Author: Malley, Mary

Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization

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Lewis R. Gordon, Author

Routledge, 2021

The eminent scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a probing meditation on freedom, justice, and decolonization. What is there to be understood and done when it is evident that the search for justice, which dominates social and political philosophy of the North, is an insufficient approach for the achievements of dignity, freedom, liberation, and revolution? Gordon takes the reader on a journey as he interrogates a trail from colonized philosophy to re-imagining liberation and revolution to critical challenges raised by Afropessimism, theodicy, and looming catastrophe. He offers not forecast and foreclosure but instead an urgent call for dignifying and urgent acts of political commitment. Such movements take the form of examining what philosophy means in Africana philosophy, liberation in decolonial thought, and the decolonization of justice and normative life. Gordon issues a critique of the obstacles to cultivating emancipatory politics, challenging reductionist forms of thought that proffer harm and suffering as conditions of political appearance and the valorization of nonhuman being. He asserts instead emancipatory considerations for occluded forms of life and the irreplaceability of existence in the face of catastrophe and ruin, and he concludes, through a discussion with the Circassian philosopher and decolonial theorist, Madina Tlostanova, with the project of shifting the geography of reason.

Book cover for Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization.

Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Fellowship Matching Challenge

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A “match challenge” has been made in support of the Ruth Garrett Millikan Fellowship Fund. Anonymous donors have pledged $1000, which will be contributed to this fund by December 31 if others have collectively contributed that same amount by that date.

 

The Millikan Fellowship fund is used to support ABD grad students for a summer of dissertation writing or related professional development, by providing them with a sum that they’d otherwise earn by teaching a summer course. They also receive research funds to purchase books, pay for conference registration, and, where appropriate, travel. Thus far there have been four holders of the Fellowship: Andrew Tedder (2018), Drew Johnson (2019), Jordan Ochs (2019), and Ryo Tanaka (2020). This spring the Department of Philosophy will select another holder of the Fellowship for the summer of 2021. As the balance of the fund grows, we will get closer to being able to use the income it generates to support a grad student for a semester of dissertation writing, and then, eventually, for an entire dissertation year fellowship.

 

Please consider giving what you can.

Stewart Shapiro in 2019 Philosopher’s Annual

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Stewart Shapiro

Stewart Shapiro’s article, ‘Actual and Potential Infinity,’ co-authored with Oystein Linnebo, and published in Nous, vol. 53 (pp. 160-191), has been selected by The Philosopher’s Annual for inclusion as one of the ten best philosophy articles published in 2019.

Abstract

The notion of potential infinity dominated in mathematical thinking about infinity from Aristotle until Cantor. The coherence and philosophical importance of the notion are defended. Particular attention is paid to the question of whether potential infinity is compatible with classical logic or requires a weaker logic, perhaps intuitionistic.

Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture

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Michael P. Lynch, Author

Liveright/W. W. Norton, 2020

Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet—where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them—has contributed to the rampant spread of “intellectual arrogance.” In this culture, we have come to think that we have nothing to learn from one another; we are rewarded for emotional outrage over reflective thought; and we glorify a defensive rejection of those different from us.

Interweaving the works of classic philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Bertrand Russell and imposing them on a cybernetic future they could not have possibly even imagined, Lynch delves deeply into three core ideas that explain how we’ve gotten to the way we are:

• our natural tendency to be overconfident in our knowledge;
• the tribal politics that feed off our tendency;
• and the way the outrage factory of social media spreads those politics of arrogance and blind conviction.

In addition to identifying an ascendant “know-it-all-ism” in our culture, Lynch offers practical solutions for how we might start reversing this dangerous trend—from rejecting the banality of emoticons that rarely reveal insight to embracing the tenets of Socrates, who exemplified the humility of admitting how little we often know about the world, to the importance of dialogue if we want to know more. With bracing and deeply original analysis, Lynch holds a mirror up to American culture to reveal that the sources of our fragmentation start with our attitudes toward truth. Ultimately, Know-It-All Society makes a powerful new argument for the indispensable value of truth and humility in democracy.

The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology

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Heather Battaly, Editor

Routledge, 2019

What is an epistemic virtue? Are epistemic virtues reliable? Are they motivated by a love of truth? Do epistemic virtues produce knowledge and understanding? How can we develop epistemic virtues? The Routledge Handbook of Virtue Epistemology answers all of these questions. This landmark volume provides a pluralistic and comprehensive picture of the field of virtue epistemology. It is the first large-scale volume of its kind on the topic. Composed of 41 chapters, all published here for the first time, it breaks new ground in four areas.

  1. It articulates the structure and features of epistemic virtues.
  2. It provides in-depth analyses of 10 individual epistemic virtues.
  3. It examines the connections between epistemic virtue, knowledge, and understanding.
  4. It applies virtue epistemology, and explores its impact on related fields.

The contributing authors are pioneers in the study of epistemic virtue. This volume is an outstanding resource for students and scholars in philosophy, as well as researchers in intersecting fields, including education, psychology, political science, and women’s studies.

Book cover for the Virtue Epistemology Handbook

Richard Rorty: Outgrowing Modern Nihilism

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Tracy Llanera, Author

Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

The book makes a new contribution to the contemporary debates on nihilism and the sacred. Drawing on an original interpretation of Richard Rorty’s writings, it challenges the orthodox treatment of nihilism as a malaise that human beings must overcome. Instead, nihilism should be framed as a problem for human culture to outgrow through pragmatism.

Essays on Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic

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Marcus Rossberg, Editor

Oxford University Press, 2019

The volume is the first collection of essays that focuses on Gottlob Frege's Basic Laws of Arithmetic (1893/1903), highlighting both the technical and the philosophical richness of Frege's magnum opus. It brings together twenty-two renowned Frege scholars whose contributions discuss a wide range of topics arising from both volumes of Basic Laws of Arithmetic. The original chapters in this volume make vivid the importance and originality of Frege's masterpiece, not just for Frege scholars but for the study of the history of logic, mathematics, and philosophy.

Recent and Forthcoming Graduate Student Publications

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Heather Muraviov and Taylor Tate co-authored “Black Women Philosophers Conference at the CUNY-Graduate Center,” which uses the pedagogical framework developed by Fanonian scholar Erica Burman to review the conference. Their analysis appeared in the “Black Issues in Philosophy” series of the Blog of the APA.

https://blog.apaonline.org/2019/04/30/black-issues-in-philosophy-black-women-philosophers-conference-at-the-cuny-graduate-center/

 

Drew Johnson has two forthcoming articles:  “Hinge Epistemology, Radical Skepticism, and Domain Specific Skepticism,” The International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, doi 10.1163/22105700-20191302 and “Epistemological Disjunctivism: Perception, Expression, and Self-Knowledge” (With Dorit Bar-On). Forthcoming in New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism (2019), Doyle, C., Milburn, J., & Pritchard, D. (eds.). Routledge.

 

Recent graduate Jared Henderson has a forthcoming article, ‘A Neglected QUA Solution to the Fundamental Problem of Christology’, (co-authored with Jc Beall) in the journal, Faith & Philosophy.

 

Recent graduate Dana Francisco Miranda has an article titled “Review: Jessica Blatt’s Race and the Making of American Political Science,” forthcoming in The Journal of African American History. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jaah/current