My research concerns itself with the metaphysics of free will. To posit, as some philosophers do, that free will and determinism are incompatible is to provide a necessary condition for free will. Yet what should a sufficient condition look like? In other words, how might indeterminists provide a positive account of free will? In section 2 of my paper, I provide a few definitions and discuss an influential argument against compatibilism, namely the view that free will and determinism are compatible. This will help to identify some important criteria for theories of free will. Section 3 shows how abandoning determinism and adopting indeterminism is also problematic, and that we thus need to fill in the definition of free will. Section 4 presents the first part of Robert Kane’s definition of free will, which goes along the lines of "we make choices based on our beliefs, priorities, etc." and section 5 offers Kane’s account of Self-Forming Actions to explain how our beliefs and priorities are our own. The core of my objection will take place in section 6, where I show how the concept of a Self-Forming Action cannot make free will compatible with indeterminism in that the idea of a Self-Forming Action is incoherent.

Philosophy research and teaching pedagogy are usually approached, in much of Western academia, through a method focused on rational, explicit argument. However, many other fields privilege the role of emotion in decision making and suggest that non-argumentative methods, such as stories, discussion, or implicit argument more closely represent our natural cognitive processes. This alternate approach has important implications for the field of philosophy that are worth exploring further. My research seeks to address several questions: How might stories, discussion, and implicit argument represent our everyday cognitive processes more accurately than rational, explicit argument? Why might doing philosophy without arguments be important? When, conversely, might a focus on rational, explicit argument (which brings clarity in form, a shared method among different philosophical communities, and rigorous writing and critical-thinking skills) be the better choice? What kinds of questions are best addressed by what means? These questions will be examined by a combination of methods: 1) literature review (focusing on Feyerabend’s arguments against strict, methodological rules; Bicchieri’s research on norms and beliefs; and data from neurobiological studies on the role of emotion in decision-making), 2) contrastive analysis of personal experience using different approaches to philosophy in different contexts (during interactions with children in Philosophy for Children programs; and by employing non-directive tutoring strategies in writing center tutoring practices), and 3) non-structured interviews with other participants in these educational programs. Preliminary findings suggest that non-argumentative methods of doing philosophy can be more effective in promoting social and personal change. Presentation participants will be invited to explore the question of what should be the implications of these findings for philosophy research and teaching pedagogy.

After its publication in 1959, Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum roused a number of scathing reviews from its critics who found its treatment of the devastation incurred under the Nazi regime irreverent and its subject matter generally distasteful. Now widely recognized as one of the most significant anti-war novels of the twentieth century, disparities in the criticism remain in both focus and method for the treatment of a novel whose scope is at once immense and minute, its narration spanning nearly fifty years but its perspective anchored to the diminutive stature of Oskar, the “eternal three-year-old.” This study proceeds with the belief that the novel’s peculiar narrative situation, privileging the lives of individuals and devoid of the application of an “adult” morality or location of guilt, advances a portrait of pre-, inter-, and post-war Germany which is, nonetheless, profoundly ethical. To examine the function of the intimate ethics afforded by the literary text, my analysis of The Tin Drum is situated within a framework of theoretical and philosophical texts, including work by Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno, all of whom address problems of ethics and history through the deployment of theory. This study takes as its objective the exploration of the relation between literature and theory, and literature and standard historical accounts, in terms of what can be seen or envisioned by each type of text. The analysis centers on numerous oppositional dualities staged by the novel, which, as models for understanding the identity of the inverse or the contrary, offer a singular illumination of structures of power and narratives of progress. The latter stands as Grass’ primary antagonist throughout his work, as that which obscures the presence of the past in our own time and the experience of the individual in the context of empire.

Jack London's American Naturalist novel is one of the greatest works the author had written, and along with "The Call of the Wild," appeared on newly formed American Bestseller lists for American novels after its publication in the early 1900's. While a popular novel, the Sea-Wolf is also a major literary achievement. As one of Jack London's early pieces, The Sea-Wolf exhibits London's efforts at responding to major philosophical and political ideas of the era's international climate: London explores in his novel, ideas of Social Darwinism, alongside the need of altruism in an age of the consolidation of the Capitalist system and its economic policies. These two ideas owe the attention given to them to the genre of Naturalism and Realism, whose division is controversially blurred, which was a literary movement occuring at the time of the novel's writing. These two ideas are accompanied by the Naturalist's focus on the individual in the city, and is foregrounded by an antecedent Romantic literary tradition, which put concerns of the individual in front of societal ones. In the Naturalist tradition, the opposite occurs, and the individual must survive in the face of an antagonistic and often mechanistic environment. My research will entail close-reading passages of the Sea-Wolf to show that it cannot be strictly one genre, and that its hybrid form is in fact an emergent one in which new methods are found to say new things. I will be using as my theoretical framework, and supplementary texts, Donald Pizer's definition of Naturalism and also Donna M. Campbell's examination of Naturalism under the lens of gender in her "Resisting Regionalism". My aim in this presentation is to show The Sea-Wolf trafficks in Naturalist themes, such as the inability to escape the forces of environment, and the transformative, and even the degenerative effect it can have on the human encased within it. I want to show London's novel deals with the grittier aspects of life, as many Naturalist novels do, but it also utilizes the strategies of a more feminine literary tradition in the creation of the displaced domestic space existing between the novel's Humphrey Van Weyden and Maud Brewster. I want to show that by the end, Maud's last line as she spots a search boat, "Rescue us from ourselves," has implications equivallently significant both for a Naturalist reading and a Local Color one.

Within the literary world, science fiction has been assigned an illogically negative reputation, often considered to be poor-quality and low-value literature. Yet, even those who do not enjoy science fiction cannot deny its intrinsic value as a way to imagine worlds and possibilities beyond our own. More than that, science fiction provides an entirely unique experiential mode of examination, creating a network of removed analytical "spaces" that we can use as lenses through which to examine reality. Thus, science fiction not only allows us to imagine what might be, but it in many ways surpasses the effectiveness of other genres in investigating what is. Curiously, the overlapping but not equivalent genre, utopia, performs its critical work using similar "spaces," but is generally accepted as a valid, useful form of literature. While utilizing these critical "spaces," works of utopia are able to provide additional levels of analysis that other genre forms are not necessarily able to address. This is possible because each utopic work provides the opportunity for a double-edged mode of critical investigation: the question of subjective versus general utopia, which allows readers to explore multiple conditions of the present as they shape the content of the text. My research examines the stigma of science fiction, navigates the complicated yet fascinating relationship between science fiction and utopia, and then examines the kind of critiques and commentaries made possible when science fiction and utopia are blended. Ultimately, the intersecting "spaces" of utopic science fiction produce an incredibly rich, multi-faceted form of literature and a superior vessel of social critique.