Graduate Student Dissertation Committees

Kenji Lota (U Miami), “Asking for a Reason.”

Kenji’s dissertation develops a novel “Reasons Appraoch” to the epistemology of inquiry which an analysis of the nature, functions, and relations between inquiring attitudes and the questions that guide inquiry.

Courses

University of Miami Department of Philosophy

2014 (Fall): PHI 350 “Philosophy of Psychology “

Scientific theories of psychological phenomena rest on a foundation of philosophical assumptions. Many of these assumptions are metaphysical and concern such things as the nature of and relationships between perception, memory, imagination, reason, emotion, empathy, agency and practical skill. But they also concern more encompassing metaphysical questions concerning the nature of mind and value. Metaphysical assumptions drive, but can also be driven by, methodological assumptions and practices, concerning, e.g., the extent to which we can model organic minds on machines; how facts about nonhuman animal psychology should bear on the way we understand human psychology; whether human psychology is best understood by studying individual subjects in isolation, in highly controlled, artificial environments, and by focusing on what’s “inside the head,” or by studying subjects as embodied and embedded in social environments, whose cognitive operations are manifested in individual-level activities that involve a variety of artifacts and tools; and so on.  To isolate and assess competing metaphysical and methodological assumptions at work in contemporary scientific theories of psychological phenomena, this course will draw on a number of historical as well as contemporary texts and resources, including guest visits by experts in relevant fields. Part of the course will also address ways in which the psychological scientific theories, methodologies, and specific studies can encode and reinforce prejudices, thereby perpetuating epistemic injustice. 

2024 (Fall): PHI 348 “Intro to Philosophy Through the Brain & Behavioral Sciences”

An old philosophical tradition holds that humans are essentially rational animals. The rough idea is that we humans are aware of ourselves as creatures who perceive and act in the world, and whose symbolic capacities make us capable of reasoning about whether our perceptions are accurate and whether our actions are appropriate. In other words, we can ask ourselves: “Are our beliefs true and well-founded? Are our ends good? Are our means to fulfilling our ends permissible or optimal?” And such questions aren’t just idle talk, for our rational capacities make us at once free and responsible to recreate ourselves, and thus change our minds, so as to better conform with our (ideally) ever expanding and improving conception of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Philosophy was long considered the exemplar of rational activity, i.e., of systematic, critical thinking and reasoning. And over the centuries, natural philosophy gave way to the natural sciences we know today. More recently, however, these sciences have largely usurped their philosophical progenitors. While foundational debates and fundamental physics remain tightly connected to metaphysical cosmology, the stupendous success of the physical sciences inspired theoretical projects aimed at bringing as much of nature under its purview as possible. But can explanations in physics really provide an adequate model of a subject-matter that’s alive, conscious, capable of pain, pleasure, thought, decision, and expression? What do biological explanations bring to the table? How does psychology relate to biology on the one hand and social science on the other?  And is there a place for history, and artistic ways of knowing and representing minds?  This course will connect these questions with the brain and behavioral sciences to the extent that they purport to bring the study of human mind and nature under the purview of the natural sciences. We will examine the historical philosophical foundations of these sciences, especially in the late 19th-Century and early to Mid- 20th-Century to shed light on ongoing foundational debates about the nature of the mind and mental capacities. We'll also consider the extent to which current empirical findings can shed light on philosophical questions about human nature, mind, freedom, and responsibility. Finally, we'll bring the metaphysics of mind into conversation with recent developments in the metaphysics of race and gender to assess whether the human mind is better understood as a biological or as a socially constructed kind.

2024 (Spring): PHI 795 “Special Topics Seminar on Practical Agency”

There’s a sense in which anything that has causal powers can be said to be a “causal agent.” And to the extent that intentionality can be explained in terms of causal powers or sensitivities, just about anything can be said to be an intentional agent, too. Causal agents “act for reasons” in the sense that we can explain what they do by appealing to their intrinsic causal properties and the natural laws governing the ways they interact with extrinsic causal properties. “Practical agents”-- i.e., humans and some other animals-- seem different. Practical agents have causal powers that take a teleological or means-end form. Unlike merely causal agents, practical agents act for reasons that they can relate to and include their own ends. This capacity seems to be essentially connected to the form of  intentionality characteristic of practical agency: practical agents can be intentionally related to objects with which they lack the sort of causal contact that’s exhaustive of the intentionality that applies to merely causal agents. Moreover, practical agential intentionality is inherently normative: the way practical agents are intentionally directed at objects is assessable for correctness or fittingness. Likewise, what practical agents do is essentially connected to, yet not always identical to, what it is they ought to do. In contrast, what causal agents do, they simply do. No standards of success are intrinsic to the activities of causal agents merely as such.  Where standards of success do attach to them, they have been shaped to be incorporated into-- as parts of or tools for-- practical agential activities.

This course will consider accounts of the nature and varieties of as well as the metaphysical dependencies between practical agency, intentionality, and practical reasons. Our guiding questions include: (1) What are practical reasons (or reasons for action) and how are they metaphysically related to manifestations of practical agency? (2) What is the nature of the intentionality that many think mediates between practical reasons (qua facts) and actions? Here we’ll look at different accounts of the nature and roles of the standard stock of intentional attitudes, i.e., beliefs, desires, varieties of intentions, and plans. But we will also consider historical and history-inspired accounts of the nature and roles of perception and what Anscombe calls "want," as well as less orthodox conceptions of what’s involved in grasping reasons for action that appeal to Gibsonian affordances. (3) How are such intentional attitudes or graspings related to practical knowledge, and how is practical knowledge related to knowledge-how and skill? Finally, (4) are there distinct species of practical agency, and if so, what are the principles of unity and differentiation? To address this question, we’ll consider the relationship between practical agency and (a) life, (b) perceptual-motor capacities, and (c) rational capacities-- both their discursive and ethical dimensions. The course will feature a number of guest lectures from philosophers working on different aspects of practical agency.

2023, (Spring): PHI 340 “Theory of Knowledge”

You presumably know your best friend pretty well. But what does it mean to "know" them? You know some facts about them, e.g., their birthday, sure. But you know facts about lots of people you’ve never met, whereas you’re personally acquainted with your friend. You’ve spent enough time in their presence that you have lots of ways of recognizing them, e.g.,  by the back of their head, their laugh, their gait, the felt shape of their face, perhaps even the stench of their farts. You can also recognize your kitchen from different angles or positions of approach, and you know your way about it so well you hardly have to look to grab a plate or dry your hands. But the way you know your friend seems different. You can often see it on your friend's face when they are sad and, when this happens, you often know how to support them. True, you also know when your computer needs to be plugged in, to be cautious to avoid water damage, and maybe you even have some kind of affection for your computer. But you don’t worry about hurting its feelings, and knowing that it's yours doesn’t require having any feelings of warmth towards it. By contrast, you wouldn't really count as knowing your friend as a friend if you didn't care about the fact that they can be harmed or if the event of their being harmed didn't move you to at least empathize with them. And even though your computer makes available more information than your friend ever could, you know to treat your friend, rather than your computer, as a knower: as having an ability and perhaps a right to form and express what are genuinely their own opinions. Evidently, then, what it means to “know” your best friend is a rather complicated matter, ripe for the sort of analytical investigation that will be the task of this course. We'll consider theories of the social aspects of knowledge, inter-& intra-personal manifestations of knowledge, and debates concerned with the ethics of knowing. Along the way, we'll grapple with questions like: What kinds of knowledge are there and what, if anything, makes them all count as knowledge? What makes knowledge valuable and are some kinds more valuable than others? To what extent is knowledge socially constructed and why does this matter?  What sorts of conditions, including social norms, practices, institutions, and recent technologies, threaten or undermine knowledge, and by what mechanisms? And how is being a knower related to moral responsibility and being a rational agent?  

University of oklahoma Department of Philosophy

2023, (Fall): “Graduate Writing Seminar.”

The point of this class is to develop a greater appreciation and mastery of the art of clear expression. The aim is to find your voice while keeping the ear of your audience. More concretely, the aim is to increase your odds of professional success, including in graduate school, by improving your expository skills. To this end,  we will (a) examine examples of high-quality philosophical writing,  and (b) learn from giving and receiving extensive feedback on one or two of your papers both through  (i) in-class workshopping, and (ii) accountability group tasks. In addition to developing your mastery of lucid and gripping exposition,  you’ll also experience the benefits of accountability groups, learn to write abstracts more skillfully, experiment with  extending your research, practice concisely and effectively presenting your work, and you’ll get to hear humanizing anecdotes from your professors that prove that you can be an extremely successful writer, too.  

2023, (Fall): “Intro to Philosophy.”

The word “Philosophy” comes from the Greek word Philosophia, which means love (philo) of wisdom (sophia).  So, what better way to be introduced to philosophy than to consider some of the ways philosophers have answered questions in the vicinity of and including: “What Is Love?” and “What Is Wisdom”? These questions are, after all, gripping--especially, one would guess-- for college students. What’s more, these topics will allow us to get a peek at a sampling of the different sub-disciplines of philosophy (Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics/Value Theory) as well as some major sub-sub-disciplines (Philosophy of Mind & Psychology, Philosophy of Science, and a wee touch of Political Philosophy). As they are explored in this class, the topics of love and wisdom will also shed some light on why Immanueal Kant declared philosophy as “queen of the sciences,” why many still refer to philosophy as “the mother of all science,” and why philosophy and science need each other.  The broader aim of this course, however,  is simply to nurture students’ love of wisdom-- an affection that is of the essence of human nature. The course will be largely focused on recent work on love and wisdom in the analytic tradition. However, much of this work is rooted in concepts from Ancient Greek philosophy, a bit of which we’ll sample. We’ll also sample some non-Western philosophical appraoches to love, wisdom, and virtue. Our texts will also include some of Martin Luther King’s speeches on agape love.

2023, Upper-Division Undergraduate/Graduate (Spring): “Kinds of Minds.”

Why are minds so mysterious? A key reason is that they seem to have certain distinctive features that other things in nature lack. For instance, they have the power to think, have beliefs, reason about things, perceive, feel, desire, want, and intend things, and to act intentionally, that is,  with certain aims.  In contrast, it seems like dead matter-- rocks, dirt, twigs, sand, etc.-- doesn’t think, feel, reason, perceive, intend, etc. What’s more, things with minds, but not rocks and the like, can be harmed or feel pain, be responsible or obligated, and behave in ways that are properly evaluated in terms of rightness and wrongness, or success and failure. 

The philosophy of mind, at least in the analytic tradition, seeks to solve or dissolve this mystery of the mind by offering competing theories of how the mind fits into the rest of nature. An important part of this project of “demystifying the mind” is taxonomical and comparative; we want to know: What are the key features (properties, powers) of mind and how do they relate to each other? What sorts of things have those features? And what are the different ways those features can be manifested? In other words, an important part of the project of demystifying the mind involves investigating different kinds of minds, both actual and possible. 

Accordingly, in this course, we will not only investigate the metaphysical question of what mind is and how it relates to the rest of nature and matter, but also what kinds of minds there are. The first half of the course will consider different answers to the questions “What is mind (and how does it relate to matter)?” The second ways in which distinctive features of mind-- thought, perception, agency, language, rationality, sociality, moral cognition, consciousness and self-consciousness,  to name a few-- show up in different kinds of beings. In particular, we will examine continuities and discontinuities between human and non-human animal minds, as well as the possibility of plant and fungal minds, socially extended minds, and machine or artificial minds. 

Our aim will not be to solve the mystery of the mind, but, more modestly, to appreciate its difficulty, complexity, ethical and perhaps also personal significance by grappling with different attempts to illuminate the nature of mind and by examining a multiplicity of modes in which mentality does or might manifest. 

2023, (Spring): “Intro to Philosophy.”

This class will give students a chance to explore some recent debates on socially and politically important topics in contemporary analytic metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of action/moral philosophy, and philosophical psychology/philosophy of mind.  Students will also have a chance to explore some other debates in these or other areas of philosophy (e.g. aesthetics, history of philosophy, political philosophy) through group project work. 

2022, Graduate Seminar (Fall): “Metaphysics: Varieties of Representation.”

Description: Representation is a central notion in contemporary analytic philosophy. Logicians traffic in propositions; ethicists ask whether ethical or moral claims have any representational content; philosophers of science investigate how scientific models support surrogative reasoning; philosophers of language consider what grounds linguistic meaning, what kinds of meaning exist, and how human language could have emerged from nonhuman animal signaling and communication; epistemologists ask how knowledge-- often thought to at least entail certain kinds of mental representations-- is possible; philosophers of perception debate whether perceptual experiences are representational, and how that affects the way in which perception affords knowledge of the empirical world; aestheticians study the nature of art objects and judgements of beauty and value, both of which are widely considered kinds of representations; and philosophers of cognitive science and psychology argue about what roles representations play in cognitive architectures, and how those representations ought to be conceptualized.

Given the central role or roles the notion of representation plays in analytic philosophy, it is natural to ask: What are representations? What is it to represent something and how is representation achieved? What are the essential properties (e.g. success conditions) and key components or aspects (e.g. vehicles, functions) of things that represent? Can we give the same answer for mental representations that we give for public representations? Can we even give the same answer for all varieties of mental representations? Speaking of which, what kinds of representations exist and what are our grounds for thinking that they do? Given the central role or roles the notion of representation plays in analytic philosophy, it is perhaps surprising how difficult it can be to answer these questions adequately!

In this seminar, we will a) examine the philosophically puzzling properties of representations, b) critically consider philosophical accounts of different types of representations, and c) touch on topics like realism and natural kinds that intersect with debates about the nature of representation. Among the kinds of representations we'll investigate include: mental representations, artistic representations, scientific representations, and linguistic representations.

Students seeking credit for this course must I) give a presentation and II) write 7-10K words in total, either in the form of two papers on different topics or two papers on a single topic (where the second paper builds off of the first) covered in the seminar. I will work with students to help them find topics that will connect with their broader research interests. Students will also have a chance to interact virtually (and perhaps even in person) with guest speakers.

2022, (Fall): “Intro to Philosophy.”

This class will give students a chance to explore some recent debates on socially and politically important topics in contemporary analytic metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of action/moral philosophy, and philosophical psychology/philosophy of mind.  Students will also have a chance to explore some other debates in these or other areas of philosophy (e.g. aesthetics, history of philosophy, political philosophy) through group project work. 

University of Tübingen Department of Philosophy

2021, Block Seminar (Winter/Spring): “Millikan’s Beyond Concepts.” With Dr. Krisztina Orban.

2021, Thesis Seminar (Winter/Spring).

University of pittsburgh Department of Philosophy

Primary Instructor

2019, 6-Week Summer Session II: “Philosophy and Public Issues.”

Description: We are faced with a number of pressing social and political issues in 2019. A subset of these will constitute the subject matter of this course. We will explore some of these issues as a class through readings, in-class discussions, and twice-weekly short writing assignments (summaries, discussion questions, warm-ups and reflections). We’ll tackle additional topics through project-group readings (assigned in part on the basis of students’ individual interests) and discussions that will occur on BlackBoard and culminate in two short written assignments and a group panel at the end of the session. A final paper and individual presentation will bring the material you worked on in your groups together with the material you worked on in class.  There’s no exam.

Much of the work we do in this course will be collaborative. Most of the time we spend in class will consist in discussion. Students will grapple with other material with the help of their fellow project-group members (and me) and at the end of the semester they’ll engage their other classmates with what they learned. Finally, students will work together (and with me) to improve written and spoken communication skills in the form of peer-review (and feedback from me). 

The subset of topics we will cover is not exhaustive of the important issues facing us in 2019 nor does the philosophical approach we’ll adopt in grappling with them exhaust all of the philosophical approaches one could fruitfully adopt to grapple with them.

I have selected topics according to i) the ease and elegance with which they can be handled using the philosophical approaches we’ll explore, ii) the quality and approachability of the literature discussing them, iii) my own assessment of the most pressing social and political issues we’re facing, and iv)  what I’m in the best position to teach you given my areas of expertise. Criterion (iii) is subjective in a way that worries me a bit, so I invite student feedback on what topics we cover and I’ll do what I can to accommodate your ideas.

Our philosophical approach to our social and political subject matter will emphasize issues in metaphysics (the study of the natures or essences of things or what exists), epistemology (the study of knowledge), and subsets of these fields including the philosophy of mind and language. A major theme of the course will be the nature (metaphysics) of emotions especially as regards their epistemic (knowledge-related) properties as these relate our social and political subject matter. The reasons for this emphasis include: i) the fact that my own areas of expertise are in metaphysics and epistemology, and especially philosophy of mind (including perception and emotion) and to some extent language, ii) my desire to distinguish this course (“Philosophy of Public Issues”) from other courses you might take (e.g. Political Philosophy or Ethics), and iii) my sincere belief that this philosophical approach contains important insights to help us grapple with the challenges we face, both private and political (to the extent these come apart), in 2019 and beyond.

Syllabus

(Email me if you’d like to see the list of readings for the project-groups. Topics include: Philosophies of Race, Gender, & Identity, Political Language, Environment, and Economics).

2018, 6-Week Summer Session I: “Intro to the Philosophy of Mind.”

Description: A person falling is a cause for concern. A rock falling isn’t, unless, of course, a person or animal risks getting hurt by it. Why do we care what happens to people and animals, but not rocks? The question may seem silly—it seems so obvious, indeed it seems to be built into the way we think about the world, that living things, at least animals, and especially human beings, are sources of moral concern, whereas rocks, sticks, game pieces etc., are not. But what makes animals and humans special in this way? Could it be that other sorts of things—perhaps robots or computers, institutions, plants, bacteria, etc. should also be considered sources of moral concern in the way animals and humans are? And should animals and humans be considered the same or different sorts of sources of moral concern, and why?

Questions like these arise when we face issues such as whether abortion is murder, whether it is unethical to eat meat, whether by using sophisticated robots as mere machines we’d be engaging in a kind of slavery. In essence, these questions are asking what makes a person a person, in the morally relevant sense. For perhaps if we can figure out what traits of persons make them the (hopefully) obvious sources of moral concern they are, we can check whether certain non-persons also have these traits, and thereby settle whether or to what extent they too should be considered sources of moral concern.

This course will approach issues in the philosophy of mind from this kind of ethical lens by exploring candidate answers to the question “what makes a person a person in the morally relevant sense?” including:

1.       Being alive

2.       Being agents

3.       Having a “mind”—i.e. being conscious and/or having intentional states

4.       Being rational and/or being self-conscious

We will draw on a variety of philosophical resources, historical and contemporary, and touch on such topics as the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, animal minds, and personal identity, to name a few.

Syllabus

Writing Section Leader

2018, Fall: “Introduction to Ethics” with Prof. Michael Thompson (2 sections 2x/w).

Recitation Leader

2019, Spring: “Intro to Philosophical Problems” with Dr. Benjamin Schulz (3 sections).

2017, Spring: “Theories of Knowledge and Reality” with Dr. Robert Howton (3 sections)

2016, Fall: “Intro to Philosophy of Mind” with Dr. Robert Howton (3 sections).

2015, Spring: “Philosophy and Science” with Prof. Giovanni Valente (3 sections).

2015, Fall: “Introduction to Philosophical Problems” with James Shaw (3 sections).

Mentoring

2015-2019: Graduate student mentor for undergraduates.

2017-18. Co-Supervisor for the Philosophical Mentoring Program at Pitt (PMP) (an undergraduate mentoring program).

2016, Fall: Mentor and project overseer for Gretchen Rundorff, recipient of the Honors College Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Research Fellowship.

CTY

2013, Summer: “Philosophy of Mind,” Session I at Dickinson College, Session II at Franklin and Marshall College for Johns Hopkins’s Center for Talented Youth (CTY) https://cty.jhu.edu

yoga!

2017, Summer: 200-Hour Teacher Training with Kimberly & Dezza @ The Yoga Hive (Pittsburgh, PA) https://www.yogahivepgh.com