DANTE SOCIETY PRESENTS

ISSUING CITATIONS:

A space for graduate students and early career faculty alike to co-present, interact, and form connections across disciplinary lines.

Issuing Citations (IC) is a public-facing event series aimed at fostering research connections, nurturing inchoate projects, and providing an organizational catalyst for future conferences and publications.

For more information, or to learn about presentation opportunities, please contact us at admin@beatriceinstitute.org.

Juliana Knot

Correlation is Causation: Some Formal Properties of INUS Causation

Regularity theories, most famously articulated by David Hume, deny the adage: “causation is not correlation.” In “Cement of the Universe,” J.L. Mackie built on Hume’s description to ground causality as an “insufficient but non-redundant part of an unnecessary but sufficient condition.” I argue that coincidences contain more capacity for structure than previously shown and make plain how coincidences can yield to more thoroughgoing causal inference, analogous to graphical models. This account includes transitive causal chains, hypothetical reasoning, predicting outcomes of interventions, differentiating between chains and common causes, and discovering unobserved common causes.

Juliana is pursuing her masters in Logic, Computation and Methodology. She studies in the Philosophy Department of the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests include causality, the history and philosophy of mathematics, and logic.

Lucas Carroll

The Fragile Word: Metaphysics and the Conservation of Theoreticity

Lucas stages a connection between metaphysical discourse and the theoretical word. He argues that metaphysics is the reflexive self-affirmation of theoreticity as such—and that, this being the case, there exists a specific and urgent vocation of metaphysics vis-à-vis the human possibility for uttering a word of truth, for theoreticity. He sheds light on the concept of "theory" by resituating it within its originating metaphorical context. Then, he speaks about theoreticity-in-itself, and defines metaphysical discourse as theoreticity-for-itself. He deploys the primary theorem of metaphysics: "theoreticity is," and turns in his claims to the paradoxes involved in determining this affirmation. He resolves these paradoxes by exhibiting the real fragility of theoreticity. Lastly, he shows how, in light of the contingent subtraction of theoreticity, metaphysical discourse can be understood as the formal conservator of the theoretical word.

Sarah Moore

"I Don't Expect to Be Forgiven" : How YouTubers Navigate Identity Formation Through Enregistering the "YouTube Apology"

Apologies can take many forms, and "I'm sorry" can convey many meanings depending on the delivery of the message. In an attempt to better understand apologies made in digital spaces, this study focuses on investigating how YouTubers negotiate their online identity and resolve conflict while making apologies through semiotic strategies including language, dress, environment, and video recording techniques. It also seeks to find if the patterning of these strategies has become a mainstream, cross-linguistic template in an age of digitally mediated globalization.

Twenty videos from both English-speaking and Brazilian Portuguese-speaking YouTubers have been analyzed for the use of six apology strategies adapted from Blum-Kula et al's (1989) CCSARP Coding Manual for Apologies. Results of this study suggest that the "YouTube apology video" is enregistered via pragmatic apology strategies and semiotic devices across languages.

Raimundo Cox

Kant and the Question of Metaphysics

Since Aristotle, philosophers have aimed to develop a science that explains the fundamental principles and causes of reality. For centuries, this discipline—metaphysics—was seen as essential for grounding our understanding of the world, our moral principles, and even our religious beliefs. But in the Modern era, metaphysics came under increasing suspicion, and today metaphysical claims often strike us as obscure or untrustworthy.

In this talk, I explore how the philosopher Immanuel Kant confronted this crisis. Although Kant is often portrayed as an opponent of metaphysics, I will show that his project is not simply to criticize metaphysical speculation. Rather, Kant seeks to rescue and transform metaphysics by giving it a new scientific foundation. My aim is to explain, in accessible terms, how Kant redefines the scope and method of metaphysics and why his approach may still matter for contemporary questions about knowledge, morality, and religion.