposed three conditions to satisfy for an account to be realist. The third condition, “to maintain that those truths are true in virtue of that ontology in a relevant fashion”, is mainly invoked to properly characterise quasirealism as anti-realist. This condition itself is intriguing but hard to understand. I will look into Asay’s articulation on this condition and demonstrate the difficulties in interpreting it in a way that is consistent with Asay’s methodological commitments. I will explore three interpretations of condition (iii): the second-order truthmaking interpretation (SOTI), the epistemic interpretation (EI), and the functional interpretation (FI). I will show that SOTI poses a dilemma to Asay’s ontology-first truthmaking project, EI is undesirable because it deviates from the focus of ontology, and FI would render Asay’s truthmaking account redundant.

Hu, Mengyu. 2022. “Truthmaking in a Realist Fashion.” AJPH 1, 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44204-022-00010-w

 

Christopher Rahlwes: “Nāgārjuna’s Negation”

Check out graduate student Christopher Rahlwes’ recent article in The Journal of Indian Philosophy, “Nāgārjuna’s Negation.”

Abstract

The logical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s (c. 200 CE) catuṣkoṭi (tetralemma or four-corners) has remained a heated topic for logicians in Western academia for nearly a century. At the heart of the catuṣkoṭi, the four corners’ formalization typically appears as: A, Not A (¬A), Both (A &¬A), and Neither (¬[A∨¬A]). The pulse of the controversy is the repetition of negations (¬) in the catuṣkoṭi. Westerhoff argues that Nāgārjuna in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā uses two different negations: paryudāsa (nominal or implicative negation) and prasajya-pratiṣedha (verbal or non-implicative negation). This paper builds off Westerhoff’s account and presents some subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s use of these negations regarding their scope. This is achieved through an analysis of the Sanskrit and Tibetan Madhyamaka commentarial tradition and through a grammatical analysis of Nāgārjuna’s use of na (not) and a(n)- (non-) within a diverse variety of the catuṣkoṭi within the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

Rahlwes, Christopher. Nāgārjuna’s Negation. J Indian Philos (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10781-022-09505-5

2022 Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship Winners

Congratulations to Mengyu Hu and Chris Rahlwes, who are both recipients of the 2022 Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship!

This summer, the fellowship will support Chris’s dissertation research on “Absence, Difference, and Denial: An Analysis of Negation” in the work of Nagarjuna and Zhuangzi, and Mengyu’s dissertation research on meta-semantics and mixed disjunctions.

The Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship was created in 2017 with an endowment by some beneficent anonymous donors and continues to be augmented by generous gifts from admirers, friends and colleagues of Professor Emerita Ruth Garrett Millikan, one of the world’s most distinguished philosophers, and a cherished member of UConn’s philosophical community. To support the fellowship fund, please visit the UConn Foundation.

Congratulations Mengyu and Chris!

Lewis Gordon: LARB Radio Hour

Check out Professor and Department Head Lewis Gordon on The Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour with Eric Newman and Medaya Ocher.

In this episode Professor Gordon discusses his new book, Fear of Black Consciousness, and the historical development of racialized Blackness and the larger issues this type of consciousness leads too. Gordon also discusses the responses Black and non-Black communities display in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom.

To listen: Click Here 

APA Appoints Heather Battaly New Journal of the APA Editor-in-Chief

Congratulations to Professor Heather Battaly, who has been appointed the new Journal of the APA Editor-in-Chief by the American Philosophical Association. Check out the article here.

Published quarterly, the Journal of the American Philosophical Association provides a platform for original work in all areas of philosophy. The journal aims to publish compelling papers written in a way that can be appreciated by philosophers of every persuasion.