Note from the Chair:

I am pleased to bring you the 2024-25 Newsletter for the Sage School of Philosophy. The department has had a banner year. I’ll report a few of the highlights.

We are delighted to welcome two new members to the department. Justin Steinberg joins the department as a full professor. Justin works in the history of modern philosophy, boasting, among other things, a great book on Spinoza’s political philosophy. You can learn more from the latest interview with Justin.

Toni Alimi is a new assistant professor. Toni’s arrival in the department coincides with the publication of his first book, Slaves of God, a bold new look at the role of slavery in Medieval philosophical thought. Toni has also already added a new undergraduate course into our curriculum – The Meaning of Life – which we are excited to bring to our students.

In August the Sage School welcomed Jacquelyn Johnson as our new EPL Coordinator. Jacquelyn replaces Shannon Adamsen, who had been with the department since 2020.

In other departmental news, I am very pleased to announce that Harold Hodes has been promoted to Professor. The entire department shares warm congratulations with Harold on this richly deserved recognition of his accomplishments. 

Two Sage School Philosophers published books that had a much broader reach than most philosophy books. David Shoemaker’s Wisecracks was reviewed in The Atlantic, Choice, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Shoemaker explores the most common kind of humor we experience. It isn’t jokes, it’s wisecracking-the kind of ad-lib funny interactions we have with our friends. Despite its ubiquity, this kind of humor has been entirely neglected by philosophers. Dave puts it on the intellectual map, and he argues that it deserves a central location. The review in The Chronicle of Higher Education remarks that part of the importance of the work “is Shoemaker’s sensitive attention to the social and psychic benefits of wisecracking and his willingness to defend it despite the harms that it can cause.”

Kate Manne’s Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia was listed as one of the best books of the year by the New Yorker and by NPR, and it was a finalist for the National Book Award! In addition to being rigorous philosophy, it’s a gripping read, as reflected in this remark from NPR: “[Unshrinking] blew my mind right from the start...I couldn’t stop talking about this book with fellow parents at school drop-off or at home with my spouse -and I gave a copy to my mom when I finished reading it.” And here’s a snippet from the Chicago Review of Books rave: “A breathtaking work of meticulous research, philosophical rigor, and personal anecdote. Manne argues that “fatphobia” [has] catastrophic results: limiting the freedoms and opportunities of fat people, and also - as Manne demonstrates persuasively yet heartbreakingly over the course of the book - causing them serious harm.”

The department also enjoyed national recognition. This year, the Sage School was ranked #1 in the country in Ancient Philosophy and in Moral Psychology. In Fall 2024, these groups joined to launch the first annual T. H. Irwin Lecture Series in the History of Moral Psychology. In addition, John Doris, Laura Niemi (Cornell Psychology), and I ran a month-long Summer Institute in Moral Psychology, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The students at the Institute were 21 scholars and scientists, ranging from graduate students to full professors; the feedback has been very positive – students reported that the experience is already having a transformative effect on their careers.

The Program on Ethics & Public Life (EPL) has continued to thrive with the Ethics Colloquium Series and the hugely successful Law & Society minor. This year, EPL also organized and hosted the first ever ColdWAR - a Workshop on Agency and Responsibility in the Cold - inviting in four outstanding younger scholars from around the U.S. to discuss their latest work with our own experts in agency and responsibility (both faculty and grad students). EPL also continued to sponsor the annual Mind and Value conference, organized by Emad Atiq (Emad is also featured in a new interview).

Turning, finally, to our educational mission. Our classes continue to draw students from A&S and indeed across the university. This is a testament to the great value of philosophical education in teaching students how to think carefully. It is also, of course, a testament to the excellence of our teachers and courses. And a large part of our pedagogical successes are due to the terrific students! The always amazing Logos, our Undergraduate Philosophy Club, held the annual Norman-Kretzmann undergraduate conference and continues to run the best undergrad philosophy journal in the country. They also again hosted the Apocalypse debate where professors from different disciplines argue which discipline should be preserved in the apocalypse.  Ahem…Philosophy won (thanks Emad!).

Shaun Nichols
Chair & Distinguished Professor of Arts & Sciences in Philosophy

There are lots of ways to support us: 
You can support undergraduates in LOGOS. 
You can provide travel grants for graduate students to present their papers at conferences.
You can support faculty research. 
In addition to one-time gifts, you may also create an endowment to fund an activity, seminar series, or faculty position in perpetuity.

News since last publish: 

Spotlight on Employee Degree undergrad: Derrick Jones
Derrick Jones, working in IT security at Cornell, talked about the benefits of the employee degree program and how a degree in Philosophy has shaped his academic and professional journey. 

Spotlight on Kim Montpelier
Recent graduate Kim Montpelier reflected on her four years at Cornell as philosophy major. 

Humanities Scholars work on AI and Supreme Court
Recent Philosophy graduate and Humanities Scholar Ethan Kovnat researched and rebutted a philosopher who claimed that people with autism are not “moral agents.”

American Forensics Association National Speech Tournament in April
Jaliah Smith ‘25, philosophy major, and the rest of the Cornell Speech Team took home top honors at the American Forensics Association National Speech Tournament

LOGOS journal winner, Vonnegut
Philosophy majors Sophia Gottfried ‘25 and Ethan Kovnat ‘24 describe the process of awarding the top prize of the 2024 edition of LOGOS

History of the Sage Professorship
In honor of Giving Day, Alumni Affairs and Development published a piece on the history of the Sage School of Philosophy. 

Logos Notes:

After a busy Fall semester where Logos hosted a wildly successful Apocalypse debate and a mass of successful meetings (including hosting Toni Alimi for a book talk), the club entered the Spring semester with boisterous enthusiasm. The Logos Journal has a record-breaking number of twenty-five editors, which is the first time Logos editorial meetings have ever hit room capacity, and they are working hard evaluating works from undergraduates around the world. Additionally, Logos is planning its second annual Norman-Kretzmann undergraduate conference. This event will occur on April 26th, host Ben Bradley from Syracuse, three undergraduate colloquia speakers, and a whole swarm of undergraduate posters. Logos, when not focused on grand projects, hosts movie nights, game nights, and other causal events in order to forge friendships among undergraduates interested in philosophy.

Sophia Gottfried | Logos President

Faculty:

John Doris published an op-ed titled “Milgram’s Infamous Shock Studies Still Hold Lessons for Confronting Authoritarianism" in Scientific American. He issued “Making the Best of Things: Character Skepticism and Cross-Cultural Philosophy” in Philosophy East & West, as well as “True Believers: The Incredulity Hypothesis and the Enduring Legacy of the Obedience Experiments” in Philosophia Scientiae: Travaux d'histoire et de philosophie des sciences. He was President-elect of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, as well as worked to get funding for the Humanities Summer Institute in Moral Psychology at Cornell University in summer 2024. 

Rachana Kamtekar authored “Commensuration and Currency in Plato’s Phaedo” in Rhizomata and “Causal Pluralism in Plato and Vasubandhu” in Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Caves. In addition, Kamtekar co-published “Plato’s Scientific Feminism: Collection and Division in Republic V’s ‘First Wave’” in the The Routledge Champion to Women and Gender in Antiquity, as well as "Aristotle's Social and Political Philosophy” in D’Agostino and Muldoon in Routledge Companion to Political and Social Philosophy. Her work this year also includes an edit of Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy vols. 63 and 64. 

Kate Manne's third book, Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia came out in January 2024 and has since been reviewed by many outlets and granted the National Book Award. This month, she co-hosted a talk Is Fat Female? that was co-sponsored by the Philosophy Department and the other on campus departments. She was also awarded 2024 Lebowitz Prize and gave talks at the Boheim Lecture at Marquette, the Stiernotte Lecture at Quinnipiac, the Plenary Address at the NCHC (National Collegiate of Honors Council) Conference, and closing address for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Among her upcoming projects, she will give a lecture at the Pacific APA in April 2025. Kate Manne received the Inclusive Excellence Award.

Shaun Nichols continues to publish on Buddhist philosophy of mind. The latest entry appeared in Philosophy & Phenomenological Research and explores how Buddhists can endorse vows with denying the self. He has been experimentally exploring the idea that it’s a universal feature of the human mind to presuppose that there has to be some kind of explanation for anything that exists. In a third project, along with a former Cornell undergrad, Shaun has been investigating how norms (e.g., it’s wrong to take from others) might emerge culturally from judgments of prudence (e.g., it’s imprudent to take from others).  

Carlotta Pavese co-published “Technical knowledge as scientific knowledge in Aristotle” that has been accepted by and forthcoming in Phronesis. Her other recently published works include "Intentionalism out of Control” to be published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy and “Knowledge, Skills, and Credibility” in Philosophical Studies. In 2024, she hosted a keynote lecture at the Summer School in Epistemology, awarded a visiting fellowship at Center for Advanced Studies at LMU Munich, and worked with The Cogito-European Research Council Knowledge-Lab Research Excellence.

Dave Shoemaker issued The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation in the Oxford University Press, Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life in the University of Chicago Press, “The Identity of What? Pluralism, Practical Interests, and Individuation,” in Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, and co-edited the Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility via the Oxford University Press. His other works include “Quarrels & Cracks: On the Values of Comic Distraction” and “From Amusement to the Amusing: A Sentimentalist Theory of Humor.” He has presented his work and ideas through various keynote speaker opportunities at Cornell, University of Southern California, and University of Delaware.

Nico Silins published “The Conscious Theory of Higher-Orderness” in Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind and was a keynote speaker at the Graduate Conference in Epistemology, University of Rochester. He’s also presented his work “The Lamp that Illuminates Itself: Consciousness and Inner Awareness” At Vin University, Hanoi; Kobe University; and Université de Montréal. 

Graduate Students: 

Leonel Alvarez Ceja presented “Chicanx Triangulation from Double Consciousness?” at last year's Creighton Club Conference at the University of Syracuse, where he took home the Graduate Student Presentation Award, and International Social Ontology Society Conference at Duke University. Ceja also served as a graduate mentor at the Rutgers Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy. 

Migdalia Arcila Valenzuela was interviewed in Why Philosophy?, as well as made a guest post for the Epistemic Injustice under the Healthcare blog domain titled “Testimonial Injustice: The Facts of the Matter.” She also published Visualizing Taxonomic Reasoning: Casta Paintings and the Hierarchization of Bodily Differences in Critical Philosophy of Race and her work in Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Vol. 9 is forthcoming. She also presented her paper “On Not Knowing Your Place: An Agnostic Model of Pride” at the University of Toronto and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. 

Bobbi Cohn's paper "Gaslighting-Up: When Gaslighting is Good" is forthcoming in Feminist Philosophy Quarterly. Cohn also recently contributed a chapter, "Rewriting Pedagogy," to the second edition of The Art of Teaching Philosophy: Reflective Values and Concrete Practices, edited by Brynn F. Welch, which is forthcoming in 2026 with Bloomsbury Press.

Adelle Goldenberg recently presented “A Beauvoirian Analysis of Ageism: Children & the Elderly as ‘Other’” at the Arizona Feminist Philosophy Graduate Conference. She also presented “A Pro-Choice, Anti-Ableist Abortion Politics” at the Central Division APA. 

Edvard Meza won The Sadov Graduate Student Fellowship.

Joseph Orttung is a fifth year graduate student and recently confirmed his Bersoff Faculty Fellowship at New York University (postdoc) for the 2025-2026 academic year. 

Arundhati Singh launched The Pinkonomics Podcast that explores “the economics of womanhood, with perspectives from philosophy, economics, sociology, and law.” You can read more in the article here. 

Anni Sun presented her paper "Better than the Best? Supererogation in Deontic Modality" at the USC-UCLA Philosophy Graduate Student Conference, along with another paper, " The Inheritance of 'Ought' and Action Entailment," at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Philosophy Graduate Student Conference.

Matthew Augustus Turyn presented his papers “Imagination, Identity, and Mental Files” at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, “Hurt Feelings and Excuses” at the Rocky Mountain Ethnics Congress, and “Gaslighting, Knowledge Norms, and Knowing What We Know” at the Eastern Division Meeting of the APA.

Giving Day

The College of Arts & Sciences is preparing for Giving Day on Thursday, March 13 and we hope the whole Cornell community can join in to support the work and growth of our students and faculty. 

Your gifts help support many aspects of the Sage School of Philosophy and its mission. Click here to make a gift online in support of our department.

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Compiled and Published by Melissa Totman and Tenzin Kunsang
philosophy@cornell.edu

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