Jennifer Foster
about me
I'm a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at University of Southern California, dissertating under the supervision of Mark Schroeder and Robin Jeshion.
My dissertation explores the concepts of doxastic courage and cowardice – that is, how forming (or omitting to form) beliefs can be a kind of moral virtue or vice – and their relationship to doxastic anxiety and political conflict. It is a project in epistemology, social and political philosophy, virtue theory, and the ethics of belief. But whereas most recent work on the ethics of belief focuses on the wrongs of positive belief, my virtue-theoretic approach highlights how lack of belief can wrong. Contrary to many moral and political exhortations to practice epistemic humility, there is such a thing as being too open-minded.
Aside from my dissertation, I have projects in philosophy language, metaethics, and aesthetics. I am particularly interested in how social and evaluative language, especially figurative language works – semantically, pragmatically politically. In this vein, I also work on the semantics of slurs and their relationship to other derogatory and nonderogatory evaluative expressions, as well as aesthetic terms.
jennifnh at usc dot edu
upcoming talks
APR
5
Comments on Teresa Bruno-Niño's "The Limits of the Pragmatic Account of Moral Categoricity"
2021 Pacific Meeting, American Philosophical Association
(rescheduled due to COVID19)
TBA
'21
Are Women "Free and Equal" in Rawls's Well-Ordered Society?
2020 Vancouver Summer Philosophy Conference (VSPC), postponed by COVID-19 until TBA 2021
recent presentations
Comments on Gözde Yildirim's "Rough Heroes Revisited"
Feb. 2021 Central Meeting, American Philosophical Association
Comments on Bianca Takaoka's "The Social Value of Insults"
Jan. 2021 Eastern Meeting, American Philosophical Association, Online
Comments on Gretchen Ellefson's "The Cooperative Principle Revisited"
Aug. 2019 Vancouver Summer Philosophy Conference (VSPC), Univ. of British Columbia
Are Women "Free and Equal" in Rawls's Well-Ordered Society?
2019 Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress (RoME), University of Colorado, Boulder
Comments on Tarasenko-Struc's "Objectification and Domination"
2019 Bay Area Feminism & Philosophy Workshop (BayFAP), University of San Francisco, CA
Not-At-Issue: The Normative “Flavor” of Instrumental Necessities
Apr. 2019. The American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, Vancouver, BC
Comments on Dan Zeman’s “Self-Identificatory Uses of Slurs & Their Semantics"
Feb. 2019. The American Philosophical Association, Central Division, Denver, CO
with my partner and colleague, Daniel Pallies, at SCSCA San Diego, 2018
