The Grindstone

This episode of The Grindstone features the lecture given by Vanessa de Harven (UMass-Amherst) at Purdue University on Saturday, 27 April 2019. The lecture was given at a conference honoring the career of Dr. Patricia Curd, Professor Emerita of the Department of Philosophy at Purdue.

The title of the lecture is: "Plato, The Last Presocratic: Remarks on Republic V in honor of Pat Curd".

Dr. de Harven's overview of the talk is below:

The end of Republic V is a locus classicus for the characterization of Plato as an impossible realist so committed to Forms that he forgoes all knowledge of the sensible world. I argue that one can stand by a so-called objects analysis of the argument directed to the lovers of sights and sounds, which sets knowledge and opinion over different objects, without precluding knowledge of the sensible world. The mistake engrained in the tradition is the idea that sensible particulars themselves (say, Helen or a vase) are the objects of opinion, as opposed to sensible particulars considered only in terms of their sensible properties (e.g. their shapes and colors). Setting knowledge over the Forms and opinion over sensibles is thus not a move to another world or to mere Form-gazing, but a change in perspective on this one world. Indeed, Socrates’ underappreciated analogy with dreaming and waking tells us as much, and I show it is of a piece with the argument that follows.

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Welcome to PatFest...Patapalooza...the PatBash...Call it what you will, this series features lectures in honor of Dr. Patricia Curd - a luminary in the field of ancient philosophy who retired from Purdue last spring (2019). Over two days, 26-27 April 2019, a group of preeminent scholars of ancient philosophy gathered here in West Lafayette, IN, to give talks in honor of Dr. Curd's work and career.

The conference, organized and hosted by Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Dept. of Philosophy at Purdue Dr. Michael Augustin, was exceptional. The weather cooperated, the talks were brilliant, and the admiration and camaraderie on display demonstrated what a great influence, interlocutor, and friend Dr. Curd has been to so many over the years.

In this episode, Michael and Matthew look back on the conference, preview the talks, and share some loving anecdotes about Dr. Curd. We will begin posting the full lectures next Friday (13 March 2020).

Enjoy!

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This week we welcome the Joyce & Edward E. Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, Dr. Mark Bernstein. Dr. Bernstein tells us the story of how he went from being an undergrad math major to being a metaphysician as a grad student and early in his professional career to ultimately being an expert in animal ethics. We then discuss the moment in his life in which he became a vegetarian, his intuitive sense that the moral status of animals was a worthy philosophical pursuit, the principle of gratuitous suffering which he has developed, the moral status of meat eaters, vegetarianism vis-à-vis environmental sustainability, the causal impotence argument and our complicity in the meat industry and in harm to animals generally, and the astonishing number of animals consumed annually worldwide. The numbers are staggering.

This episode also features a line from Paul Simon, a reference to Bruce Springsteen and several mentions of Steely Dan...and of Queens College!

Note: There is some volume discrepancy during the first 2 minutes or so of the interview. After that, the volume for both mics evens out. Sorry!

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This week on The Grindstone we are joined by Dr. Daniel Kelly, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. Dr. Kelly shares his journey to a career in philosophy (inspired, in part, by his desire to organize his thoughts more effectively), his interest in the epistemic foundations of modern science and naturalistic approaches to philosophy of mind, the history of naturalism in philosophy, and the interplay between the scientific image and the manifest image. We also take a deep dive into repulsion and morality, which Dr. Kelly expounds in his book Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust. The latter discussion leads to some candid thoughts from Matthew regarding the Green Bay Packer’s color scheme. Also, Dr. Kelly makes the bold claim that When Harry Met Sally is the original rom-com!

Dr. Kelly was a 2018-19 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where he continued his interdisciplinary research in moral psychology.

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To kick off the long-awaited second season of The Grindstone, we welcome to the studios Dr. Lacey Davidson, who graduated with her PhD from Purdue just this past summer! Dr. Davidson is now a Visiting Assistant Professor at California Lutheran University.

In this episode, we discuss how one of her first philosophy courses challenged her worldview, critical philosophy and philosophy born of struggle, her work with the organization Springfield Promise Neighborhood (Springfield, OH), community organization and effective strategies, the influence community organization and activism has on her philosophical research program, entity type pluralism as a way through the individualist-structuralist debate in philosophies of racism, Dr. Leonard Harris' actuarial account of 'necrobeing', and her research on implicit bias. Many of the ways Lacey talks about community organizing and the power of people comes from the collectively developed epistemic resources of the Younger Womxn's Task Force of Greater Lafayette. You can read Dr. Davidson's recent article, "When Testimony Isn’t Enough: Implicit Bias Research as Epistemic Exclusion," in Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social and Psychological Perspectives (eds. Sherman and Goguen, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).

We also launch the Sally Scholz fan club. Enjoy!

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For the Season 1 finale of The Grindstone, we dip into the archive to share our interview with Purdue Philosophy grad Tom Scholl. Tom joined us last fall while he was in town for the Scholl Lecture Series, which he sponsors.

Tom discusses his journey from starting out as an Electrical Engineering major to graduating with a Philosophy degree, Purdue University in the late '60s, what he might do differently if he were to be a student again, some of the interesting jobs he had post-graduation, how students can put a Liberal Arts degree to work, his time as a CIA systems programmer, why it is that engineers and programmers are often leaning on the philosopher in the room, the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, and how philosophy has helped him in his business career.

The 2018 Scholl Lecture was given by Jenann Ismael, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. You can see her talk here: "Some Thoughts on Time, Totality and Transcendence"

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Dr. Andrew Iliadis, Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Production in the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, joins The Grindstone to discuss his background in philosophy and communication, navigating interdisciplinary spaces as a grad student and as faculty, Gilbert Simondon and the philosophy of information, web 3.0, metadata ontologies, and the social and ethical implications of semantic technologies. Matthew absolutely nails the first line of "Scarborough Fair," but, sadly, there was a technical glitch (see below).

Note: Matthew's mic cuts out a few times from the 5:35-7:02 mins marks. Andrew's responses can be heard clearly and will give you a sense of the questions being asked. Special thanks to Reyes Espinoza, who was on the mixer for this episode, for catching the technical difficulty and helping to restore order.

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Dr. Taylor Davis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, discusses his journey from undergrad psychology major to being an evolutionary psychology expert in a philosophy department, the challenges of incorporating theory into an observational science, the dual inheritance theory, and how norms of sustainability are, and can be, developed. Sadly, there are no digressions regarding the 1990s.

Also, Taylor would love it if any interested developmental psychologists would contact him immediately re: a question he has tried to identify using theory.

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