Recent Graduate Student Accomplishments

Two Department of Philosophy graduate students, Teresa Kouri and Eric Snyder, were among the speakers at the Dubrovnik Conference on logical pluralism in June.

Teresa also has been busy with other professional travels. In May, she participated in a colloquium at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Munich, Germany, where she presented her paper, “Connective Meanings in Beall and Restall's Logical Pluralism,”which she also presented at University of Connecticut earlier in the year. Teresa presented her paper, “Restall’s Proof-Theoretic and Model-Theoretic Pluralisms,” at the Pacific meeting of the American Philosophical Association in April, and she delivered “Reconciling Carnap’s Logical Pluralism with Beall and Restall’s” at the Linguistics and Philosophy Workshop, “No, Ifs, Ands, Or, Buts,” a workshop that she helped to organize.

Eric coauthored a paper,“Vagueness and Context,” with his advisor, Stewart Shapiro, which has been accepted for publication in the journal, Inquiry. He presented another paper, “Comparing Tastes: A New Problem for Relativism,” at the central meeting of the American Philosophical Association in February.

Recent PhD graduate Lindsay Rettler was the distinguished alumna speaker at Western Michigan University's Graduate Philosophy Conference in December, 2014. Additionally, she presented, “On the Control of Faith and Belief,” at the Nature of Faith Symposium at the Pacific American Philosophical Association conference in April, 2015, and presented at the Faith Project's four-week summer seminar in Columbia, Missouri, in July. She received the Faith Project summer research fellowship for her work.

Brian McLean, whose work was featured in last year's Logos, spent spring semester at Princeton University, where he attended classes and worked with Professor Michael Smith. This autumn, he has been engaged in professional activities closer to home: delivering his paper, “Narrative Explanation and Emotional Transformation,” at the College of Wooster; and presenting commentary on Professor Avery White's paper, “Adaptive Preferences and Overconsumption,” at the Political Theory Workshop at Ohio State.

Aly Massof presented, “The Patient's Duty to Disclose,” at the Western Michigan University Medical Humanities Conference in September, 2015.

First-year PhD student Lavender McKittrick-Sweitzer presented her paper, “Rawls' Instability and the Aggressive State,” at the meeting of the Indiana Philosophical Association in November, 2015, where she also was a commentator.

John Hurst won the 2015 William H. Fink Award for his paper, “An Epistemic Constraint on Intention: Null Hypothesis or Genuinely Binding?” John also presented his paper, “Action Forecasts and the Epistemic Significance of Intention,” at a conference on agency and knowledge in September.

Juan Garcia received the Fink Award honorable mention for his paper, “Kant's Schematism, Paul Guyer, and the Epistemic Constraint.”

Four graduate students received their PhDs in spring or summer semester of 2015: Kate McFarland, “Feigning Objectivity,” advisor: William Taschek; Lindsay Rettler, “Doxastic Agency and Responsibility,” advisor: Declan Smithies; Danny Pearlberg, “Causation, Mechanism, and Mind,” advisor: Richard Samuels; and David Blanks, (“The Metaphysics of Dispositions: A Case for Counterfactualism,”, advisor: Ben Caplan.