Calendar

Individuals support forms of domination with varying levels of understanding that they are doing so. In many cases, those very structures of domination distort our conceptions of them through mechanisms such as motivated reasoning, implicit bias, affected ignorance, false consciousness, and belief polarization. These various epistemic distortions, in turn, cause social conflict, notably by promoting political polarization. Those worried by social conflict have spent a great deal of energy decrying the increasingly polarized contexts in which we live. However, epistemic distortions in our sociopolitical beliefs also misrepresent, maintain systems of domination and prevent human needs from being met.

This workshop aims to go beyond pronouncements such as ‘we are polarized’ or that ‘partisanship is on the rise,’ and begin to think through epistemic distortions at the individual and intersubjective levels, the role of criticism and critique in facilitating belief and social change, and the idea of reconciliation, by asking questions such as:

• In what ways are individual beliefs about domination/social structures epistemically distorted?
• What explains why social beliefs are epistemically distorted?
• What are the normative upshots of epistemic distortion for social relationships like allyship, comradeship, and friendship?
• Ought polarization be remedied? Which epistemic resources and theoretical frameworks avail themselves of emancipatory potential?

Convenors

Ege Yumuşak is a philosopher, specializing in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and social & political philosophy. She received a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University in 2022. Her research examines political disagreement—its material foundations, psychological and social manifestations, and epistemic properties. She is currently writing a series of articles on the nature and significance of clashes of perspective in social life.

Nicolas Côté is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. His research is mainly in normative ethics and social choice theory, but they also dabble in applied ethics and issues of practical rationality. Côté’s doctoral dissertation work focuses on the measurement of freedom, especially on axiomatic approaches to the measurement question, and on how deontic concerns for protecting individual rights interact with welfarist concerns for improving the general welfare. Côté’s current research focuses on the ethics of decision-making under radical uncertainty.

Invited speakers:

Sabina Vaccarino Bremner; Daniela Dover; Cain Shelley

Invited commentators
TBA

riday, November 10

9:30–9:55        Check–in and Coffee

9:55                 Welcome

10:00–12:00    Adam Smith

Speaker: Ryan Patrick Hanley (Boston College)

Commentator: Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois Chicago)

12:00–2:00      Lunch Break

2:00–4:00        Immanuel Kant

Speaker: Marcia Baron (Indiana University Bloomington)

Commentator: Kyla Ebels–Duggan (Northwestern University)

4:00–4:30        Coffee Break

4:30–6:30        German Romanticism

Speaker: Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University)

Commentator: Owen Ware (University of Toronto)

6:30–7:30        Reception

Saturday, November 11

9:30–10:00      Check–in and Coffee

10:00–12:00    Friedrich Nietzsche

Speaker: Andrew Huddleston (University of Warwick)

Commentator: Claire Kirwin (Northwestern University)

12:00–2:00      Lunch Break

2:00–4:00    Simone De Beauvoir

Speaker: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)

Commentator: Susan J. Brison (Dartmouth University)

4:00–4:30        Coffee Break

4:30–6:30    Contemporary

Speaker: Simon May (King’s College London)

Commentator: Alecxander Nehamas (Princeton University)

6:30–7:30        Reception