Ohio State Philosophy

The Philosophy Department is pleased to welcome six new students to our graduate program. Jordan Brown, Steve Chan, Robert Laurent, Liz Rozenberg, Eli Schantz, and Mingyan Yang have a variety of philosophical interests and ambitions. https://philosophy.osu.edu/news/incoming-graduate-student-class-2024

Ali Aenehzodaee has successfully defended his dissertation, "On Fictional Names, Linguistic Pretense, and Imaginative Resistance." His Advisor was Stewart Shapiro.

Ali’s dissertation addresses three central puzzling issues broached by our fictional talk and thought: the semantics of fictional names, the nature of the speech acts deployed in storytelling, and the so-called puzzle of imaginative resistance. It defends three claims: that fictional names have the underlying semantics of predicates; that fictional utterances can constitute genuine assertions; and that readers confront imaginative resistance when they find the offending fictional assertions inexplicable.

If the fall, Ali will begin a tenure track position at Harper College.

Congratulations Ali!

Abe Wang has successfully defended his dissertation, "Pragmatism as a Theory of Normativity: Three Revisionary Projects." His Advisor was Robert Kraut.

Guided by the pragmatist methodology, the dissertation explicates and defends several revisionary proposals on some of our normative practices: that we should stop following the truth norm, that we should stop viewing meaning as dictating the use of concepts, and that we should abandon morality.

Congratulations Abe!

Philosophy and Critical Thinking (PACT) summer camp, hosted by the Department of Philosophy and Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) student organization, welcomed its seventh year of participants for two sessions in mid-June. High school students attended from Central Ohio, Cincinnati, and Cleveland as well as from Arkansas, California, Connecticut, and New Jersey. PACT ran two different themes for the first time this year: Philosophy and Artificial Intelligence; and Science, Faith and Reality. https://philosophy.osu.edu/news/pact-offers-new-and-old-camp-themes-inquisitive-high-school-students-2024

Zoe Ashton has successfully defended her dissertation, "A Social Epistemological Approach to Mathematical Rigor." Her advisor was Stewart Shapiro.

Zoe's dissertation concerns the nature of mathematical rigor. She argues that the standard view of rigor based on formalizability fails to make sense of mathematical practice. She developed a social account of rigor motivated by the tagline "a proof is what convinces." She also uses her account to explore instances of epistemic injustice relating to rigor evaluations.

Congratulations to Professor Dawn Starr, senior lecturer in philosophy at The Ohio State University at Lima for receiving the Provost's Award for Distinguished Teaching! This is Ohio State's most prestigious recognition for teaching. https://oaa.osu.edu/starr-receive-provost%E2%80%99s-award-distinguished-teaching-lecturer

Pranav Ambardekar successfully defended his dissertation “The Epistemology of Reflection” with Declan Smithies as his advisor. In his dissertation, Pranav argues for a moderate position on the significance of reflection in the epistemological enterprise. One of the chapters of his dissertation, entitled 'On the Epistemic Value of Reflection' has been accepted for publication and is forthcoming in Ergo.

In the fall, Pranav will join the Department of Philosophy and Critical Thinking at FLAME University in Pune, India as an Assistant Professor.

Congratulations Pranav!

Congratulations to Owain Griffin for receiving the Fink Award! This prize is awarded in recognition of an outstanding graduate student essay for original, sustained philosophical argument and the quality and polish in ex*****on found in leading scholarly journals. The prize comes with a $1000 award. Well done, Owain!

Congratulations to Cameron Green for receiving the 2024 Bingham Award! This prize is designed to recognize undergraduate excellence in Philosophy, and is awarded on the basis of a student essay written during the previous year. The prize comes with $750 and a medal. Congrats, Cameron!

We are excited to announce the first issue of “Joining Worlds, Breaking Barriers”: a collection of works from the Philosophy for Humans (P4H) Learning Community. P4H is part of our partnership with The Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (). P4H members are comprised of people who are incarcerated at Southeastern Correctional Institution in Lancaster, Ohio and faculty, staff and graduate students in the Department of Philosophy and from other units at Ohio State. Download a copy today at https://philosophy.osu.edu/p4h/zine

https://artsandsciences.osu.edu/events/practical-philosophy-how-think-about-consumers-ethical-relationships-large-scale-wrongs

https://philosophy.osu.edu/events/mmme-talk-hilary-kornblith

Congratulations to Dr. André Curtis-Trudel! André has accepted a position as a tenure track assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. André received his PhD from OSU in 2022 after defending a dissertation entitled “Towards a theory of physical computation” (co-supervisors Richard Samuels and Stewart Shapiro). Since 2022 André has held a postdoctoral fellowship at Lingnan University in Hong Kong. At the University of Cincinnati, André will establish and direct an interdisciplinary center for AI and the humanities.

https://philosophy.osu.edu/events/department-colloquium-renee-jorgensen

https://philosophy.osu.edu/events/sps-talk-tim-maudlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h2JAKMBtOg

The Minorities and Philosophy chapter at Ohio State announces a call for submissions to our next graduate student conference. We are able to offer modest travel stipends to accepted authors. For more details on the theme and how to submit: https://philosophy.osu.edu/map/2024-map-conference

Associated Faculty Member of Philosophy and CEHV Associate Director Aaron Yarmel published an editorial in the Columbus Dispatch reflecting on the Civil Discourse Program's contribution to recent campus conversations about what's going on in Israel and Palestine right now.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2024/02/15/israel-hamas-war-fear-protest-bigtory-on-college-campus-ohio-state-universty/72585488007/

End of life decision-making is difficult, especially when the patient can no longer speak for themselves. Can algorithms help? Some think so...

We invite you to join us for the first lecture in the Department of Philosophy's new webinar series: Practical Philosophy!

This webinar presentation, lead by Assistant Professor Dana Howard, will offer an ethical examination of the risks and benefits of using algorithm-based tools for medical decision-making.

Register here: https://click.t.osu.edu/?qs=957efa5683b23e3d0ccb04cf364ff5bb947177a04b5fe8a0560e13d3691ccd8017ac1b96fc64e7b2299a5733166fcf7a0ef8a39a90e18d4c

One of our Spring 2023 course offerings, The Philosophy of Happiness with Professor Amy Shuster, was featured in the Autumn 2024 newsletter of the Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP). The OPEEP article included reflections from students on how the course impacted them. The reflections were drawn from the printed program produced for the course's closing ceremony. "At the end of the semester," says Professor Shuster, "each student invited one special guest--often a friend or family member--to come to the prison and take part in our course through a closing ceremony where students offered presentations on the course material as well as speeches on the overall experience of learning inside a prison. This has been one of my favorite ways to bring this course to a close: sharing out the achievements of our learning community." The Philosophy Department is thrilled to partner with OPEEP to offer these courses for our students.

Follow the link to learn more https://go.osu.edu/opeepnewsletter

Congratulations to Ethan Brauer (PhD OSU 2020), who is starting a four year postdoc at the University of Oslo as part of the project "C-FORS: Construction in the formal sciences". The project, led by Øystein Linnebo, will develop a theory of both extensional objects and intensional entities such as properties and propositions. The aim is to draw on constructional approaches to the ontology of mathematics and apply those ideas in further areas such as formal semantics and formal ontology.

We are delighted to announce that Todd DeRose (PhD OSU 2023) has taken up a position as a tenure-track assistant professor at Edward Waters University in Jacksonville FL. Congratulations, Todd!

We are hiring at the senior level! Please spread the word to those who might be interested.

O'Donnell Professorship in Philosophy, The Ohio State University - PhilJobs:JFP An international database of jobs for philosophers

Tyler Cook has successfully defended his dissertation, "Essays on Machine Ethics" with Professor Justin D'Arms as his advisor. Tyler’s dissertation concerns some issues in machine ethics, the area of artificial intelligence (AI) research that is concerned with questions regarding the design of ethical machines or ethical AI. It makes a case for designing end (or goal)-constrained ethical AI, provides a qualified defense of top-down design approaches in machine ethics, and argues that the development of especially sophisticated ethical AI that is capable of theorizing about ethics would be risky. Congratulations Tyler!

The Conversation has featured an article by Piers Turner, Director of CEHV and Dennis Hirsch, Professor in the Moritz College of Law and Director of its Program on Data and Governance, on the topic of companies' approach to "ethical AI." Turner summarizes the main idea this way: "In an interdisciplinary study here at Ohio State, we found that data ethics professionals within companies often wanted to be handed a set of principles that perfectly tells them how to 'do the right thing,' so they could then just apply those principles and align business practices with them. But there are no such simple guidelines. There will always be a need for interpretation and judgment in light of evolving understanding, and so implementing 'ethical AI' in a realistic sense means establishing conscientious practices that allow businesses to keep up with that evolving understanding. It means being a responsible decision-maker in the context of uncertainty.

What is 'ethical AI' and how can companies achieve it? Companies that want to avoid the harms of AI, such as bias or privacy violations, lack clear-cut guidelines on how to act responsibly. That makes internal management and decision-making critical.

The Department of Philosophy is excited to partner with OPEEP to offer our courses in local prisons.

Ohio State brings classes and students to Ohio prisons By design, prisons are not stimulating places, said Mary Thomas, a professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. This is why prison education programs are important.“In spaces of incarceration, there’s very little that nourishes the brain an...

This spring two graduate students completed their Ph.D. in Philosophy. Todd DeRose successfully defended his dissertation, "New Work for Berkeley's Theory of Divine Language" with Professor Lisa Downing as his advisor. Soyeong An successfully defended her dissertation, “Towards A New Non-Ontic Conception of Scientific Explanation” with Professor Chris Pincock as her advisor. Congratulations to both Todd and Soyeong!

Professor Justin D’Arms new book, Rational Sentimentalism (co-authored with Professor Daniel Jacobson, UC Boulder), has appeared this spring from Oxford University Press! The book argues for a new account of the relation between emotion and value, according to which all emotions are sometimes fitting and moral theory must be constrained by the limits of sentimental values. Congratulations, Justin!

We are delighted to announce that Jada Wiggleton-Little will be joining us in August 2024 as an assistant professor of philosophy! Jada is finishing her PhD at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and beginning a one-year fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Bioethics. She works in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and clinical ethics, with a special focus on pain communications and racial and gender disparities in pain management. Welcome, Jada!