Brad Cokelet, Author at PEA Soup

On January 25, 2018 By Brad Cokelet In Experimental Philosophy, Ideas, Normative Ethics, Political Philosophy, Value Theory, Virtue Comments (13) 5

New Research Avenues in Anthropology?

When was the last time you read an Anthropology article or book? Did you know that there is a recent “Ethical turn” in anthropology and that anthropologists are writing interesting things about moral development, practical reasoning, virtue, autonomy, and other moral topics – all with reference to specific cultural contexts and practices?

If you are like me only a little while ago, you have never heard of the ethical turn because current anthropology is simply not on your radar. And that is why I am posting! I think this might be of interest to many philosophers, but especially to graduate students.

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On November 13, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Featured Philosophers, Normative Ethics, Value Theory Comments (13) 5

Uniqueness (by Gwen Bradford)

I’m happy to introduce our current Featured Philosophy, Gwen Bradford, who teaches at Rice University and has written a creative and insightful book on achievement. Her post today is on the nature and value of uniqueness. Please comment with your thoughts about the interesting new territory that Gwen is exploring!

Uniqueness

I have been thinking about uniqueness and its relationship to value.

The issue first arises in one of the important moments in value theory. The orthodox conception of intrinsic value as value strictly in virtue of intrinsic properties was questioned by counterexamples pointing to extrinsic properties generating what’s plausibly intrinsic value. Monroe Beardsley in 1965 wrote this:

One inconvenience of this definition can be brought out as follows: A sheet of postage stamps has been misprinted – the central figure, say, is inverted. …[but] its value is not for the sake of anything else. (Beardsley 1965: 61-62).

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On October 5, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Featured Philosophers, Metaethics, Value Theory Comments (23) 1

Expressivism without Minimalism

By Tristram McPherson

It is a striking fact that many of the most recently influential expressivists (e.g. Simon Blackburn, Allan Gibbard, Mark Timmons) have embraced minimalist accounts of words such as ‘truth,’ ‘fact,’ and ‘property.’ And others have argued that embracing minimalism is indispensable for the expressivist. In this post, I argue that expressivists can and should resist the idea that they are forced to embrace minimalism.

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On September 28, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Featured Philosophers, Metaethics Comments Off on Coming Featured Philosopher: McPherson on Expressivism without Minimalism 1

Coming Featured Philosopher: McPherson on Expressivism without Minimalism

I am happy to announce our next Featured Philosophy post. On next Thursday, October 5th, Tristram McPherson (Ohio State University) will be sharing his post “Expressivism without Minimalism”. Please swing by then to join the discussion!

On September 6, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Experimental Philosophy, Featured Philosophers, Ideas, Moral Psychology Comments (8) 5

‘I Love Women’: The Conceptual Inadequacy of ‘Implicit Bias’ (by Yao and Reis-Dennis)

Hi everyone! Thanks very much for the opportunity to discuss our work-in-progress, “‘I Love Women’: The Conceptual Inadequacy of ‘Implicit Bias.’”

Tests for implicit bias, in particular the Implicit Association Test (IAT), have recently come under scrutiny. Two different meta-analyses, by Oswald et al. (2013) and Forscher et al. (2016) (recently discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education) have concluded that measurements of “implicit bias” do not reliably predict biased behavior.

In our paper, we offer a different critique of implicit bias testing, one which philosophers and other humanistic thinkers might be well-suited to address. We argue that the dominant implicit bias tests assume crude and implausible conceptions of explicit prejudice, leaving open the possibility that the morally bad and wrong actions supposedly best explained by something interestingly implicit are instead best explained by non-obvious but nonetheless explicit prejudice.[i]

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On August 31, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Featured Philosophers Comments Off on Coming Featured Philosopher post on The Conceptual Inadequacy of ‘Implicit Bias’ 1

Coming Featured Philosopher post on The Conceptual Inadequacy of ‘Implicit Bias’

I am happy to announce our next Featured Philosophy post. On next Wednesday, September 6th, Vida Yao (Rice) and Samuel Reis-Dennis (Johns Hopkins) will be sharing their post titled ‘I Love Women’: The Conceptual Inadequacy of ‘Implicit Bias’”. Please swing by then to join the discussion!

On August 4, 2017 By Brad Cokelet In Featured Philosophers Comments Off on Featured Philosophers & The Moral Demands of Patriotism 1

Featured Philosophers & The Moral Demands of Patriotism

I am happy to announce the Featured Philosophers series will be running on a regular basis again and that it will now include more early career philosophers and advanced graduate students. The first post by Derek Baker (Lignan University) will go up Monday, August 7th and it will be titled “Why Bad People Will Find It Hard to Be Patriotic”. Please swing by then to join the discussion.