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  • "Foundational Hope"
    "Foundational Hope"
    Trevor Adams
    Apr 23, 2022, 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PDT
    Trevor Adams
    Hope theorists say that if S’s hope is to be rational, it is a necessary condition on hope that their subsequent belief and desire be justified. I want argue that the belief component can sometimes be unjustified, and yet the hope will remain justified.
  • "Seeking Beauty, Even in Darkness"
    "Seeking Beauty, Even in Darkness"
    Michael R. Spicher
    Apr 23, 2022, 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
    Michael R. Spicher
    Aesthetic experience is a basic motivation for human action, which in part leads to flourishing. It is still necessary (possibly more so) during dark times, as illustrated by people, like Primo Levi.
  • "Back to the Rough Ground: Radical Philosophy for a New Optimism"
    "Back to the Rough Ground: Radical Philosophy for a New Optimism"
    Leo Lepiano
    Apr 23, 2022, 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PDT
    Leo Lepiano
    Facing multiple global crises, what room is there, if any, for optimism? Is it ontologically correct? Is it psychologically possible? Can we make room for happiness without relinquishing responsibility? And does philosophy harm or help our efforts to answer these questions?

coffee hour

8:30-9:30
PDT

A new Hope?

cogtweeto

optimism and the good life

23 Apr 2022

Philosophy can equip us with the tools to manage dark times. This workshop aims to highlight how philosophy can help brighten our lives.

newhope
  • "Meliorating Self-Doubt: How Communities Can Help Mitigate the Epistemic Harms of Microaggression"
    "Meliorating Self-Doubt: How Communities Can Help Mitigate the Epistemic Harms of Microaggression"
    Bella-Rose Kelly | comments by Joe Glover
    Bella-Rose Kelly | comments by Joe Glover
    Microaggression causes epistemic harm to marginalized subjects. They have cumulative effects that diminish the epistemic confidence of the subject. Communities, I argue, can help mitigate such harms by fostering the subject's epistemic confidence and providing her with hope.
  • “Dependence, Transformation, and Meaning"
    “Dependence, Transformation, and Meaning"
    Philip Schwarz | comments by Laura Nelson
    Philip Schwarz | comments by Laura Nelson
    I outline a reading of Alasdair MacIntyre to show how relationships of dependence shape our lives. Under the right conditions, these relationships are transformative experiences. They become meaningful and therefore valuable to us. This constitutes special moral demands.

"apa-style"

9:45-10:45
PDT

  • "A Dew(eyan) Hope"
    "A Dew(eyan) Hope"
    Johnathan Flowers
    Johnathan Flowers
    I draw on John Dewey to understand hope as the felt sense of possibility in the world. To be hopeful, therefore, is to have a sense of positive possibility; hoplessness is a sense of restricted possibility or restricted capacity to make the possible actual.

colloquium

1:00-3:00
PDT

Many thanks to our 2022 Cogtweeto Sponsors Andrew Bridges, David Hoinski, Tim Kenyon, Klynton, Laura Nelson, Kristopher G. Philips, Sarah Wieten, Twitter user @mondilator and generous anonymous donors for making this workshop possible.

  • "The Incurables, Reincarnation, and Plato's Cosmic Drama"
    "The Incurables, Reincarnation, and Plato's Cosmic Drama"
    Thomas Bonn
    Apr 23, 2022, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
    Thomas Bonn
    In some of Plato's myths, incurable people suffer endless torment. In others, they don't. The Neoplatonists rightly rejected the notion that Plato held anyone to be incurable. Plato's actual sketch of the soul's endless journey (given e.g. in the Myth of Er) is oddly comforting.
  • “Don’t Stop Believing: Believing in Yourself As Pretense"
    “Don’t Stop Believing: Believing in Yourself As Pretense"
    Blakely Phillips
    Apr 23, 2022, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
    Blakely Phillips
    What is believing in yourself? Using Evans's theory of pretense I argue that believing in oneself is a pretense that when successful undergoes a 'game-to-reality shift': the belief held as a pretense becomes true in the real world.
  • “Hope in the Shell: Why it’s Wonder-full that our Brains are not Computers”
    “Hope in the Shell: Why it’s Wonder-full that our Brains are not Computers”
    Jonathan McKinney
    Apr 23, 2022, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PDT
    Jonathan McKinney
    As the global ecological, psychological, and economic crises worsen by the day, it would seem that hope for life on our planet is dimming. Luckily for us, human beings (& philosophers) are profoundly stupid. In this coffee hour, we will sacrifice our brains for a glimmer of hope?

coffee hour

11:00-12:00
PDT

SPonSor This workshop

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