Much work has been done in contemporary epistemology to reconcile our epistemic ideals with our human need for healthy relationships with our loved ones. Ryan Preston-Roedder makes an attempt to resolve the tension between these two goals in his paper, “Three Varieties of Faith.” However, his account lacks the clarity necessary to make a thoroughly convincing argument. In this paper, I expand on Preston-Roedder’s ideas, distilling a novel account of epistemic partiality that allows us to maintain epistemic rationality without sacrificing elements of friendship that have a significant impact on our social and emotional well-being.

We operate under norms of evaluating actions as good and bad, right and wrong, or reasonable and unreasonable. What justifies the authority of these norms? Christine Korsgaard takes the constitutivist position and argues that self-constitution, as the standard for what constitutes action, is the source of normativity. David Enoch argues that it is impossible for any constitutivist model to justify normative standards, and that realism is the best solution. In this paper, I demonstrate that the best solution to the tensions Enoch raises is not realism, but an original coherentist-constitutivist model of normativity rooted in Korsgaardian constitutivism.

This paper addresses the problem of racism against Latinx and Black people in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and offers possible solutions. This ethical analysis is necessary because with a dramatic increase in the production of AI, the way we use it is critical in eliminating its current perpetuation of racism. I offer evidence of the current perpetuation of racism through AI by analyzing its use in banking and in law enforcement. I argue that the current way we produce and use AI needs to be seriously reconsidered and reinforce this argument with the use of Rawls’ theories of justice.

This essay aims to construct and demonstrate an analogical inter-disciplinary methodology. Developing the parallels between the God of classical theism and the modern market illustrated by Harvey Cox, I propose that neo-liberalism may be scrutinized as a philosophically understood entity. Debates within philosophy of religion may act as templates of scrutiny against the postmodern deity that is the neo-liberal market system. I aim to exemplify this method through the bedrock theological issue that is the Epicurean Paradox; just as philosophers produce theodicy, I contend that free‑market fundamentalists need advocate laissez-faire in light of socio-economic suffering.

In this essay, I look at two skeptical accounts of empathy that argue against our ability to imagine what it is like to be someone else but present alternative solutions to accomplish the same sort of human understanding. I will demonstrate how these solutions can encompass the imaginative process cattle-equipment-designer Temple Grandin describes undergoing while trying to imagine what it is like to be a cow. I then argue that Grandin’s exercise is a successful imagination of the other and because she uses the approaches described to achieve this, the accounts are not actually skeptical, and policymakers ought to adopt these sorts of practices.

When we mathematically model natural phenomena, there is an assumption concerning how the mathematics relates to the actual phenomenon in question. This assumption is that mathematics represents the world by “mapping on” to it. I argue that this assumption of mapping, or correspondence between mathematics and natural phenomena, breaks down when we ignore the fine grain of our physical concepts. I show that this is a source of trouble for the mapping account of applied mathematics, using the case of Prandtl’s Boundary Layer solution to the Navier-Stokes equations.

Just as math and history classes aim to prepare students to do math and history well, sex education must prepare students to participate in good sex that contributes to their overall flourishing. I reject David Archard’s autonomy-centered view of sex education because it fails to address deeply ingrained social inequalities. I deny Paula McAvoy’s mutuality-centered view of sex education because mutuality and consent are not sufficient for good sex. I draw on Quil Kukla’s work on sexual negotiation and claim that for sex to be good, we must engage in communicative sex that goes beyond consent. Therefore, sex education should not only instruct students how to avoid bad sex, but also enable students to participate in good sex that contributes to their overall flourishing.

This paper applies Hegel’s master-slave dialectic to Fanon’s issue of pseudo-recognition discussed in the essay, “The Negro and Recognition,” as a way of establishing a form of self-consciousness. I begin the paper by arguing that in the Hegelian dialectic establishing a self-consciousness is an essential prerequisite to Fanon’s goal of mutual subject-recognition. I then argue that given the position of black people as slaves within the master-slave dialectic, they are denied the recognition required to attain being in-itself for-itself, which in reality can only be obtained if black people establish self-consciousness on their own terms. I then make the case that this required self-consciousness can only be obtained through struggle, essentially reversing the stages of the dialectic to create a new master/slave relation. In particular, I argue that this moment of struggle provides a moment of proto-recognition which can be used to build a new mutual subject-recognition. I then theorize on what form this new relation must take, making the case that it must be a relation where the categories of master and slave are made irrelevant, and where all subjects are capable of mutual recognition.

Based on the brain in a vat thought experiment, skeptics argue that we cannot have certain knowledge. At the same time, we do have the intuition that we know some things with certainty. A way to justify this intuition is given by semantic contextualists who argue that the word “knows” is context sensitive. However, many have objected to the intelligibility of this claim. In response, another approach called “moderate pragmatic contextualism” was invoked, which claims that “knows” itself is not context sensitive, but knowledge assertions are. I show, however, that to refute skepticism, moderate pragmatic contextualism rests on unjustified and implausible assumptions as well. Since no form of contextualism works as a response to skepticism, I argue that we should simply accept skepticism. However, I argue that skepticism is not a problem because skeptic pragmatic contextualism can offer a plausible explanation of why we have the intuition that our ordinary knowledge claims are true, even though they are not. I conclude that skeptic pragmatic contextualism offers the most plausible response to the brain in a vat thought experiment.

In “Fatalism and Time,” Mark Bernstein argues against the notion that the B-theory of time is fatalistic. However, when he frames the differences between the A-theory of time and the B-theory of time, I argue that Bernstein imports some troublesome conceptual baggage in the form of what he calls “atemporal truths,” which, in the end, dooms the B-theory to fatalism, the consequence he sought to avoid. From my examination of Bernstein’s framing of the B-theory of time, I suggest that, given the proper framing of that theory, it is not doomed to fatalism.

This paper addresses the skeptical paradox highlighted in Saul Kripke’s work Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. The skeptical paradox stands in the way of many attempts to fix meaning in the rule-following of a language. This paper closely assesses the ‘straight solutions’ to this problem with regards to another type of language; mathematics. A conclusion is made that if we cannot sufficiently locate where the meaning lies in a mathematical operation; if we cannot describe how it is that we follow a rule in mathematics, we ought to tread lightly in characterising it as the language of nature.

In this article, I advocate in favor of music as a method of conveying philosophical thought, in the process defending subjective, non-verbal feeling as a component of true philosophical discussion. I first invoke the Kierkegaardian concepts of subjective truth and the musical-erotic to support my position, then show how such a method could be employed through a case study of the Arcade Fire song “Here Comes The Night Time.” Finally, I confront and disarm the potential accusation that this method would over-intellectualize music through excessive interpretation, removing the erotic nature that empowers it.