REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF APRIL 7-8, 2006

The 56th annual meeting of the MPA was held at Ole Miss.

FRIDAY

7:00 KEYNOTE ADDRESS: Eugene Mills, Virginia Commonwealth University, "Searle's Haunted Chinese Room"

SATURDAY

9:00-9:40 Bryan Cwik, University of Arkansas, "Nonconceptual Content and the Bounds of Sense" (student essay contest winner--second place)

9:45-10:25 Dustin Tune, University of Mississippi, "Existential Neutrality and the Partial Quantifier" (student essay contest winner--first place)

10:30-11:10 Jim Shelton, University of Central Arkansas, "A Descriptive-Reference Theory of Proper Names"

11:15-11:55 Morgan Rempel, University of Southern Mississippi, "Nietzsche and Epicurus"

12:00-1:30 PICNIC LUNCH

1:30-1:45 Business meeting

1:45-2:25 Michael Fitzgerald, independent scholar, "Albert of Saxony and Socrates' Missing Finger"

2:30-3:10 Paula Smithka, University of Southern Mississippi, "The Prejudice of Carbonism"

3:15-3:55 Kristen Brown, Millsaps College, "Reading the Presocratics Through the Lens of Emerging Literacy"

4:00-5:00 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS: Kenneth Curry, University of Southern Mississippi, "Arthur Schopenhauer" (not delivered due to program running late--see outline)

ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS

Jim Shelton, "A Descriptive-Reference Theory of Proper Names"

In this paper, I formulate the D-R theory. The theory locates a schema for providing a descriptive meaning of proper names It is expressed: The meaning of a proper name, N, in world w, is a definite descriptive phrase in the form of "The object that was named 'N' in a particular naming situation in world w." This avoids the problems with the reference theory but preserves the significance of the reference theory. These are the problems of the tautologous claims of identity statements using proper names, denial of existence using a proper name, and use of non-referring names. I then show how the D-R theory can answer the objections raised against description theories, the lack of a principle of selection of a description, undesirable ambiguity tht results from multiple descriptive definitions and the unwanted necessity arising from selecting a descriptive definition. The truth behind causal theories is accounted for by showing that causal theories are relevant to the knowledge of the meaning of proper names not to the constitution of the meaning. Finally, I show how the D-R theory preserves rigidity of reference across possible worlds. This is done by the theory connecting naming situations to a particular world. 'Mark Twain' refers to the same individual in every possible world because it is keyed to a naming situation in this world.

Morgan Rempel, "Nietzsche and Epicurus"

Given that there are more than 100 references to Epicurus in the Nietzschean corpus, Nietzsche's attitude toward the Greek philosopher has received relatively little scholarly attention. This paper endeavors to at least partially redress this trend by examining several of Nietzsche's more provocative aphorisms on the topic. Certainly one of the more interesting aspects of Nietzsche's career-long engagement with the figure of Epicurus is its marked ambivalence in general, and with respect to the garden philosopher's relationship to Christianity, in particular. In places, Nietzsche enthusiastically celebrates Epicurus' valuable opposition to "latent Christianity" and insists Epicureanism came tantalizingly close to "winning" its world-historic struggle with Christianity for the hearts and minds of his beloved Roman Empire. Epicureanism, writes Nietzsche, was "the redemption doctrine of the pagan world". Yet alongside such strident contrasting of Epicureanism and Christianity, readers of Nietzsche also encounter passages where these two ancient philosophies are characterized as having a great deal in common (little of it good). Nietzsche accuses Epicurus, Jesus, and the respective movements they inspired of "decadence" and "nihilism", ultimately characterizing both worldviews as suitable primarily for antiquity's weak and suffering. In essence, while Epicurus' teachings have much to recommend them, and appealed to "better minds" than early Christianity did, both movements fall well short of any Nietzschean ideal. By examining the nuances that characterize his contrasting and comparing of these two ancient redemption doctrines, this paper sheds valuable light on Nietzsche's fascinating and ambivalent relationship with one of ancient philosophy's most interesting figures; Epicurus of Sámos.

Michael J. Fitzgerald, "Albert of Saxony and Socrates' Missing Finger"

One of the current debates in contemporary metaphysics is the debate between the 'endurantist' and 'perdurantist' accounts of the persistence of concrete particulars through change. The current debate tends to focus on the perdurantist's Descartes-Minus Argument, which tries to show that the endurantist account runs afoul of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. The perdurantist argument tries to show the endurantist is committed to claiming: Descartes at t-1 is numerically identical with Descartes-Minus at t-1, even though Descartes-Minus is all of Descartes except his left hand and Descartes whole and complete with his left hand at the same time. In this paper, I will argue that Albert of Saxony's 14th century version of an analogous argument, The Socrates' Missing Finger Argument, is both instructive and insightful. I conclude that Albert's response to the 14th century version avoids running afoul of the Indiscernibility of Identicals because he shows that at least one of the premises in that version is false. Extrapolating this result, the contemporary perdurantist Descartes-Minus Argument will also fail because of a false premise.

Paula Smithka, "The Prejudice of Carbonism"

Humans have been guilty of harboring a variety of prejudices: racism, sexism, classism, ethnocentrism, and anthropocentrism. Are humans also guilty of carbonism, the prejudice that life forms can only be carbon-based? If so, then two related issues arise. The first is a not-so-easily-answered biological question: What is life? Or, what counts as a living entity? The second is a normative question concerning the moral and/or legal status of alternative life forms.
With regard to the first, since all life forms as we know them here on Earth are carbon-based, we expect that any life forms found on e.g., Mars, asteroids, Saturn's moon Titan, would also be carbon-based. In fact, we might not even be able to identify a non-carbon based life form as a life-form. (One might recall Star Trek's Horta was a silicon based life form.) Furthermore, there is no agreed upon criteria among scientists for determining life from non-life.
Concerning the second issue: among the vast diversity of carbon life-forms on this planet, only a few are considered to be worthy of moral (and perhaps legal) consideration. Humans have historically occupied this favored place among life forms because we are "rational animals," though recently some moral and/or legal considerations have been extended to some non-human life forms, e.g. certain mammals or endangered species. Could non-human, non-carbon based entities deserve moral and/or legal consideration?
In this essay I investigate the nomological possibility of artificial life and artificial intelligence in relation to traditional human presuppositions about life and moral status, and suggest that humans may beg the question in favor of carbon life and human moral and/or legal worth.

***

In the business meeting, Neil Manson was elected President, Morgan Rempel Vice-President and Program Chair, and Steve Smith Secretary-Treasurer for 2006-2007. Interest was expressed in inviting religion scholars to future meetings accommodating both fields of study; soundings will be taken.

The MPA bank balance was $246.08, again undepleted as Neil Manson worked out special funding for all the meeting's expenses.

All full-time employed philosophers are respectfully asked to pay their $10 dues for the coming year (if they didn't pay at the meeting) to support our program.

Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

RREPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF APRIL 22-23, 2005

The 55th annual meeting of the MPA was held at USM with around 24 attending the Saturday program (Dr. Ruse had a much bigger audience Friday night).

Friday, Michael Ruse (Florida State U.) sketched the history of "The Evolution-Creation Struggle: A Very American Story." The struggle was heightened by a variety of factors: 18th-century rationalism linked to evolutionism while emotional pietism linked to biblical literalism; 19th-century British reformers touted evolution while social conservatives opposed it; the 19th-century American slavery debate reinforced biblical literalism on the pro-slavery side; pre-millennialism and dispensationalism embraced creationism, especially in the influential Scofield Bible of 1909, and laid particular stress on Noah's flood; and the Scopes trial of 1925, after which evolution was suppressed for many years in American school textbooks. The new Intelligent Design thinkers Michael Behe and Phillip Johnson have pre-millenarian ideas and socially conservative concerns also.

Saturday began with Neil Manson's (UM) paper on "Contemporary Design Arguments: An Overview." Bayesian design arguments have problems: (a) the alleged improbability of the "fine-tuned" physical values of our universe can't be demonstrated in a proper probability space in which all the identified probabilities add up to 1; (b) "irreducibly complex" structures that supposedly couldn't have been built without design guidance could have been produced by simplifying changes, as in an arch bridge produced by subtraction of stone; and (c) the alleged improbability of the great assemblage of prerequisites for intelligent life in our world can be countered by appeal to a great number of universes.

Michael Fitzgerald rose heroically to the challenge of finding a 14th-century philosopher of nature in "Conrad of Megenburg and His 'Book of Nature'." An active opponent of "English logic" at the University of Paris--associating Ockhamism with professional vainglory and neglect of ethics--Conrad later wrote an encyclopedic "Book of Nature," the first such book in German. Aristotle's biology had only recently become available in the West and Conrad was one of its first interpreters.

Ken Curry (USM) presented a Curry and Smithka paper, "The Biological Species Understood as a Homeostatic Property Cluster Kind." This is an ontological thesis about species--a posteriori, evolutionary, and explanatory (we can study and make predictions about homeostatic vectors), building on an idea of Boyd's. Speciation involves a breakdown and re-emergence of homeostatic cohesion among properties. The cohesion among a species' properties has horizontal (synchronic) and vertical (diachronic) dimensions. No one property is necessary or sufficient in distinguishing a species.

Patrick Hopkins spoke on "'Naturalizing' Homosexuality: Biology, Sexual Orientation, and the Nature/Culture Distinction." There has been a shift in argumentation: some critics of homosexuality have accepted that homosexual orientation can occur naturally but now conceive it as a pathology, like alcoholism which can also have a genetic predisposition, and argue for correcting it on the basis of a more frankly prescriptive norm of the "natural." An assumption that each bodily organ can be assigned one primary proper function is still influential.

We lunched at Panino's. Excellent manicotti, I found.

Chris Meyers (USM) brought up "Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument and the Use of Introspective Reports in Psychology," examining a study in which descriptions of orgasm were collected to try to determine how similar or different men's and women's experiences are. Despite the prevalence of "tension and release," "tingling," and "pulsating" in the descriptions, the private language argument warns that expressions for private experience as such cannot have genuine meaning because they cannot perform public ostension or follow public rules.

In "Betraying Stories: Trauma and Adaptive Speech in the Writings of Merleau-Ponty," Kristen Brown (Millsaps) used Merleau-Ponty's idea that bodily beings are fundamentally communicative (and that the primary level of communication is bodily) to criticize Judith Herman's account in Trauma and Recovery for wrongly assuming that the linguistic expression of trauma must somehow be representational; instead, trauma-inspired language expresses corporeal desire. There was agreement in discussion that Merleau-Ponty's point is better made without distinguishing "higher" from "lower" life forms.

John Kimble (UM) presented the first-prize student paper, "Sociobiological Accounts of Morality and Religion and Their Problems." Sociobiological explanations of moral and religious beliefs (Richard Dawkins, Pascal Boyer) do not adjudicate their truth. Moral and religious beliefs are not subject to that kind of confirmation or disconfirmation.

Jonathan Miles (UM) argued in the second-prize student paper, "The Possibility of Theistic Science," that although Intelligent Design Theory has so far been more a protest against Darwinism than a research program, a valid theistic science can be practiced so long as supernatural causes aren't invoked where natural causes may be found. It would be well suited to study how design and agent causation occur.

Paula Smithka's (USM) Presidential Address was on "The Biological Species Understood as Parts to a Whole: An Examination of the S-A-I Thesis." The Smithka-Curry view is nominalist-particularist, like the Species-As-Individuals view, but avoids SAI's implausible commitment to considering species members parts of a whole and the species as an ontological subject of possessed properties.

***

In the business meeting, we elected Ken Curry President, Neil Manson Vice-President and Program Chair, and Steve Smith Secretary-Treasurer for 2005-2006. Suggestions for the 2006 meeting should be communicated to Neil Manson.

The MPA bank balance was $158.08, undepleted this year since USM is covering all expenses for the 2005 meeting including the student prizes.

All full-time employed philosophers are respectfully asked to pay their $10 dues for the coming year (if they didn't pay at the meeting) to support our program.

Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF APRIL 2-3, 2004

The 54th annual meeting of the MPA was held at Millsaps with around 15 attending.

On Friday evening, April 2, Paul Churchland (U. of California-San Diego) gave a Dunbar Lecture on "Impossible Colors: How Objective Brain Science Really Can Explain Subjective Experience." The "impossible colors," e.g. a green as dark as black, are opposite-color after-images lying outside the range of colors that can be perceived in the world; they are produced by reactions of opponent cells in the visual cortex. It was suggested that an analogous process can produce gender-identity afterimages: a gender-balanced face looks feminine after we've stared at an intensely male face but masculine after we've stared at an intensely female face.

On Saturday, we first heard the Undergraduate First Prize paper by Angela Thurmond (Millsaps), "Terrorism and Enmity," a critique of the premise that terrorism as such can be an enemy since the justification of violent acts is always relative to combatants' ideologies (e.g. the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act in British eyes but not in the eyes of American revolutionaries). Commentator Wendy Brady (Jones County Junior College) defended the relevance of just war criteria as applied against terrorism.

Mary West (USM) then presented a further development of her assessment of Michael Lynch's account of truth, "A Moderate Approach to Truth: The Relativism of Metaphysical Pluralism." Crucially, Lynch admits the relativity of facts to conceptual schemes and so falls into relativism; instead of resisting this he should embrace it. Realism can be dropped; practical relativism can affirm all needed standards of truth.

Steve Smith (Millsaps) argued in "Appeals and Meaningfulness" that existentially orienting "meaningfulness" as distinct from logically discriminating "meaning" depends on an active relationship between subjects and beings in which beings appeal, i.e. project promises of mutual flourishing, and subjects are thereby given chances to commit somehow to partnerships with beings. This account of meaningful experience is more empirically attuned and open than are the dominant types of positivism, phenomenology, and value theory.

Independent scholar Marvin Vining caught us up on Shroud of Turin issues in "David Hume Encounters the Shroud of Turin." There are Humeanly respectable reasons to think the Shroud image is not a forgery, involving Jerusalem pollen, Roman coins, and Volckringer patterns (acid reaction imprints); those who want to affirm that the image is truly of Jesus should not spoil the natural-cause case by appealing to a miraculous "resurrection energy" as the cause.

For lunch, some of us went to Delhi Palace and there is some reason to think that others went to Keifer's (although it is possible that MPA members in fact ate at Keifer's for reasons other than the reasons I have to think that they did). The talk at Delhi Palace turned to the confrontation between USM President Shelby Thames and the faculty over the dismissals of Frank Glamser and Gary Stringer.

Jonathan Miles (UM) presented the Graduate First Prize paper, "Mostly Rational: Galileo's Telescope and Rational Meta-Criteria in Scientific Theory Choice," a challenge to a Kuhnian or Feyerabendian relativist view of scientific rationality. A key point is that rational criteria transcending the contested paradigms motivated Cardinal Bellarmine to shift in 1611 to accepting Galileo's astronomy. General standards of logic can filter out flawed paradigms; the weight of evidence can motivate assent to a superior paradigm.

Paula Smithka (USM) presented "Bewitched by Language: Conceptual and Ontological Confusions Regarding the Nature of Species." Michael Ghiselin et al. have good reasons for thinking of a species as a grammatical subject, since much can meaningfully be said of a species, but talk of species as individuals is nevertheless systematically misleading insofar as it implies the existence of a logical subject, a particular, that doesn't actually obtain.

Bob Barnard's (UM) Presidential Address was "Rethinking Knowledge" Although it worked within the justified/true/belief framework it was not more Gettier shadowboxing. Knowledge is one end of a continuum, distinguished from various grades of belief by its relative value rather than by an intrinsic subjective quality. It is appropriate to assert (like Kant) that knowledge and truth do in fact obtain, even if a universal set of their sufficient conditions can't be specified. When truth is treated as a multiply realizable functional concept, this is no longer an embarrassment.

***

In the business meeting, these officers were elected for the coming year: Paula Smithka, President; Ken Curry, Vice-President; Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer.
The treasury now holds $50.58 (last year: $77.83).

We read this memorial for Jay Keehley (MSU), who passed away on November 29, 2003, written by Wallace Murphree (MSU):

All full-time employed philosophers are respectfully asked to pay their $10 dues for the coming year to support our program. THIS MEANS YOU ______
Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF APRIL 11-12, 2003

We held the 53rd annual meeting of the MPA at Ole Miss.

On Friday evening, April 11, former Ole Miss philosopher Michael Lynch (Connecticut College) gave our keynote address on "The Value of Truth," arguing that minimalist deflations of truth (cf. Michael Horwich) leave us unable to explain why we prefer the real world to various illusions that would render some of our beliefs irremediably false but without any cost in utility. Discussion revolved around why we hold truth to be an intrinsic value. There are communicative considerations: it must always be possible to question the truthfulness of speakers and claims.

Saturday's program began with Christopher Adair-Toteff's (MSU) paper on "Max Weber's 'Unpleasant Truths'." Adair-Toteff examined the conception of truth involved in Weber's critique of positivism and Romantic rationalism in his 1918 address "Science as a Vocation." In the Comment, Bill Lawhead (UM) argued that Weber's ideal of "value-free" inquiry promotes scholarly voyeurism and arbitrary decisionism.

William S. Larkin (Southern Illinois U.-Edwardsville) addressed "The Authority of Inner Sense," claiming that "a broad perceptual model of introspection is both naturalistically interpretable and adequate to account for first person authority." That certain "privileged introspective judgments" are immune to subjective irrationality is sufficient to ground a good bit of first-person authority. In the Comment, Allan Hillman (UM) called attention to Sydney Shoemaker's argument that problems with the Ordinary Perceptual Model of belief-grounding apply also to the Broad Perceptual Model that includes introspection.

Mary West (USM) read the prize student paper, "Contextual Truth: The Subjectivity of Objective Science," taking a Lynch-influenced pluralist approach to the truth of propositions and data. In the Comment, Tyler Simon (UM) pointed out that if science is the only epistemic game in town it functions in a way, despite its revolutionizability, as an absolute context of truth.

Scott Wilson (UM) argued in "Contractualism, Direct Moral Status, and Animals" that contractualism can grant moral standing to nonhumans even though they are not rational contractors. In the Rawlsian original position, rules are adopted that protect all human beings regardless of their ability (e.g. the retarded as well as the mentally normal); the same sort of agreement should be extended to all sentient beings, as all such would e.g. desire not to be subjected to cruelty. In discussion it was suggested that the contractualist premise can be cut out of this argument entirely if the key point is just that cruelty is bad.

Ken Curry and Paula Smithka (USM) pursued their examination of the biological species concept in "Horizontal and Vertical Dimensions of the Ontology of Species Taxa." Horizontal (morphological) determinations of species membership are contingent while vertical (genealogical) connections are necessary. Horizontal specieshood endures through the time of ordinary observation; vertical specieshood perdures through a longer time exceeding direct observation. Horizontal species identification is burdened with the problems of justifying essence judgments (e.g. how we judge that Descartes is still Descartes after losing a hand); vertical species identification needs an appropriate internal cohesion principle. In discussion it was asked whether we are really forced to accept two different species concepts as opposed to recognizing two dimensions of species.

The Presidential Address by Patrick Hopkins (Millsaps) was "The Truth Can Be Depressing: On Optimism, Falsehood, and Happiness." Psychological research tells us that pessimists see the world more accurately while optimists are happier, thanks in part to illusions about self and world to which they are prone and an explanatory style geared to these illusions. We all took a 10-question test to see if we are pessimists at risk of depression, stable pessimists, flexible optimists, or stark raving optimists who are dangerous to themselves and others. A difficult disjunction is posed: do you want your children to be happy or lucid? One conclusion: after all, truth is only one value among others!

***
In the business meeting next year's officers were elected: Bob Barnard as President; Ted Ammon as Vice-President, contingent on his acceptance (subsequently obtained); and Steve Smith as Secretary-Treasurer. A meeting at Millsaps is anticipated for next spring around the beginning of April. It was suggested that we do more to encourage student involvement in MPA; that we introduce distinct undergraduate and graduate divisions in the student essay contest; that we continue to invite guest speakers and arrange for commentators on papers; and that we reach out to the philosophers of neighboring states.

The balance in the treasury is $77.83, down from last year's $112.85.

Steve Smith made this statement in memory of Millsaps philosopher Bob Bergmark:

 

* * *
Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF MARCH 18-19, 2002

We held the 52nd annual meeting of the MPA in the Leggett Center at Millsaps College, about 23 attending. Ronald Bishop brought a big contingent of Jones County Junior College students.

On the evening of Monday, March 18, Robert Bernasconi (U. of Memphis) gave the annual Dunbar Lecture at Millsaps, entitled "When Race Was Everything: A Philosopher Looks at 19th-Century Anthropology." Eschewing a single explanation for the popularity of Disraeli's proposition that "race is everything"--which apparently means that the constitution of a physically distinctive, true-breeding human group is all-determining of the prospects of human flourishing--Bernasconi examined a sample of race anthropologies offered by Kant and others. Much discussion revolved around the role of slavery in motivating and shaping race-thinking. Some philosophers repaired to the Blues Cafe at 930 Congress after the Dunbar reception.

In our regular program on Tuesday, Bennie Crockett (William Carey) paid tribute to Mortimer Adler (d. 2001) with a paper called "The Ghostbusters Failed this Time: Mortimer J. Adler on Human Nature." Much in the Aristotle-Aquinas tradition, Adler was a stalwart proponent of an immaterially real human intellect, conceived however as a set of powers rather than as a substance. Humanity is unlike all other animal species in its essential potentiality: humans have free will and differ from each other. Crockett concluded that Adler didn't overcome the problems of dualism and didn't acknowledge biological information that tells against his view of human difference. It was noted that Adler's concept of "powers" is not indebted to Whitehead or Locke but is driven by his commitment to freedom.

In "Neither/Nor: Two Absurdities in Kierkegaard Scholarship," Bill Lawhead (UM) offered a kinder, gentler view of Kierkegaard's religious epistemology than is commonly taken. S.K., like Kant, sets a limit to the religious competence of reason, but is not an irrationalist or completely relativist subjectivist: "truth is subjectivity" means only that truth must be subjectively enacted. Nor does S.K. espouse absurdity for its own sake, his point being rather that Christian life is incongruous with life under a different paradigm. A point made in discussion is that S.K. needs the tension of his "paradox," that the paradigm shift he recommends isn't as smooth as e.g. that between Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. How do we tell acceptable from unacceptable paradoxes? Why embrace Christian rather than Buddhist paradox?

Paula Smithka (USM) took up "The Problem With Taxa and Categories: Dispelling the Myth of the A Priori Species," followed by Ken Curry's (USM) "Understanding the Species Concept: Taxa and Categories." Members of species are not parts of wholes in the usual ontological sense. Various cohesion principles determine the referents of species concepts. For clarity, we may call "species taxa" the sets of organisms that are perceived to cohere as groups genotypically and phenotypically. Taxa can change and disappear while the epistemic "species categories" retain fixed sense for purposes of classification. It may be epistemologically necessary that we employ species categories, but their content is not a priori. We must avoid confusion of epistemological and ontological requirements yet be aware that "epistemology gestures at ontology [while] ontology beckons epistemology." In discussion, it was pointed out that the application of "endangered species" policy depends on whether species is conceived as a physical type or as a (breeding) population.

The first-prize student essay by Kamper Floyd (UM) concerned "A Meaningful Self-Concept: Some Possibilities for Kant's Pure Unity of Apperception." Kant ruled out knowledge of a metaphysically substantial self but continued to affirm the connection of an "I" with all meaningful experience. This self develops a character in interaction with the world. A self that has interacted and is interacting richly with other beings is morally preferable to a self formed by poorer interaction. As Arne Naess suggests, an ecologically attuned self may be morally best of all. Self-identifying in relationship with other beings is warranted (the example was given of twin siblings' substantial identification with each other). The objection was brought up that "self" and "identification" are intrinsically problematic points of reference from e.g. a feminist or Buddhist perspective. How are significant Others most appropriately identified?

Sam Bruton (USM) gave his Presidential Address on "Imperfect Obligations and Human Nature" in Kant's ethics. He argued that Kant himself takes a tenable middle way between current Kantian interpretations of imperfect duties that are too rigorous (the duty of beneficence requires constant dedication to serving the welfare of others) and too lax (the duty of beneficence is fulfilled by one day's Habitat for Humanity outing). We must allow for judgment and discretion in the sphere of imperfect duty. Discussion explored the problem of finding standards for such judgment in situations that can't be resolved more directly from the categorical imperative.

***
In the business meeting next year's officers were elected: Patrick Hopkins as President; Bob Barnard as Vice-President, contingent on his acceptance; and Steve Smith as Secretary-Treasurer. We expect to meet at Ole Miss next spring.

Sam Bruton reported that the idea of publishing an MPA-sponsored journal is held up for the time being by the excessive expense involved in supporting an editor on the one editorial proposal that has been offered. Questions about the character and publication mode of the journal are still open. Patrick Hopkins said he is willing to set up an MPA website once he works out his relationship to the Millsaps computer system.

 

The balance in the treasury is $112.85, up from last year's $98.15.
Bill Lawhead offers these observations to mark the passing of long-time Ole Miss philosopher and MPA member Tom Flynn:

* * *
Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.
Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF APRIL 21, 2001

The 51st annual meeting of the MPA was held at Millsaps in Olin 240, about 27 attending.

Shawn Fitzgibbons (UM) presented the first-prize student paper, "The Minimal Theory of Truth and Its Account of Generalization." Paul Horwich contends that our entire understanding of truth is captured by our disposition to accept instantiations of the bare equivalence schema, "<P> is true if and only if P." Can truth be so trivial, though? The point of truth is to allow generalizing, but the minimal theory cannot account for the truth of generalizations by the fallible mind. In discussion it was noted that minimalism's empirical appeal to generalization might create problems for the requirement that truth be closed across entailment and for bivalence.

Steve Smith (Millsaps) suggested that "Three Appeal Arguments in Philosophy after Kant"--the value-philosophy of Rickert, Buber's philosophy of I-You relation, and Heidegger's phenomenological ontology--rework the Kantian motif of a supreme appeal of reason in instructively conflicting yet complementary ways, aiming our appeal-responsiveness toward (respectively) future possibility, presently constituting actuality, and already-constituted reality. Each argument risks theoretical "strangeness" for the sake of responding adequately to exterior-ity, but (Smith maintained) they do not violate limits of language or philosophy in doing this.

At the mid-morning break, Vice-President Bruton displayed the new Addresses of the MPA volume published by Rodopi and expressed appreciation to its editor, Bennie Crockett. Dr. Crockett was called elsewhere by his children's soccer fortunes but saluted the MPA in a written statement read by Dr. Bruton.

To celebrate the 100th year of the APA, Gerald Gaus (Tulane University) was invited with support from USM and Millsaps to address "Taking the Bad with the Good: Some Misplaced Worries about Retributivism." Gaus defended the notion that punishment, as harmful, can right a wrong by relocating our worries about punishment to the principle of desert. If it's mysterious how punishment can "square away" a situation, it's mysterious for reward as well; if punishments are hard to justify because they're not beneficial, rewards aren't necessarily beneficial either (as "Behind the Music" proves on VH1). In discussion, Gaus suggested that how to apply the desert principle (e.g., whether to groups as well as to individuals) will depend on one's political philosophy, and that a better political philosophy is one that will be harder to use for obviously bad ends.

In "Trauma and Speech in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception," Kristen Brown (Millsaps) argued that appropriate foundations for the interpretation of trauma experience (as by Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery) will be found in Merleau-Ponty's account of mind-body-world relations, which admits indeterminacies and permeable boundaries, and in Elaine Scarry's account in The Body in Pain of the dependence of consciousness on articulation (revealed negatively in the squelching of articulation by torture). It was asked whether any account centered in a subject's experience reinforces a commitment to ego-domination.

We went to Keifer's for lunch, where we were presented with one bill for $140. Reimbursements of the bill-payer were sufficiently generous that $19 extra went into the MPA treasury. If we went to lunch more often we could accomplish anything.

***
In our business meeting, we elected Sam Bruton President, Patrick Hopkins Vice-President, and Steve Smith Secretary-Treasurer and agreed to meet again at Millsaps next year.

The officers reported that Tommy Blanton's proposal to start a journal with MPA sponsorship has gone through a round of discussion and is still on the table. A sticking point appears to be finding an academic person to take on the main editorial work. Anyone who wants to know more about the proposal or who wants to help realize the journal may contact any of the officers or Mr. Blanton. (See the enclosed letter on this subject from Sam Bruton.)

Two suggestions were made for future programs: that former students and colleagues who moved out of state but are still philosophically active be invited back to share their current work, and that more time be allowed for discussion of papers.

The balance in the treasury is $98.15, up from last year's $23.92.

***
In the afternoon, Ken Curry (Biology, USM) and Paula Smithka (USM) made a joint presentation on the concept of species. In "The Species Crisis in Biology: Some Recent Views Concerning the Nature of Species," Curry argued that a robust concept must reconcile morphological similarity and traceable descent as bases of species identification and must accommodate our growing understanding of how various factors work in evolution. We may come to see species as byproducts of evolution rather than as "units of evolution." Smithka's paper, "Ontological and Epistemological Concerns Regarding Species: Are They Kinds or Individuals?" offered a non-relativist, minimalist, functionalist theory of species as kinds (they just don't seem like individuals) inspired by Michael Lynch's theory of truth in Truth in Context. The thin universal meaning of species is "a set of organisms whose lineages are grounded in evolution"; this meaning is multiply realizable depending on which questions are being asked (e.g. in cladistics, in genetics, in field biology). In discussion, it was objected that "functional-ism" is concerned with the multiple realizability of a substantively interesting factor (like full-fledged mind in brain or in machine) as opposed to a minimal commonality among contexts.

Yolanda Estes' (MSU) Presidential Address was on the theme "Why Fichte Now? Reflections on the Vocation of a Scholar in Mississippi." Fichte asserted in a 1794 lecture course that the vocation of scholars is grounded in the vocation of all humanity to actualize freedom and attain truth. This ideal must be pursued by endless approximation and in social collaboration. Scholars' role is to help all human beings develop knowledge both a priori and a posteriori. Whether or not their activity seems to be rewarding, it is their duty; thus, we who are scholars today shouldn't be too much discouraged by lack of public understanding and support for education. In discussion, Estes distinguished those who misrepresent philosophy (who are indeed worthy of censure) from those who seriously problematize philosophy from within.

Patrick Hopkins (Millsaps) added a twist to a Nozickian thought-experiment in "On the Value of Simulated Worlds and Experience Machines." Nozickians, i.e. those who would refuse to be put in an Experience Machine (EM) that would give them all the experiences they want, would only be unhappy in an EM if they believed themselves to be in an EM; what they need, therefore, is to believe they're in a real world. If the EM's simulation can in fact satisfy them by giving them this belief also, why should they object to the EM? It was pointed out in discussion that Nozick puts ethical weight on what we desire as opposed to what makes us happy. Also it was asked how the ethical issues in a scenario of brainwashing (which can be remedied by con-sciousness-raising, e.g. that of feminism vis-à-vis patriarchal culture) differ from those of EM.

* * *
Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

Report on the Mississippi Philosophical Association meeting of May 6, 2000

The 50th annual meeting of the MPA was held at Mississippi State University in the Women's Studies center.

Paula Smithka (USM) began the program with her presidential address on "The Tension Between the Desire for Ethnic Self-Determination and the Quest for Global Community." Reviewing the debate between liberals and communitarians on the relation of individually and communally defined goods, she affirmed that ethnic groups stand to nations as individuals stand to communities and should analogously have the autonomy that liberalism demands for individuals. In discussion, she did not rule out the possibility that ethnic groups might rightfully secede from the U.S., although she suggested that the U.S. can and should avoid such a scenario by continuing to thrive on pluralism and voluntary allegiance.

Arnold Farr (St. Joseph's University) gave an invited address, "Between Rights and Recognition: Reconciliation and the Hope for Democracy." Farr argued that the unfinished, unclosable democratic project requires attention to the inequalities of "social capital" that make some citizens less able than others to get the benefit of formally equal rights. Habermas' proceduralist model of justice, conceiving rights as relational, responds to this problem helpfully, but so does Derrida's "cracking of all nutshells," i.e. his deconstruction of all rational validity claims (a project Habermas sees as nihilistic).

In "Ethical Philosophy of History: Two Views," Sandy Zale and Steve Smith (both of Millsaps) clashed on the merit of Enlightenment historical thinking as represented by Voltaire, Gibbon, Hume, and Herder. For Zale, sympathizing with these figures, historical study is best conceived as a cultivation of impartial moral judgment through exposure to examples of praiseworthy and blameworthy character. Smith found this view misleadingly individualistic and unworldly, like its Hellenistic antecedents, and called for a redirection of ethical attention in history to larger collective actions. The problem was raised of how to justify history against other community-shaping narratives, such as political myth and interruptive genealogy. Zale admitted that impartiality is never perfected but must be an ongoing collective pursuit.

Sam Bruton (USM) spoke on "Kant, Toleration, and the Social Contract," exploring Kant's approach to public reason and the justification of the state. Kant opposes a direct-democracy conception of collective reason. He looks more to natural law than to contract as the basis of government; but legislators must apply the heuristic test of an ideal consent by all citizens, which is best fostered by "freedom of the pen" (short of attacking the constitution). Violent revolution cannot be justified because it violates rights. Yet what reason requires is never settled once for all. Kant could support "passive resistance" as seen in the civil rights movement.

We lunched at the MSU cafeteria.

Larry Chappell (Mississippi Valley State U.) presented a paper he wrote with Bernard Bray, "On Teaching Liberal Citizens: Power, Ethics, and Theater in the Classroom." This was both a critique and defense of public standards of reasonableness. Reasonableness does need to be imposed on civil discourse, but it is not the same as empathetic communication and cannot adjudicate conceptions of the good life. To function well in a liberal society, citizens must learn "theatricality"--in the sense not of emoting but rather of understanding and constructively managing the differences between one's self, one's roles, and others. A liberal way of life is not the same as a deep pluralism of radically self-determining individuals. Though overdone, liberalism is better than alternatives.

In "Rearing the Citizen: Conflicts Familial and Social in Neill's Summerhill and McEwan's The Child in Time," Melanie Eckford-Prossor (MSU) reviewed strategies for shaping the loyalties of children. Neill and novelist McEwan were both critical of an "authorized child care handbook" calculated to make children politically and economically docile. Neill's Summerhill school let children rule themselves. In managing and defending Summerhill, however, Neill used virtually coercive arguments that put his students in the same position as citizens required to be loyal to their country. Lockean children learn freedom by assuming responsibility, whereas on Neill's model children find their way to responsibility through exercising their freedom. It was pointed out in discussion that Neill put individual happiness ahead of social "progress."

Wallace Murphree (MSU) analyzed a phenomenon of "intellectual kidnapping" in "Evangelizing Children: Breaking the Cycle of Dogmatic Belief Systems." Children may be convinced that it is their duty not merely to hold particular religious beliefs but to hold them exclusivistically (= believing that no other beliefs can be true) and dogmatically (= believing ethically that one is obligated to accept one's beliefs unconditionally). To ask such persons to question their religious beliefs is thus to invite them to sin. Their better nature has been enlisted in the defense of dogma against all possible threats. The best philosophical strategy for approaching such persons is to distinguish their extracreedal ethical belief from their creedal belief and challenge the former first. There is a similar syndrome with beliefs about race, sex roles, etc.

Jay Keehley (MSU) brought us news from the real world, in which large amounts of money flow fitfully through institutional review boards, in "The Old Way: Parents Consent, Children Assent. The New Way: It's a Family Thing." A study questionnaire approved at VCU was found to ask subjects for sensitive information about their family members without the latter's consent. Now consent requirements will be more rigorous. Sample questions from questionnaires will have to be included on consent forms. There is also less latitude now for researchers to fool their subjects as part of a study. Schizophrenics remain peculiarly difficult subjects of consent.

Andrea Zale (USM) delivered the prize student essay, "Theories are not Semantic Constructions within a Deductive Nomological System." She reviewed the relative merits of Popper's view of scientific theories (linguistic, non-verifiable) and the view of Aronson, Harré, and Way in Realism Rescued (less language- and more thing-oriented). AH&W's view better matches the practice of scientists. They stress that the laws of nature don't change as language does and aren't subject to language's limitations (cf. complementarity in subatomic physics). They express the cognitive content of science in terms of "types" rather than propositions; "types" are not defined but apparently are possibilities of physical ostension. In discussion, some thought that AH&W's view couldn't account adequately for the power of a scientific theory to generate predictions.

In Lynn Holt's (MSU) view of "Two Rival Versions of Objectivity," the modern emphasis on method and detachment has unfortunately displaced the ancient appreciation of the role of such virtues as honesty, fortitude, and imaginativeness in acquiring objective knowledge. Methodism is good for raising the performance of the lowest, but the rules that can be followed equally by novice and expert alike tend to be empty (e.g. "buy low and sell high"). Objectivity, not to be confused with standardness, is what serves to get the knowing subject to the object. It was asked whether making the needed specification of the cultural contexts of recommended virtues would weaken the general epistemological case for virtue; it was replied that it wouldn't.

Business Meeting

Secretary-Treasurer Smith reported a balance of $23.92--or would have, if a figure had been asked for. Officers elected for 2000-2001 were Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer; Sam Bruton, Vice-President/ Program Chair; and Yolanda Estes, President. We plan to meet in the spring of 2001 at Millsaps.

Tommy Blanton brought a proposal for MPA sponsorship of a new interdisciplinary journal. The envisioned journal could publish MPA proceedings as well as invited and other papers on themes of broad and current interest. It could be published semiannually or more often. Mr. Blanton offers to take care of the initial funding for it. By a vote, the current officers were charged to explore what is involved in setting up such a journal and the prospects for MPA members sharing in the editorial work.

NEWS

MPA volume about to appear in Rodopi's "History and Addresses of Philosophical Societies" Series. Bennie Crockett reports: "(1) Richard Hull, editor of HAPS, has approved the entire book. (2) After his approval I constructed the 20 page index, and he then approved it as well. (3) Robert Ginsberg, editor of the Value Inquiry Book Series of which HAPS is one part, has approved the entire book, except for the index. After his approval of the index, the book will be sent to Amsterdam for printing. (4) I expect Ginsberg's approval and sending of the book prior to June 1. "I want to thank all MPA members for their patience and kind assistance as I have edited this collection. My understanding is that contributors will receive a copy of the book when it is released. Specific questions may be addressed to me by e-mail or phone."

Bill Lawhead's new introductory text published by Mayfield. The Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach consists of a discussion of the main topics in philosophy along with short readings. What makes the book unique is the wealth of interactive exercises throughout. Each topic is introduced with a thought-provoking story or essay. After initially surveying the issue in question and the array of positions on it, a questionnaire is provided in which the student is asked to agree or disagree with a number of philosophical claims relevant to the topic. An answer key informs the students of the philosophical label associated with their answers (e.g. empiricism, hard determinism, mind-body dualism, fideism, ethical relativism, etc.). The answer key also points out possible inconsistencies in their answers. Thus, before getting into a detailed examination of each position, the students are made to realize that they are not merely spectators, watching the moves of the great minds, but they are actually players down on the field. The book also includes a number of exercises called "Philosophy in the Marketplace" in which students are asked to play Socrates by asking questions of their friends outside of class (e.g., Will science some day be able to explain us completely?) The responses they gather provide rich material for classroom discussions and opportunities for the students to engage in philosophical evaluation. At the end of each chapter is a "Looking through X's Lens" in which students are asked to apply a particular philosopher's insights to a novel situation to enhance their understanding of the position. other exercises which call for the student to provide a response or take a stand include abundant thought experiments and questions on the readings. For more information and for ordering an examination copy, see Mayfield's web site for the book at www.mayfieldpub.com/ lawhead/index.htm.

Steve Smith's musical comedy, REAL LIFE, THE IDEA produced as a CD. New philosophy Ph.D. Creighton Malone thinks a college is the place to be. Can he hang on at Southeast West Virginia College once the President resolves to cut his position? Can he expect the students in his first class to understand the question, "What is a class?" Will senior business major Elizabeth Dalton take over the family chicken business and satisfy her ethical scruples? Will she and her friends manage to graduate? Does anyone know the whereabouts of real life?

Song lyrics are posted at home.millsaps.edu/~smithsg. You can sample a track, "Real Work," on the Assemblers' page on www.mp3.com. You can order a CD from Smith for the special MPA price of $10 plus $2 for shipping.

* * *
Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

This means you: _______

Also, please make sure your listing on the enclosed Directory is accurate, and help me weed out the listings that no longer belong (to save on mailing costs).

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF MARCH 19-20, 1999

The 49th annual meeting of the MPA was held at the University of Southern Mississippi. It began Friday with a discussion by Peter Klein (Rutgers U.) of "Evil Geniuses, Skepticism, and Other Problems for Knowledge" and a public lecture on "The Failures of Dogmatism." It continued Saturday with a full slate of presentations by Mississippi philosophers to an audience of nearly 40.

Leslie Frazier (USM) won the second prize in the student paper competition with "Schematism in the Internalist/Externalist Debate." Robert McMillin (USM) read his first-prize paper, "An Epistemologist's Pipe Dream." According to McMillin, defeasibility theories have responded to Gettier problems in a misleading way, raising the epistemic justification standard too high. Instead, contextual subjective justification should be the key. It was asserted in discussion that adding a fourth condition to justified true belief to guard against Gettier problems provides for something other than "justification."

Lynn Holt (MSU), in "Metaphor, History, Consciousness: From Locke to Dennett," argued that Dennett has actually not introduced a new metaphor of "text" ("multiple drafts") to oppose to the "Cartesian theater" metaphor for consciousness but rather has revived a way of figuring consciousness used by Locke and more pointedly by Locke's critics, who worried about the unreliability of a narratively self-unifying consciousness. Dennett has only partially recognized the role of metaphor in philosophy and the historical and literary dimensions of consciousness. But his emphasis on content is right--at least, a conception of consciousness without content is wrong.

With help from Calvin and Hobbes, Katarzyna Paprzycka (USM) exposed "The False Consciousness of Intentional Psychology" by reviewing cases in which the agent's own belief and desire are not (as "explanatory individualism" would hold) the relevant causes of an action. E.g., when I am asked to pass the salt I pass it due to a habit of compliance. But individualism is important normatively, when we call on people to act for reasons. Another example of false consciousness: a counselor tells an abused wife that "she must be getting something out of" her relationship with her husband.

David Holley (USM) argued in "Rational Choice and Self-Transformation" that, on the one hand, important moral choices are made with an eye toward living the best kind of life as a whole, but that, on the other hand, we sometimes can't tell how our criteria of self-assessment will change as a consequence of choices we make. Rita of Educating Rita was a main example. Although Rita talks of "discovering herself," Holley resisted the interpretation of her odyssey as a recovery of a preexisting or constant "real self."

We lunched and held our business meeting at the Crescent City Grill. Complaining of a low dues collection in the last year, Secretary-Treasurer Smith reported a balance of $78.27. Officers elected for 1999-2000 were Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer; Yolanda Estes, Vice-President/ Program Chair; and Paula Smithka, President. The idea is that we'd meet in 2000 at Mississippi State. Bennie Crockett reported that he is on the verge of sending in the final set of papers for the HAPS MPA volume.

Our program resumed with "Transtrying and Transworth" by Steve Smith (Millsaps). Trying, a normal part of doing, is presupposed in crediting an agent's actions with worth. To be beyond the uncertainty and pain of trying, however, is a morally desirable, transworthy goal, a "blessing." Serenity and passion are two modes of transtrying, the former harmonizing individual effort with external occurrences, the latter embedding individual effort in a greater energy and urgency, an "inspiration." Questions were raised about how transworth can motivate agents and about heroes (as worth types) in relation to saints (as transworth types).

In "Kant's Apparent Argument for the Value of Humanity," Samuel Bruton (USM) discussed problems with a key premise of the "Treat humanity always as an end" formulation of the categorical imperative, namely that humans necessarily conceive their own existence as an end in itself. Ambitious interpretations of humanity as the condition of all goodness (Korsgard) or end-setting (Wood) were found unconvincing; a "thinner" approach, appealing just to the morally legislating will in humanity, was recommended.

Yolanda Estes (MSU) reviewed "Fichte's Attack on Dogmatism, Skepticism, and Agnosticism within the Context of the Atheismusstreit." Though he was viciously attacked for his supposed atheism, Fichte saw his transcendental idealism as the defense of genuine religious faith, ultimately warranted against materialist and theological dogmatisms by a pre-philosophical recognition of the moral law, freedom and autonomy. Discussion probed the practical reasons that could be given for Fichte's position and the idealist despair of not being able to fulfill one's moral calling.

John Nau (USM) rose at this point to reflect on his long career of inviting people to examine their lives and encouraged us to maintain our dedication to philosophy.

Kristen Brown (Millsaps) gave the Presidential Address on "Logos, Contradiction, and First Principles: Aristotle's Expressions of Form in Politics and Metaphysics Z and I." Retrieving a less-noticed side of Aristotle's logic in Topics according to which the being of the form of humans is known differently as said in different circumstances of discourse, Brown argued that Aristotle's different expressions of the principle of form in Politics and Metaphysics needn't be contradictory. Does this interpretation of Aristotle make him as much of a contextual relativist as the later Wittgenstein? No, especially when we remember his commitment to nous.
* * *
Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

This means you: _______

Also, please make sure your listing on the enclosed Directory is accurate, and help me weed out the listings that no longer belong.

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF MARCH 31, 1998

We held our 48th annual meeting at Millsaps College, with ca. 30 persons attending at least in part. Robert Solomon (U. of Texas-Austin) delivered the 1998 Dunbar Lecture at Millsaps on Monday evening, March 30, on "Nietzsche and the Passionate Life."

First thing Tuesday morning, Laura Angstadt (USM alumnus) presented the first-prize student paper, "Impure vs. Pure Philosophy of Language: A Comparison of Verificationism and Constructivism," in which she argued that Rorty's linguistic constructivism lands him in unacceptable relativism and thus is no better, or perhaps is worse, than Ayer's principle of verifiability which mixes metaphysical epistemology with a theory of how language works.

Then Thomas Gardner (Purdue U.) examined "Frege's Apparently Inconsistent Triad" of three doctrines: (1) Every sense is an object. (2) Some senses are "unsaturated"--e.g. in a function like "( ) + ( )". (3) No object is unsaturated. The recommended solution is to distinguish functions (unsaturated senses) from objects, thus dropping (1)--which isn't strongly supported in Frege's writings anyway--and to be careful not to speak of "the sense of 'A'" when "A" is a function.

"Widgets and Bugs: Positivism Vindicated" by Jay Keehley (MSU) turned out to be about Y2K, that is, the year-date 2000 as a computer programming problem, and the applicability of Richard Posner's "wealth maximization" theory of tort liability to the impending wave of claims that computerized enterprises haven't done enough to avert loss. In what sense is positivism vindicated? In these humiliating Y2K discussions the logic of a formal system has got the "human element," the knowing subject, utterly in its power.

In "Can There Be a Naturalistic Epistemology?," Mark Bross (SUNY-Buffalo) argued as a "weak naturalist" that valid patterns of inference must be considered together with reliable causal histories of belief formation in justifying knowledge claims. A clair-voyant might have a reliable belief formation process yet lack epistemic justification for lack of valid inferring. Questions raised: How does the internalism/externalism debate (about the need for a higher-level criterion) relate to the naturalism debate (about normative meaning supervening on non-normative fact)? Why not be a strong naturalist and shrug off counterintuitive results in non-central cases?

We lunched densely at two tables at Kiefer's and had a very fast business meeting. Bennie Crockett reported that the MPA history volume is on track to be delivered by the publisher's deadline this summer. Secretary-Treasurer Smith reported a balance of $129.36. Officers elected for 1998-1999 were Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer; Paula Smithka, Vice-President/Program Chair; and Kristen Brown, President. Our USM colleagues volunteered to host next year's meeting, presumably around the same time of spring we've been meeting of late.

Ted Ammon being laid waste by sickness, our only paper after lunch was the Presidential address by John Meadors (Mississippi College) on "The Cultivation of Virtue." In a "nesting bowls" model of three contexts of virtue, Meadors drew on Plato's Protagoras to consider political factors, Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue for socially sustained "practices," and Charles Taylor's account of personal moral authenticity as articulated through "strong evaluations," emphasizing nevertheless that the actuality of virtue is somewhat mysterious. This came out more strongly in dealing with questions about a person who might be expert in a practice (e.g. an ace surgeon) but utterly misanthropic, hypocrites, and persons who have been morally indoctrinated.

* * *

Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

Please make sure your listing on the enclosed Directory is accurate.

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer

 

REPORT ON THE MISSISSIPPI PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION MEETING OF MARCH 29, 1997

Our 47th annual meeting was hosted by Mississippi College. 18 attended.

Nathan Segars (UM) presented the first-prize student paper, "How Bipartisan is Foundherentism?," a critique of Susan Haack's attempt to balance the strengths of foundationalism and coherentism. According to Segars, Haack tilts toward foundationalism in granting experiential evidence a privileged justifying role under some circumstances. Although she does not reach her goal, she performs a valuable service in keeping epistemology going. Questioning circled around the problem case of determining the meaning of a term that appears only once in a text.

David Holley (USM) reviewed possible justifications of "Breaking the Rules When Others Do" on grounds of self-defense, avoiding disproportionate sacrifice of self-interest, and acknowledging that a stated rule is not actually in force. The measure-ment and interpretation demands made by such arguments are difficult to satisfy. Still, the real meaning of moral policies is always specified by concrete expectations people have of each other. We discussed how moral trust is gained and lost and how moral rules are distinguished from non-moral customs.

Coming to parry Kuhn, not to raze him, and giving no quarter for a paradigms, Dennis Rohatyn (U. of San Diego) addressed "The Revolution in Revolutions." Ironies: in reviewing the history of scientific worldviews, Kuhn translated between them, which he claimed couldn't be done ("incommensurability"); in applying scientific method to the understanding of science itself, he was a conservative; the Kuhnian revolution "transcends transcendence," puncturing the overinflated ideal of a "revolution." Agreeing with Kuhn, Rohatyn appealed to firm criteria like simplicity, consistency, and heuristic power in answering a challenge to science's validity.

In "Subject Formation, Taste and the Other: Opening Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals to Feminine Body," Kristen Brown (Millsaps) used the metaphor of curry (the somewhat indeterminately relation-al cooking agent) to suggest how within Nietzsche's dynamic monism we might find our way toward a less abstract, less woman-estranged corporeality than Nietzsche's text explicitly allows. Various questions about Nietzsche's relation to feminism ensued; perhaps the deepest issue had to do with the risk of gender-essentializing that is run by a more concretely bodily account of the subject.

We repaired for lunch to Penn's Fish House and shrewdly held our business meeting while things were frying. Secretary-Treasurer S. Smith reported a balance of $115.26 after a high dues collection and deceptively low expenses for the year. Officers elected for 1997-1998 were Steve Smith, Secretary-Treasurer; Kristen Brown, Vice- President/Program Chair; and John Meadors, President. Next year's meeting will be at Millsaps College on a weekend, preferably not that of Easter, to be determined by the officers.

Our program continued with Paula Smithka's paper, "Integration Therapy for Patients with Multiple Personality Disorder: Does This Therapy Kill Persons?" Yes, the elimination of "personalities" does kill a "person," on a Cartesian or Lockean understanding of "person," inasmuch as the survival of the bodily "individual" is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal survival. Only materialists can accept integration therapy on the grounds that organisms naturally strive for integration. The problem of multiple personalities hampering an individual's functioning can be addressed by a scheme of cooperation among the personalities (as in the Trudy Chase case). Questioners wondered whether Buddhist meditation wherein "selfhood" is undone constitutes a "killing" similar to the elimination of personalities, and whether some personalities might be justified in trying to eliminate others in self-defense.

Bennie Crockett (William Carey) discussed "Some Epistemological Problems with Historical Claims." A Cartesian positivist approach to historical truth founders on uncertainty about historical sources. In any case, a historical assertion is always relative to a certain perspective of interest. "What happened in 1776?" is answerable only on the basis of a certain selection of things to consider. Are all perspectives equal? No, there are constraints in the data. How are disputes over historical truth resolved? Only by additional perspectives.

Bill Yount's Presidential address concerned "The Literary-Political Philosophy of Leo Strauss: A Review and Critique." Strauss argued that key philosophers realized that truth cannot be directly presented to the public without harming society; therefore, they wrote esoterically, indicating their true beliefs to fellow philosophers by planting contradictions, ambiguities, and misdirections in their texts. Philosophy, oriented to the "natural," is bound to conflict with religion, "conventional." Strauss agrees with the Genesis story of opposition between human curiosity and divine authority and sees Eve as the first philosopher. Is there any safeguard against obscurantism in the Straussian reading between the philosophers' lines? Perhaps yes, if all these readings converge on a perennial wisdom regarding the natural superiority of the rationally strong. But perhaps Straussian reading can establish different messages case by case.

* * *

Full-time employed philosophers (those who didn't pay at the meeting) are urged to send in their annual dues of $10.

Respectfully submitted, Steven G. Smith, Secretary-Treasurer