16th Annual PhilFEST
16th PhilFEST on April 30th, 2025
PhilFEST is the highlight of our undergraduate community’s life in which honors students present their research in 15-20 minute presentations followed by a public Q&A. This year, an audience of almost 50 persons –faculty from inside and outside the department, students, and interested listeners at large - engaged with and vibrantly discussed our students’ fascinating series of presentations about their research results. The research projects presented were, in the order of appearance:
Asiah Florczak: “Playing with Purpose: The Moral Obligations of WNBA Superstars”? (Supervisor: Corey Barnes)
This paper employs a Black feminist framework to examine Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) superstars’ moral duties in social activism. It builds on the current literature around moral duty and activism with a focus on marginalized individuals with a superstar status which has been widely disregarded in the mainstream discourse. Expanding on previous arguments centered on Black NBA superstars, this paper argues that WNBA superstars, who navigate intersecting oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and economic marginalization, also bear a moral duty to engage in activism. However, their obligation is comparatively reduced due to their lower levels of social and economic capital in comparison to their NBA counterparts. Drawing on Black feminist thought, the paper critiques traditional feminist and male-dominated frameworks for failing to adequately address the moral duties of WNBA athletes. Additionally, the paper critiques the failure of prominent athletes like Caitlin Clark to fulfill these duties.
Calvin Xu: Meaningfulness and Authenticity: The Standards of Work in a Fully Flourishing Life (Supervisor: Mark Alznauer)
It has been almost two centuries since Marx argued that labor, under capitalism, was ‘alienated’. Since then, the economic landscape has changed dramatically. In this paper, however, I argue that the concept of labor ‘alienation’ remains very much relevant today. In doing so, I develop two criteria for work to be unalienated: meaningfulness and authenticity. On my view, only work which is meaningful – that is, objectively forwards the good of the community – and authentic, experienced subjectively as a ‘calling’ which compels you to choose it on pain of failing a duty to yourself, could be part of a fully flourishing human life. I defend this account against three possible counterarguments: that it is infeasible, overdemanding, and insufficient.
Meli Canales: The Immoral Nature of Collective Unfreedom (Supervisor: Pascal Brixel)
G.A. Cohen argues that proletarians are individually free from selling their labor even as the proletariat is collectively unfree in this same sense. I moralize this account of collective unfreedom by first arguing that, under capitalism, when one sells one’s labor, as proletarians do, one is necessarily dominated by one’s employer. This domination undermines the respect owed to all people on the basis of their status as equal persons. Moreover, because proletarian collective unfreedom only allows people to avoid selling their labor (and thereby avoid domination) by becoming a capitalist, their freedom from domination hinges on their class status, not their equal personhood, meaning that even capitalists are not respected in the way they are owed. I conclude, then, that proletarian collective unfreedom undermines everyone’s claim to respect.
Mollie Guba: A Kantian Perspective on Plea Bargaining in the US (Supervisor: Mark Alznauer)
In recent decades, the process of resolving criminal cases in U.S. courts has become dominated by plea bargains. Today, 98% of federal convictions and 95% of state-level convictions are reached through plea deals rather than a jury trial. While scholars have explored the legal and sociological implications of the prevalence of plea bargains, little attention has been paid to its ethical implications. In this paper, I argue that these ethical issues are most clearly illuminated through the lens of Immanuel Kant’s theory of punishment. To provide real-world context for my ethical analysis, I share insights into plea bargaining practices from interviews I have conducted with attorneys. I find that a Kantian evaluation of these insights highlights three undervalued normative principles we ought to prioritize in the future of the criminal justice system: (1) avoiding efficiency-driven criminal punishment, (2) imposing proportionate punishments, and (3) preserving the law’s legitimacy.
Ann Nguyen Gaither: Moral Language Disagreements as Hermeneutical Disagreements (Supervisor: Peter Van Elswyk)
Fraught moral disagreements may stagnate for several reasons: one being that stakeholders may disagree about what words to use to describe the features of a situation. I focus on this phenomenon through the lens of the disagreement between those who advocate for the use of “female genital mutilation” and others who advocate to use “female genital cutting.” The ideal resolution might be to agree on the most accurate language to “frame the debate.” This doesn’t quite work because agents in this disagreement don’t necessarily possess differing general attitudes towards the practice they discuss—rather, they possess differing perspectives. Moral language is a directive to consider and adopt a certain perspective, and hermeneutic disagreements arise over what perspectives agents find apt given their current position in a fraught moral terrain. Finding an apt-perspective—and words that yield that perspective—is useful for those in these difficult situations, and forcing agreement does not yield the kinds of benefits suggested by the debate ideal of language disagreement.
Clary Doyle: What’s Love Got To Do With It? (Supervisor: Kyla Ebels-Duggan)
Many modern moral philosophers believe that love and morality sometimes direct us to act in different ways. Morality is about impartiality while love usually entails being partial to one person in particular. In 1964, the philosopher Iris Murdoch argued otherwise, saying that love should be the central moral concept. In my presentation, I develop a conception of love as a realization of another’s value and a conception of respect as a belief about another’s value. This distinction, I argue, helps us solve a few philosophical problems. First, it helps explain how love is the central moral concept. It gives insight into how to address Prichard’s Dilemma. And, finally, it follows from it that morality and love are not competing directives in our practical reasoning.
Andrew Chin: Why Be Moral? A Kantian Answer (Again) (Supervisor: Kyla Ebels-Duggan)
This presentation is interested in the question Why be moral? Why can’t one be free? Kant famously dismisses the question by saying that morality is freedom. In this presentation, I will unpack Kant’s argument for it and further argue that Kant fails to see the force of his own argument. Specifically, I offer a reinterpretation of Kant’s argument as one that describes the practical experience of freedom and takes morality as the condition that makes such experience possible. This allows us to see that it is not an accident that morality and freedom converge. Then, the reason why one should be moral is that being moral is necessary for one to be consistent with one’s practical experience. Lastly, I conclude that this argument is more general than it seems. Other issues in moral philosophy, such as the values of others and animals, can be similarly addressed by seeking the conditions for corresponding practical experience.