Department of Philosophy

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Anti-Metaphysical Arguments in the Anticipations of Perception
Patton, Lydia K. (Editura Academiei Romane/Publishing House of the Romanian Academy, 2022-12-22)
In the Anticipations, Kant defends the claim that all sensations must register on a purely subjective scale of response to stimuli, in order for sensation to be a possible source of knowledge. In this paper, I argue that Kant defends this claim in response to “scholasticism” or transcendental realism about sensation. The fact that all sensations are measurable on a subjec- tive scale is the a priori content of the principle of the Anticipations, and, according to Kant, is a necessary condition for building any systematic analysis of sensation. The anti-metaphysical arguments in the “Anticipations of Perception” are key building blocks of Kant’s transcendental idealism.
The beautiful soul and the autocratic agent: Schiller's and Kant's 'children of the house'
Baxley, A. M. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003-10)
In his extended essay "On Grace and Dignity," Friedrich Schiller sets out an important challenge to Kant when he argues that sensibility must play a constitutive role in the ethical life. This paper argues that there is much we can learn from Schiller's "corrective" to Kant's moral theory and Kant's reply to this critique, for what is at stake in their debate are rival conceptions of the proper state of moral health for us as finite rational beings and competing political notions concerning the ideal form of self-governance that we ought to strive to attain.
Cartesianism Revisited
Lewis, Eric P. (MIT Press, 2007-12)
Chance and the Continuum Hypothesis
Hoek, Daniel (2021-12-06)
This paper presents and defends an argument that the continuum hypothesis is false, based on considerations about objective chance and an old theorem due to Banach and Kuratowski. More specifically, I argue that the probabilistic inductive methods standardly used in science presuppose that every proposition about the outcome of a chancy process has a certain chance between 0 and 1. I also argue in favour of the standard view that chances are countably additive. Since it is possible to randomly pick out a point on a continuum, for instance using a roulette wheel or by flipping a countable infinity of fair coins, it follows, given the axioms of ZFC, that there are many different cardinalities between countable infinity and the cardinality of the continuum.
The Colonial Rift: A Review of Hannah Holleman’s Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism
Burkey, Brandon; Patton, Lydia K. (2021-07-14)
Data models, representation and adequacy-for-purpose
Bokulich, Alisa; Parker, Wendy (2021-03)
We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets' having a phylogeny-an origin and complex evolutionary history-that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Fall 2001
(Virginia Tech, 2001)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Fall 2006
(Virginia Tech, 2006)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Fall 2007
(Virginia Tech, 2007)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2003
(Virginia Tech, 2003)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2004
(Virginia Tech, 2004)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2005
(Virginia Tech, 2005)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2009
(Virginia Tech, 2009)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2010
(Virginia Tech, 2010)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2011
(Virginia Tech, 2011)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2012
(Virginia Tech, 2012)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2013
(Virginia Tech, 2013)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
Department of Philosophy Alumni Newsletter, Spring 2014
(Virginia Tech, 2014)
As a way to keep in touch with alumni, the Department published a regular newsletter with the latest news about the philosophy community at Virginia Tech.
The Dilemma of Case Studies Resolved: The Virtues of Using Case Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science
Burian, Richard M. (MIT Press, 2001-12)
Philosophers of science turned to historical case studies in part in response to Thomas Kuhn's insistence that such studies can transform the philosophy of science. In this issue Joseph Pitt argues that the power of case studies to instruct us about scientific methodology and epistemology depends on prior philosophical commitments, without which case studies are not philosophically useful. Here I reply to Pitt, demonstrating that case studies, properly deployed, illustrate styles of scientific work and modes of argumentation that are not well handled by currently standard philosophical analyses. I illustrate these claims with exemplary findings from case studies dealing with exploratory experimentation and with interdisciplinary cooperation across sciences to yield multiple independent means of access to theoretical entities. The latter cases provide examples of ways that scientists support claims about theoretical entities that are not available in work performed within a single discipline. They also illustrate means of correcting systematic biases that stem from the commitments of each discipline taken separately. These findings illustrate the transformative power of case study methods, allow us to escape from the horns of Pitt's ?dilemma of case studies?, and vindicate some of the post-Kuhn uses to which case studies have been put.
The Dilemma of Case Studies: Toward a Heraclitian Philosophy of Science
Pitt, Joseph C. (MIT Press, 2001-12)
What do appeals to case studies accomplish? Consider the dilemma: On the one hand, if the case is selected because it exemplifies the philosophical point, then it is not clear that the historical data hasn't been manipulated to fit the point. On the other hand, if one starts with a case study, it is not clear where to go from there?for it is unreasonable to generalize from one case or even two or three.