On April 24, Lincoln Lundgren defended his Honors thesis “Completing the Coincidence Argument against Metaethical Non-Naturalism”; a shortened version of his thesis also won the department’s Bingham award this year. Lincoln’s work contributes to understanding and evaluating a style of argument commonly called the “reliability challenge”. 

Lincoln’s thesis advisor, Professor Tristram McPherson, says this about the thesis: “Lincoln’s thesis is extraordinary. It provides a remarkably lucid and precise characterization of an influential but vexed dialectic in contemporary ethical theory, the ‘reliability challenge’. The thesis offers a creative and promising proposal to develop the reliability challenge into a compelling argument. It concludes by using a critique of this novel proposal to motivate the idea that further progress on understanding the reliability challenge requires that we resolve live philosophical controversies about reasoning with premises we grant to be impossible.” 

Lincoln currently plans to take at least a year off from his studies and then apply to law school.

Congratulations, Lincoln!