[FRA:] Need Commentators, Michigan State Graduate Studente Philosophy Conference

[Michael Reno]

Please Forward. We are in need of Graduate Students to comment on the 
following papers at the 7th Annual Michigan State University Graduate 
Student Philosophy Conference, East Lansing, MI, Feb 17th and 18th.

1. Toward an Anthropology of Radical Evil
Kant’s doctrine of radical evil harbors an apparent inconsistency: 
radical evil is both freely chosen and innate. The paper presents an 
anthropological interpretation that attempts to clear away the 
inconsistency. According to such a reading, radical evil is rooted in 
the historical development of the three predispositions to good; by the 
time humanity has come to consciousness of the moral law, radical evil 
has already taken root. The interpretation is significant since it shows 
that the Groundwork (the text most often studied in Anglo-American 
ethics) is importantly incomplete. In the Groundwork, Kant offers a 
theory of rational agency that fails to take into account the unique 
features and predicaments of human agency. Only in Kant’s later writings 
(such as the Religion) does he develop an account of human agency that 
completes, and at times dramatically changes, his views on rational agency.

2. Implicit Consent and Political Legitimacy
Abstract: Central to some theories of the liberal state is a commitment 
to two major ideas. The first idea is that the individuals’ rights to 
their persons and property which the legitimate state protects and 
enforces are pre-existing rights. The second idea is that an 
individual’s rights may be infringed neither on paternalistic nor on 
consequentialist grounds. But if we hold such a particular liberal 
doctrine, it is not initially clear how the very existence of the state 
could be morally permissible. Typically, the state collects taxes and 
monopolizes the provision of justice. But, if indeed people have those 
previous pre-political rights, how could the state permissibly do such 
things? One way in which liberal theories have argued for the legitimacy 
of the state is by means of a principle of implicit consent. Since Hume, 
critics have argued that the ‘price of dissent’ would be too high for 
such a strategy to be successful. Recently, consent theorists have 
replied that the high price involved in not agreeing to do something 
does not need to be a defeating condition of consenting. This paper 
argues that the failure of an implicit consent approach might be more 
fundamental than what this debate seems to suggest.

3. The Skill of Virtue
The revival of virtue ethics has brought the ancient Greek concept of 
‘virtue’ back into ethical discussion. The virtuous person appears to be 
the kind of person one should aspire to be, but problems arise with some 
of the details. Often, descriptions of the virtuous person focus only on 
the end state, and it becomes somewhat mysterious how an average person 
could ever achieve such an idealized state. Accounts of the virtuous 
person have left readers with the impression that the virtuous person is 
an unattainable ideal, a moral fanatic, or just psychologically 
implausible. This paper argues that reviving the ancient Greek idea that 
virtues are like practical skills can help provide a plausible account 
of the virtuous person. This paper updates the skill model by adapting 
the modern account of skill acquisition developed by Hubert and Stuart 
Dreyfus in their research on artificial intelligence and human expertise.

4. On Art, Ontology, and Everyday Things:
Dewey and the future of aesthetic experience
For the last half-century or so, ontological questions concerning what 
the proper definition of art should be have dominated the philosophy of 
art at the expense of any deep considerations of the many ways in which 
individuals value and experience works of art. This essay argues that a 
recovery of some aspects of Dewey’s account of ‘an experience’ as 
presented in Art as Experience provides a necessary, needed, and 
complementary addition to the many contextual definitions of art that 
are currently enjoying widespread popularity in the philosophy of art. 
In particular, Dewey’s account of ‘an experience’ is shown to be 
compatible with George Dickie’s influential ‘Institutional theory of 
art.’ It is argued that Dicke, a vociferous critic of the very idea of 
aesthetic experience, could benefit from some of the evaluative 
components found in Dewey’s account of the identity and function of 
aesthetic experience.

Keynote Speaker Helen Longino

http://www.msu.edu/unit/phl/gradconference/schedule/schedule2006.html

If interested, please email Karen Meagher, meagher6 at msu.edu
so she can get the paper to you.

-- 
Michael Reno
PhD Candidate
renomich at msu.edu

517-353-9380

Department of Philosophy
503 S. Kedzie Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1032