Environmental Ethics: TPA

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

TPA

Tennessee Philosophical Association

53rd Annual Meeting: Oct. 28-29, 2022
Vanderbilt University

Keynote Speaker-

Gordon Hull, UNC Charlotte

How Epistemic Injustice can help us understand problems in AI

Abstract. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) systems increasingly purport to deliver knowledge about people and the world. Unfortunately, they also seem to frequently present results that repeat or magnify biased treatment of racial and other vulnerable minorities. This paper proposes that at least some of the problems with AI’s treatment of minorities can be captured by the concept of epistemic injustice. To substantiate this claim, I argue that (1) pretrial detention and physiognomic AI systems commit testimonial injustice because their target variables reflect inaccurate and unjust proxies for what they claim to measure; (2) classification systems, such as facial recognition, commit hermeneutic injustice because their classification taxonomies, almost no matter how they are derived, reflect and perpetuate racial and other stereotypes; and (3) epistemic injustice better explains what is going wrong in these types of situations than does the more common focus on procedural (un)fairness.

Friday, 7:30 P.M., 114 Furman Hall, followed by a spirited reception

Sessions: Saturday, Furman Hall

9:00 am through 4:40 pm

9:00-9:55 a.m.

Author Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy
Lindsey Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Social-Epistemic Problems with Intellectual Grandstanding
Lucy Vollbrecht, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Zach Auwerda, The University of Memphis
Furman 209

The Escaped Prisoner’s Story
Charles Cardwell, Pellissippi State Community College
Commentator: Courtland D. Lewis, Pellissippi State Community College
Furman 109

Living and Gaming—Experimenting with Nguyen’s Account of Agency
Wangchen Zhou, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Ryan Gabriel Windeknecht, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Furman 217

10:05-11:00 a.m.

Author Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy (continued)
Lindsey Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Humean Collective Identity
Zachary Auwerda, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Jim Fieser, The University of Tennessee at Martin
Furman 209

Disagreement over the Beautiful Grounded in the Ethical
Jennifer Lowell Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Qingyang Cui, Vanderbilt University
Furman 109

Secularistic But Not Secular? An Analysis of the Philosophy of William Connolly
Bill Meyer, Maryville College
James Phil Oliver, Middle Tennessee State University
Furman 217

LISTEN

Pluralizing Migrant Psychology: A Non-Homogenous View of Selfhood Across Borders
Ashleigh Morales, The University of Memphis
Commentator: tba
Furman 132

11:05-11:10 a.m.

Business Meeting: Elections for President and Secretary; Furman 109

11:15-1:05 p.m.

Lunch: On your own (see insert in conference packet for local eateries)

1:10-2:05 p.m.

Collateral Damage: Black Ideologies Formed Post-Enslavement
Natalyah Davis, The University of Memphis
Commentator: tba
Furman 007

Always Look on the Bright Side of Crisis
Courtland D. Lewis, Pellissippi State Community College
Commentator: Kelly Cunningham, Vanderbilt University
Furman 209

Metaphysical Infinitism and Theoretical Virtue
William Welchance, University of Virginia
Commentator: John Stigall, Howard University
Furman 109

The Private Servant of the Public as a Privately Educated Public Servant: Foucault and Habermas on the Role of the Public Intellectual
Bernardo Alba, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Bill Meyer, Maryville College
Furman 217

2:15-3:10 p.m.

Nature’s Revenge? On the Coronavirus and Natural Evil
Daniel J. Smith, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Emanuele Costa, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Fallacy Accusation and Meta-Argument
Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: William Welchance, University of Virginia
Furman 209

The Ascetic Ideal, the Threat of Nihilism, and How to Transcend
Qiuyue Chen, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Bernardo Alba, The University of Memphis
Furman 109

Revitalising Baier: Trust Beyond Beliefs & Attitudes
Kelly Cunningham, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Cheri Thomas, University of Tennessee, Southern
Furman 217

3:25pm-4:20pm

Author Meets Critics – Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers
Brian Ribeiro, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Comments by Lucy Alsip Vollbrecht, Vanderbilt; Andrew Cling, University of Alabama-Huntsville; Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt
Furman 209

Author Meets Critics – Aristotle’s Vices
Audrey Anton, Western Kentucky University
Comments by Dan Larkin, Georgia Southern University; Alyssa Lowery, Vanderbilt University; Andrew Burnside, Vanderbilt University
Furman 217

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TEXTS Fall '24

First things first--a proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”
― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.”
― Vandana Shiva, Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?”
― Paulo Coelho, The Winner Stands Alone

“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: if you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.”
― Martin Keogh, Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World

“When the last tree is cut and the last fish killed, the last river poisoned, then you will see that you can't eat money.”
― John May, The Greenpeace Story

“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is a tendency at every important but difficult crossroad to pretend that it's not really there.”
― Bill McKibben, The End of Nature

“We know, at least, that this decision (ending factory farming) will help prevent deforestation, curb global warming, reduce pollution, save oil reserves, lessen the burden on rural America, decrease human rights abuses, improve publish health, and help eliminate the most systematic animal abuse in history.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

“An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in the
single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this
world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the
environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.”
― Ernst F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”
― Aldo Leopold

“Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.”
― Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World

“The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.”
― Ivan Illich

Environmental Ethics

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

TPA

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Peripatetics

	Michael Pollan (@michaelpollan) http://michaelpollan.com/
5/14/15, 10:57 AM All the lectures and talks from Edible Education 101 are now online. All told, a great introduction to food politics bit.ly/1Fausvx