Colloquium: "Experiments in Aesthetics: From Bad Art to Beauty"

Aaron Meskin, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Leeds (UK)
Thursday, April 10th @ 4:30PM
   » Willard–Smith Library, Vaughan Literature Building

There is a long tradition of skepticism about the role of scientific investigation in our understanding of the aesthetic domain. For example, Kant claimed ‘there is no science of the beautiful, but only critique’. Nevertheless, many contemporary philosophers who work on aesthetic issues engage seriously with the sciences—especially psychology and the related set of disciplines that fall under the heading of cognitive sciences. Perhaps the most surprising way in which philosophical aestheticians engage with scientific psychology is by doing it themselves. In this talk, I shall discuss some recent research in experimental philosophical aesthetics on which I have collaborated. This research addresses such topics as the effects of exposure to bad art and the nature of aesthetic adjectives such as ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’.

Philosophical Film: "Project Nim"

Tuesday, March 18th @ 7PM @ the Campus Theatre ($2 admission)
413 Market Street Lewisburg, PA

The Philosophy Department is proud to sponsor the screening of this fantastic documentary about a chimpanzee (Nim) raised in a human family in New York City. "Project Nim" is an unflinching and unsentimental biography of an animal that science tried to make human; it won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.



Professor Gary Steiner, John Howard Harris Chair in Philosophy and an expert on moral considerations involving animals, will introduce the film and lead a post-screening discussion of it. Note as well that Professor Steiner will be our guest for the next Philosophy Lunch Chat on Thursday the 20th (at noon) concerning the moral status of animals (for more information, see this post). We hope that you can join us for what promise to be very interesting discussions!

Lunch Chat (3/20): The Moral Status of Animals

Thursday (3/20) at noon in Willard–Smith Library 

Building on our film screening of "Project Nim" on Tuesday the 18th, the Philosophy Department will host a lunch chat discussion with Professor Gary Steiner, John Howard Harris Chair in Philosophy at Bucknell, on the moral status of animals. Among the many questions we might address are the following:

• The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reports that every year, worldwide, over 50 billion land animals are killed for human consumption. Does this fact raise any ethical questions?
• Do human beings "count" more in the moral scheme of things than nonhuman animals? If so, on what basis should we consider human beings to be morally superior to nonhuman animals?
• Even if we believe that human beings are morally superior to nonhuman animals, should we recognize any limits in the ways we treat nonhuman animals (e.g., in food production, experimentation, entertainment, field labor, etc.)? If so, how should we determine the proper limits or parameters of the treatment of nonhuman animals?
• Do measures such as California's Proposition 2, passed in late 2008 and mandating provisions such as more living space for the animals that we raise for food, accomplish any significant improvements in the lives of the animals we kill for human consumption? 
• Are the ways our society currently treats nonhuman animals morally acceptable? If not, what sorts of changes would you propose? 
• Is experimentation on nonhuman animals justifiable? Does it yield valuable information that is likely to improve human welfare? Is the improvement of human welfare a sufficient basis for justifying experimentation on nonhuman animals? 
• Do institutions such as zoos, rodeos, and circuses pose any ethical problems? If so, what problems do they pose? If not, how do our uses of nonhuman animals in such institutions reflect our values regarding nonhuman animals and the relative moral status of human beings and nonhuman animals?

You might also be interested in watching this recent interview with Professor Steiner:

Lunch Chat (3/6): Is the United States a Racial Democracy?

Join us at noon on March 6 in the Willard-Smith Library in Vaughan Lit for a lunch chat with Professor Nikki Young (Women's and Gender Studies) to discuss the question, "Is the United States a Racial Democracy?"

Like many lunch chats in the past, this one was inspired by a recent post on the NY Times philosophy blog, The Stone. Here's a choice passage. The authors are Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver.

The fairness of a system of justice is measured by the degree to which its laws are fairly and consistently applied across all citizens. In a fair system, a group is singled out for punishment only insofar as its propensity for unjustified violations of the laws demands. What we call a racial democracy is one that unfairly applies the laws governing the removal of liberty primarily to citizens of one race, thereby singling out its members as especially unworthy of liberty, the coin of human dignity.

There is a vast chasm between democratic political ideals and a state that is a racial democracy. The philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that when political ideals diverge so widely from reality, the ideals themselves may prevent us from seeing the gap. Officially, the laws in the United States that govern when citizens can be sent to prison or questioned by the police are colorblind. But when the official story differs greatly from the reality of practice, the official story becomes a kind of mask that prevents us from perceiving it. And it seems clear that the practical reality of the criminal justice system in the United States is far from colorblind. The evidence suggests that the criminal justice system applies in a radically unbalanced way, placing disproportionate attention on our fellow black citizens. The United States has a legacy of enslavement followed by forced servitude of its black population. The threat that the political ideals of our country veil an underlying reality of racial democracy is therefore particularly disturbing.

Colloquium: "Friendship's Underbelly: Ethical and Epistemic Considerations"

Sheila Lintott, Associate Professor of Philosophy & Chair, Department of Women's and Gender Studies
Monday, March 3rd @ 4:30PM
   » Willard–Smith Library, Vaughan Literature Building

Abstract: Significant inequalities persist in the United States today despite a multitude of anti-discrimination laws and virtually everyone’s alleged commitment to egalitarianism. Explanations for these obstinate inequities have been sought in the structure of institutions, the culture of organizations, the momentum of power, and even in the possibility of innate “natural” differences among races, genders, and ethnicities. A critical unexamined aspect necessary for a full understanding of the seemingly intractable inequalities that plague the United States is how the personal relationships that ground and shape our lives might contribute to furthering or frustrating the attainment of democratic ideals. In our democratic society, personal relationships like friendship largely escape critical ethical scrutiny.
    Traditional philosophical analysis shows friendship is important largely for the roles it plays in individual lives and for the ethical issues that confront it in that context such as friendship’s apparent unfair privileging: we favor our friends while claiming to believe all people should be treated equally. Personal relationships, friendships in particular, are also important for the social and political roles they play and for the ethical issues they confront as social phenomena. Friendship formation, for example, seems to be guided by myopic and provincial tendencies; in selecting friends as we gravitate too easily to those we perceive as most similar to us, a phenomenon known as homophily (“love of the same”) or in-group preference. When we share our lives, our assets, and our knowledge with our friends, we favor people who share significant aspects of social identity with us. As a result, friendship helps maintain structural inequities, including systems and arrangements that participate in large-scale institutional racism and sexism. In this talk I explore the possibility that friendship plays a mechanistic role in maintaining and reproducing inequality.

Lunch Chat (2/11): Discovering Species

Professor Chris Martine

The next lunch chat will feature Professor Chris Martine from Bucknell's Biology Department, joining us to talk about species. Professor Martine is a botanist recently back from Australia where he co-discovered a new species of "bush tomato" (related to an eggplant) that has some fascinating features.

But what is it to discover a species? What are species and why are they important to science and conservation? How much do we know about what species exist? How many species are out there that we don't know about yet? How important is it to find them?

Join us on Tuesday (note: not our usual Thursdays) at noon in Willard Smith Library to discuss these and other intriguing issues with a working field biologist. As usual, lunch (salad and pizza) will be provided.

Meanwhile, check out Professor Martine's awesome YouTube channel, "Plants are Cool Too!".

Lunch Chat (1/23): Wildspace: The Cage, The Supermax, and the Zoo

Professor Morin

Now that classes are rolling again, we're happy to bring you the first Philosophy Lunch Chat of the term, featuring Karen Morin, Professor of Geography and Associate Dean of Social Sciences, who will guide us through a discussion comparing the "caging" of humans in prisons and animals in zoos. Comparisons between humans confined in maximum-security solitary confinement cells in prisons, and nonhuman animals confined in cages in zoos and other zoo-like structures, offer a number of opportunities to compare the experiences, ethics, and politics of caging. Professor Morin will pose some questions about the similarities and differences across these practices and ask what, if anything, the prisoner rights movement can learn from the animal rights movement, where arguably more progressive change has occurred over the past 40 years on behalf of animals confined in zoos compared with men and women confined in prison cages.

Other questions we might discuss:

• What might be some similarities/differences in the day-to-day experience of being caged for both humans and animals, particularly the psychological/behavioral effects? How do human and non-human animals experience and/or act upon/resist their experience of enclosure? 
• How can we explain the various "disciplinary regimes" or mandates that socially validate the caging of humans and nonhumans? How are these similar for humans and animals, and how different? How have these changed for zoos and prisons over the past 40 years? 
• What have been the ethical/moral, social, political, and/or economical challenges to the caging of animals in zoos, brought about by the animal rights movement? What have been the challenges to the caging of humans in maximum-security solitary confinement, brought about by the prisoner rights movement? How has each of these institutions evolved/ devolved over the past 40 years? 
• If indeed it is the case that more "progress" has been made on behalf of animals in caged in zoos compared with men caged in prisons, to what can we attribute this transformation? Can the prisoner rights movement learn anything from the animal rights movement, or vice versa, with the goal advancing both human rights and animal rights?

Hope you'll join us for pizza, salad, and stimulating informal conversation between faculty, students, staff, and community members in the lovely Willard–Smith Library (Vaughan Literature Building) at noon on Thursday, January 23rd.