News and Events

Announcement:

Endowed chair to help Department of Philosophy develop master’s program in ethics

After more than 40 years as an engineer, Richard L. Hedden wanted to learn more about the humanities. So he left Los Angeles, moved to Las Cruces, and enrolled at New Mexico State University, signing up for classes in anthropology, history, astronomy, criminal justice, and lately, philosophy.

Hedden thanked the university for his education by leaving a generous financial gift establishing the Richard L. Hedden Endowed Chair in Advanced Philosophical Studies. The endowment will be funded by an initial gift from Hedden with the provision that additional gifts may be made at any time.

The fund will allow the Department of Philosophy to develop a flagship master’s program in ethics and applied ethics by enhancing the annual salary of a new faculty member in the department, providing a graduate assistantship stipend to the department, and providing income for a Philosophy Speaker Series, said Tim Cleveland, academic head of philosophy.

“There’s not really a program like this in the state or region,” Cleveland said. “Richard’s generosity is a huge shot in the arm for us and an incredible show of faith in the department, beyond our wildest expectations.

“We will be poised to make a unique contribution to education in the Southwest. This gift will allow us to hire a new person with a reputation in ethics who can come in here and help us get an applied masters program in ethics off the ground,” Cleveland said, noting that three of the four tenure-track faculty members in philosophy specialize in ethics and applied ethics.

Hedden said he would like the university to offer mandatory classes in citizenship. And he said Plato was probably right when he said, “Don’t study philosophy until you’re 30 years old.”

“If more working adults did this, the whole society would improve,” Hedden said.

By his generous gift that will allow NMSU to offer more advanced ethics classes, Hedden is helping to improve society, too, Cleveland said.

“Teaching ethics courses helps develop in students the critical reflection necessary to be highly effective members of society. It gives them the resources to better handle the difficult moral dilemmas they will face in science, business, agriculture, or life in general,” he said. “The enhanced program in philosophy and ethics made possible by Richard’s generous gift will help produce more ethically sensitive and reflective citizens for New Mexico and will make a distinct contribution to philosophy in the state.”

Bob Nosbisch Aug. 21, 2007

Announcement:

Philosophy Alumni and Faculty Endowed Scholarship

The Philosophy Department awards an annual scholarship of approximately $500 to a Philosophy major who will be either a junior or a senior in the upcoming academic year. Interested parties should submit a letter of application to the Philosophy Department containing content relevant to the following categories:

Your name
Current GPA
Philosophical interests
Philosophical ambitions
Philosophy courses taken, including the grades you received for each course
Perhaps other courses related to philosophy that you have taken, including the grades
Philosophical papers that you have presented (if any)
Philosophical publications (if any)
Membership in any philosophical organizations, including any leadership positions
An argument illustrating why you deserve to be a recipient of this scholarship

A polished, philosophical writing sample will also be welcomed as an optional supplement to your letter of application.

All entries must be submitted to the Philosophy Department by 5:00 pm on April 30.

The Philosophy Department hopes to award the scholarship by the end of this semester.

Events:

Guest Lecturer: Prof. Mark Walker, McMaster University

Date: Thursday, March 6, 2008

Time: 4:00 pm

Place: Hardman Hall, Room 208, NMSU campus

Designer Babies

ABSTRACT: Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) refers to procedures to test genetically embryos in vitro. One means to create "designer babies" is to produce several embryos in the lab and then use PGD to select a candidate (or candidates) for implantation. Those embryos not selected for implantation are typically destroyed or cryogenically preserved. Presently, PGD is used mainly for 'negative selection'. Increasingly, PGD may be employed for 'positive selection,' e.g., it has been used to select embryos for tissue matching to save an elder sibling, and for gender selection. In the near term, there is the distinct possibility that it could be used to select for genes associated with the potential for increased muscle mass, perfect pitch, or high IQ. This paper argues that even if we grant the (contested) claim that embryos are persons, positive selection does not harm the persons created through this process. That is, this paper has the counterintuitive conclusion that a policy that permits positive selection cannot be said to harm those persons created, even if it is foreseeable that tens of thousands of persons will be killed through the process.

Guest Lecturer: Prof. Neil Delaney, Visiting Ryan Chair of Metaphysics and Morals, Georgetown University

Date: Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Time: 4:30 pm

Place: Hardman Hall, Room 208, NMSU campus

Love's Contours

ABSTRACT: This talk offers a substantial romantic ideal for modern Westerners, and makes explicit both the psychological needs people commonly expect romantic love to service and the robust yet conditional commitment it demands. The basic ideas are the following: people regularly want to form an intimate union with another, to be loved for properties of certain sorts, and to have this love generate and sustain a distinctive sort of commitment to them. I close with a detailed account of what I term a "loving commitment."

Guest Lecturer: Prof. John Symons, Philosophy Department, University of Texas-El Paso

Date: Tuesday, December 3, 2007

Time: 4:30 pm

Place: Hardman Hall, Room 208, NMSU campus

Pain and Embodiment

ABSTRACT: What is the relationship between our bodies and our pains? Many philosophers have argued that there is something ontologically special about qualitative experience and that pains do not necessarily have anything to do with bodies. Such arguments move from claiming that we have special epistemic access to qualia to the ontological claim that qualitative states are non-physical. Specifically, Saul Kripke argued that because we know the essence of pain and because we can conceive of disembodied agents who suffer pain there is no way to identify pain with any physical state. This talk examines both components of Kripke’s argument and challenges the identification of my pains with the pains of possible non-physical agents. The talk concludes by rejecting the identification of embodied pains with stipulated pains.

Guest Lecturer: Prof. Daniel Nathan, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Philosophy, Texas Tech University

Date: Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Time: 2:30 pm

Place: Hardman Hall, Room 114, NMSU campus

Authors and Authority

ABSTRACT: The words ‘author’ and ‘authority’ are clearly related, but how far does the relationship go? Are authors authoritative in the sense of being the conclusive determinant of the meaning of what they write or say? Many people have argued this is so with regard to literature and other art forms. This talk will begin with some reasons why this could not be true about art generally or literature in particular. But, is law the same in this regard? It appears that the authority of a legal text presupposes certain things be true of its author. Some legal theorists have argued that legal authority in fact requires that the meaning of a law must be the one intended by its author. I will examine some of these arguments, and compare the issue of interpretation as it arises in law and the arts.

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