Graduate Student Highlights 2006-2007
MOHAMMED ABED has written
“Philosophy and Genocide”
The Oxford Handbook on Genocide (2008)
Review of “Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide”
Journal of Genocide Studies (2007)
“Clarifying the Concept of Genocide”
Metaphilosophy (2006)
This paper will be reprinted in A. Marsoobian and C. Card, eds., Genocide=s Aftermath: Responsibility and Repair (Blackwell, 2007).
He has also given the following talks:
“Complicity, 'Human Shields,' and the 'War on Terror'”
Central APA (2007)
“Philosophical Arguments for a Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions"
Eastern APA (2006)
“Two Senses of Fairness in Resolving Ethnic Conflict”
Eastern APA (2006)
“The Meaning and Meaningfulness of Terrorism”
Pacific APA (2006)
MADELEINE ARSENEAULT was awarded a UW College of Letters & Sciences Dissertation Fellowship (2005), for her work on Saying What We Do Not Mean: Conversational Implicature and Figures of Speech. She has also published:
“Philosophical Theories of Metaphor”
The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2ed. (Elsevier, 2006).
and has presented the paper
“On Idiom, Ambiguity, and What Is Said”
Pacific APA (2007)
JOEY BALTIMORE has authored an article:
“Got to Have Soul”
Religious Studies (2006)
which was based on an earlier presentation of these ideas at the Wisconsin Philosophical Assocation annual meeting (2006). Joey has also presented “Plantinga’s Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism,” at the Wisconsin Philosophical Association annual meeting (2005).
MATT BARKER has written
“The Empirical Inadequacy of Species Cohesion by Gene Flow”
Philosophy of Science (2007)
and has given the following talks:
“Biology Expands the Modular Mind”
Southern Society for Psychology and Philosophy (2007)
“Mechanism Range and Natural Selection”
International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Science of Biology (2007)
“Flowing Genes and Cohesive Species”
Philosophy of Science Association (2007)
Western Canadian Philosophical Association
“The Empirical Inadequacy of Species Cohesion”
Philosophy of Science Association (2007)
He has also served as a session chair or session organizer for:
“Content in Vision”
Early Content: Intentionality in Visual and Linguistic Perception conference
“Mechanisms and Causation in Ecology and Evolution”
International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Science of Biology
MAVIS BISS presented the following papers:
“Aristotle on Friendship and Self-Knowledge: The Friend Beyond the Mirror”
Kaleidoscope Graduate Student Conference, UW (2007)
“What Difference Does Linguistic Difference Make?”
Kaleidescope Graduate Student Conference, UW (2006)
and is the recipient of a Bonn Sommerkurs Scholarship from the UW Dept. of German, and an academic Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for 2007-8.
TOM DRUCKER has delivered two papers:
“Sous le Drapeau de Platon”
Seminar for History and Philosophy of Mathematics at the Institut Henri Poincare in the University of Paris (2007)
“The Historiography of the Philosophy of Mathematics in the Late Twentieth Century”
American Mathematical Society (2006)
He also published:
Review of 'Modern Algebra and the rise of mathematical structures' by Leo Corry
Bulletin of Symbolic Logic (2007)
Entries on Jon Barwise, Alonzo Church, Ian Hacking, S.C. Kleene, Robert Merton, John von Neumann, and Hermann Weyl
Encyclopedia of American Philosophers (Thoemmes, 2006)
“Probability”
Encyclopedia of British Philosophy (Thoemmes, 2006)
Review of 'It's About Time' by N. David Mermin
Newsletter of the London Mathematical Society (2006)
Review of 'Once Upon Einstein' by Thibault Damour,
Newsletter of the London Mathematical Society (2006)
Review of 'A Mathematical Autobiography' by Saunders MacLane,
Bulletin of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Mathematics (2006)
SARA GAVRELL delivered a paper, “The Problem with Judgments of Non-Compliance: The Case of Drug Use During Pregnancy,” to the Institute for Research in the Humanities, UW (2005). She also won the Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellowship, sponsored by the UW Institute for Research in the Humanities (2005).
CASEY HELGESON is the recipient of a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
FRED HARRINGTON has presented
“The Inadequacy of Contractarian Grounding of Rights,”
34th Annual Conference on Value Inquiry (2007)
and is the recipient of the UW Philosophy Department’s Marcus and Blanche Singer Summer Dissertation Scholarships (2007).
JOHN KOOLAGE was the commentator on two papers:
“Improvability Improved,” by Michael Farnsworth
Midsouth Philosophy Conference (2006)
“Underdetermination and the Argument from Indirect Confirmation,” by Sorin Bangu
Central Division APA (2006)
John is also the recipient of the Philosophy Department’s Marcus and Blanche Singer Summer Scholarship (2007).
MATT KOPEC delivered a paper, “Is There Biological Evidence for Human Races?” at the British Columbia Philosophy Graduate Conference (2007).
BRAD MAJORS is the recipient of a University Dissertation Fellowship (2007) for work on his thesis, “Our Entitlement to Moral Knowledge.” He has recently published:
“Entitlement, Opacity and Connection” (with Sarah Sawyer)
in S. Goldberg (ed.) Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2006)
“Quasi-Naturalism and Moral Reality”
Ratio (2006)
“Recent Work on Moral Explanation”
Philosophy-Compass (2006)
“Moral Discourse and Descriptive Properties”
Philosophical Quarterly (2005)
“The Epistemological Argument for Content Externalism” (with Sarah Sawyer)
Philosophical Perspectives (2005)
“The New Rationalism”
Philosophical Papers (2005)
Brad also gave the following talks:
“New Foundations for Moral Particularism”
Central APA (2007)
“Renouncing Causal Inheritance”
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Greensboro (2005)
and chaired Jonathan Dancy’s Authors-Meets-Critics session at the Central Division APA (2006).
EMILY McRAE is the recipient of a UW Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarship to study Tibetan (2007).
DEBORAH MOWER recently delivered the following talks:
“Empathy and Social Cognition: Models and Sex Differences”
Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2006)
“Something's Rotten in Denmark: Inference to the Best Explanation”
Pacific Division APA (2006)
“Revisiting Harman: Setting Fire to a Can of Worms”
Graduate Philosophy Conference at the University of Iowa (2005)
“Empirical Testing of Simulation Theory and Theory Theory: Practical Reasoning and the Overdetermination of Emotion”
Wisconsin Philosophical Association (2005)
PETER NICHOLS presented the following papers:
“The Problem of Overlapping Conscious Entities”
2006 Central States Philosophical Association Conference
“Questioning Physicalism: Can We Adequately Define 'Physical'?”
Northern Illinois University Graduate Conference (2005)
Comments on Erik Johnson's “On Reaching Closure”
Northern Illinois University Graduate Conference (2005)
and chaired the following APA sessions:
Thomas Sattig’s “Identity in 4D”
Central APA (2007)
Matthew Slater’s “On the Stability of Extrinsic Dispositional Ascription”
Central APA (2005)
GREG NOVACK published:
“Does Evidential Variety Depend on How the Evidence is Described?”
Philosophy of Science (2007)
Greg also presented the following papers:
“Unification and Partition-Variance”
Pacific APA (2006)
“The Variety of a Body of Evidence Depends on How it is Described”
Eastern APA (2006)
“Does Evidential Variety Depend on How the Evidence is Described?”
Philosophy of Science Association (2006)
Greg is also the recipient of a University Dissertation Fellowship (2006).
TASIA PERSSON has written:
“Integrity, Religious Identity and Dirty Hands: evil in Western Religious Treatments of Marriage”
Hypatia (2008)
“Dirty Hands and Autonomy in Evangelical Christian Indoctrination”
P. Caws and S. Jones, eds., The Morality of Religious Indoctrination (2007)
BEN SACHS received an Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize, 2006 APA Pacific Division Annual Meeting, and recently delivered four papers:
“Should we Limit PGD Use to the Avoidance of Severe Disabilities?”
Conference on Value Inquiry, April 2006
“Can There Be Reasons that Don’t Require?”
APA Pacific Division Meeting, Main Program, March 2006
“Is There Any Real Difference Between Error Theory and Relativism?”
APA Central Division Meeting, Main Program, April 2005
“The ‘You’ll Thank Me Later’ Defense of Paternalism”
Conference on Value Inquiry, April 2005
ARMIN SCHULZ delivered the following papers:
“The Pragmatic Rationality of Bayesian Conditionalisation”
International Symposium of the Canadian Society for Epistemology (2007)
“Condorcet and Communitarianism”
Midsouth Philosophy Conference (2006)
Princeton-Rutgers Graduate Philosophy Conference (2006)
University of Illinois Graduate Philosophy Conference (2006)
“Davidson, Thought, and Language: Pitfalls of a Methodology of Philosophy”
University of Western Ontario=s Graduate Conference in Philosophy of Mind, Language, and Cognitive Science (2006)
SHANNON SPAULDING and her co-author, Eric Funkhouser, have published
“Imagination and Other Scripts”
Philosophical Studies (2006)
ERIC STENCIL won the UW Philosophy Department’s Oliver Prize (2006) for the best paper written by a graduate student, for his work "Elizabeth, Interaction and Absurdity”.
JOSH THUROW has published:
“Experientially Defeasible A Priori Justification”
Philosophical Quarterly (2006)
Book review of Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason
Philosophia Christi (2006)
Book review of Andrew Dole and Andrew Chignell, eds. God and the Ethics of Belief
Religious Studies Review (2006)
Book review of Stephen T. Davis, Christian Philosophical Theology
Faith and Philosophy (2007)
Book review of Bede Rundle, Why there is Something rather than Nothing
Religious Studies Review (2007)
Josh gave the following talks:
“The A Priori Defended: A Defense of the Generality Argument”
Central APA (2007)
Rochester Graduate Student Epistemology Conference (2006)
“Universalism and Frozen Worlds”
Metaphysics Without Apology: Themes from the work of E.J. Lowe (2006)
“Fallible a Priori Justification and Semantic Theories of the A Priori”
University of Miami Graduate Student Conference in Epistemology (2006)
“Knowing God a Priori”
A Conference in Honor of Keith E. Yandell, Madison (2005)
Josh also chaired a session at the Central Division APA (2006), on Marc Alspector-Kelly’s “Empiricism as Stance and Empiricism Naturalized”. Josh was a recipient of an APA Graduate Student Travel Stipend.
JOEL VELASCO was awarded a University Dissertation Fellowship (2006), for his work on “The Philosophy of Phylogenetic Inference.”