Ari Deller (St. Peter's): 'Inquiry, Loss of Perspective and Resulting Downstream Harms'
Abstract:What does it take to imagine what it’s like to be Vito Corleone, the patriarch in the movie, ‘the Godfather’? Merely imagining some propositions to be true, such as ‘I am the head of a New York crime family’, while retaining one’s current cognitive, affective and motivational dispositions, will not cut it. Rather, imagining what it’s like to be Corleone involves structuring one’s intuitive thinking as Corleone does, taking on his ‘perspective’.
In this talk, I’ll expound some recent work by Elisabeth Camp and Paulina Sliwa on the notion of perspectives before making two contributions to the literature. First I’ll argue, against the received view, that perspectives are subject to propositional defeat. That is, learning that p can make it unfitting to take up some relevant perspective. Second, I’ll point to some ethical roles which perspectives play, and the ethical harms that can result from being inhibited from taking up perspectives on particular subject matter. I’ll end by concluding that we have pro tanto ethical reason not to learn some propositions, because of the effect that they have in making the uptake of particular perspectives unfitting.
