February 16, 2021

11:20 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.

Virtual Webinar
Please register in advance at: https://tinyurl.com/HSClecture
No charge to attend
Everyone is welcome from campus and community

Dr. Myisha Cherry describes herself as a philosopher striving to provide value and provoke thought. She’s primarily interested in the role of emotions and attitudes in public life. In her talk, Dr. Cherry will introduce a concept that she refers to as “racialized forgiveness.” She will argue that the practice of this type of forgiveness is morally objectionable because of its psychological origins, moral failures, and negative effects. She’ll then claim we need to practice forgiveness differently.

Myisha Cherry, Ph.D.

Dr. Cherry is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interest lies at the intersection of moral psychology and social and political philosophy. Cherry is also the host of the UnMute Podcast, a podcast where she interviews philosophers about the social and political issues of our day.

Cherry’s books include The Moral Psychology of Anger co-edited with Owen Flanagan (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) and Unmuted: Conversations on Prejudice, Oppression, and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2019). Her next book, The Case for Rage: On the Role of Anger in Anti-racist struggle, will be released in Fall 2021 by Oxford University Press. After a 10-way auction, Princeton University Press won North American rights to her book “The Failures of Forgiveness.” It is slated for a Spring 2023 release. Cherry has also written about emotions and race in such journals as Hypatia, Radical Philosophy Review, and Critical Philosophy of Race.

The Harold Stoner Clark Lecture Series, endowed by the late Mr. Clark and sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, was established in 1985. For further information visit CalLutheran.edu/HSC or contact Lacey Davidson at: ljdavidson@callutheran.edu 805-493-3714.

Quayshawn Spencer’s 4 p.m. lecture is available for live stream on demand at www.callutheran.edu/live.

We regret that the 11 a.m. lecture is unavailable due to technical failure during recording.

We invite you to visit Quayshawn Spencer’s website for more information on his topics at https://sites.google.com/site/qnjspencer/

Friday, February 14, 2020

Pre-lecture Discussion: “What is Race and Why is the Question Important?”

2:15-3:15 pm, Overton Hall

Join us for a pre-lecture discussion with Assistant Professor Brian J. Collins. The goal of this presentation and discussion is to offer an introduction to the topic and help familiarize everyone with the theme of this year’s lectures.

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Lecture 1: When Population Genetics Meets the Metaphysics of Race

11:10 am, Samuelson Chapel

The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) obtained the first large-scale sample of human genomes in the history of genetics. The results of the first study of HGDP genomes appeared in a now landmark paper in Science in 2002. The most famous and controversial result from this paper—and that we now know is robust—is that the human species naturally subdivides into five groups based on genomic similarity: Sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, Caucasians, Native Americans, and Oceanians.

However, it didn’t take long before geneticists started asking what else are these groups? A consensus quickly arose that these groups are biological populations. However, geneticists are still split on whether these groups are races. In this talk, I argue that these five human populations are races because they are, in fact, identical to the US government’s official races. After defending my argument, I explore implications for NIH-funded clinical research in medical genetics.

Lecture 2: A Radical Solution to the Race Problem

4:00 pm, Samuelson Chapel

In this talk, I use the results of the first lecture to show that the US government’s official race talk is about a biological division of people that’s biologically real. After defending this position, I turn to applying this result to the US race debate—the debate about the nature and reality of race according to US race talk. Since its inception, the US race debate has been completely dominated by monist race theories insofar as philosophers have always argued that there is a single, correct way to characterize what race is and its reality status.

For example, the social constructionists have argued that race is a non-biological social construct that’s socially real. However, using my previous results, I show that all monist US race theories are incorrect. Instead, I show that the correct race theory for our country is one that has a radically pluralist form and content.

Quayshawn Spencer, Ph.D.

Quayshawn Spencer is the Robert S. Blank Presidential Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds both a PhD in philosophy and an MS in biology from Stanford University.

Spencer specializes in philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, and philosophy of race. In all three of his specializations, Spencer focuses on metaphysical problems, such as how to appropriately define ‘natural kind,’ whether biological populations can have fuzzy temporal parts, and whether any folk racial classification divides humans into real biological groups.

Spencer has published several journal articles on the topic of race & biology, but he’s best known for “What ‘biological racial realism’ should mean” in Philosophical Studies (2012), and “A Radical Solution to the Race Problem” in Philosophy of Science (2014). Spencer also has one published book with Oxford University Press, What is Race? Four Philosophical Views (with Glasgow, Haslanger, and Jeffers), and one forthcoming edited volume with the same press, The Race Debates from Metaphysics to Medicine.

Looking in the AI Mirror

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
11:10 am, Samuelson Chapel

Artificial intelligence is not a technology of the future, but of the present. We already reap immense benefits from AI systems, and they are already behaving badly: issuing judgments with harmful racial, gender and class biases; failing to “see” people at the margins of society; prioritizing efficiency over humane values; and exploiting unjust imbalances in power and privilege. These are familiar vices. Indeed, AI is a mirror reflecting images of our own humanity. In this talk, I explore what we can learn from the AI mirror and how the lessons can drive the development of a more humane future.

How to Cultivate Humane Machines (and People)

Tuesday, February 20, 2018
4:00 pm, Samuelson Chapel

The art of moral self-cultivation is perhaps the only unique capacity of our species, and failing to practice it has, today, increasingly devastating consequences on local and planetary scales. Reclaiming the art of cultivating our humanity—pushing ourselves toward ideals that lie beyond our present impulses and habits—may be essential to averting catastrophe for our species and for many others. I discuss how the creation of intelligent machines, including attempts to make them more humane, might serve as a source of inspiration for this endangered art.

Shannon Vallor

Shannon Vallor is the William J. Rewak, S.J. Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, where she researches the ethics of emerging technologies. She is the author of Technology and the Virtues:  A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting from Oxford University Press(2016) and editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology. Her many awards include the 2015 World Technology Award in Ethics and multiple teaching honors. She serves on the board of the nonprofit Foundation for Responsible Robotics and regularly advises tech media, legislators, policymakers, investors, executives, engineers and design teams.

Pre-lecture Discussion

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2018 at 11:25 am
Swenson 104

Join us for a discussion in anticipation of the Harold Stoner Clark Lectures. Faculty, staff, students and classes are welcome! The goal of this presentation and discussion is to familiarize everyone with the topics of the Feb. 20 lectures.

For more information please contact Brian Collins

The things that people eat have always undergone change, but today there are both technological innovations and novel environmental constraints that are driving change. How can we bring ethics to bear on the types of change that are shaping the food systems of the future? Paul Thompson will probe this question, emphasizing the way that we assess the risks of new food technology and scenarios for reshaping the food system in response to future challenges.

Four Archetypes for Future Food Systems

Tuesday, February 21, 2017
11:10 am, Samuelson Chapel

In the coming half century our food systems will be stressed by climate change, increased urbanization and growing scarcity of resources relative to human population. Four archetypal characterizations of how food will be produced, processed, distributed and consumed can help us generate scenarios to consider these changes. These archetypes help us consider the environmental sustainability and food justice of food system change.

Social Amplification of Risk: The Ethical Questions

Tuesday, February 21, 2017
4:00 pm, Samuelson Chapel

Risk scholars have shown how assessments of biophysical hazards are influenced by social factors ranging from race and gender to stigma and outrage. But are there cases in which these influences should be regarded as legitimate factors that should be accounted for in our assessment and management of risk? The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no and sometimes it’s hard to say. Each of these cases will be reviewed using examples from innovations in food production.

Paul B. Thompson

Paul B. Thompson is the W.K. Kellogg Professor of Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University, where he also is a faculty member in the departments of Philosophy; Community Sustainability; and Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics. He has served in an advisory role to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and Genome Canada as well as to farm producer groups. His research explores ethical issues arising across the spectrum of food production, distribution and consumption, including biotechnology, animal welfare and food security. Trained in philosophy, Thompson is a two-time winner of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Award for Excellence in Communication. His book From Field to Fork: Food Ethics for Everyone (Oxford, 2015) was selected as “Book of the Year” by the North American Society for Social Philosophy.

Pre-lecture Discussion

Friday, Feb. 17, 2017 at 11:45 am
Lundring Events Center

Join us for a discussion in anticipation of the Harold Stoner Clark Lectures. Faculty, staff, students and classes are welcome! The goal of this presentation and discussion is to familiarize everyone with the topics of the Feb. 21 lectures.

For more information please contact Brian Collins

Holding Corporate Bodies Responsible

Tuesday, February 16, 2016
11:10 am, Samuelson Chapel

Watch Video

Agents are fit to be held morally responsible insofar as two conditions are fulfilled. One, they can make judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, determining the relative merits of the options they face in any choice. And, two, they can act on their judgment of those merits, pursuing the right and avoiding the wrong. I argue that corporate bodies have both of these capacities and arefit to be held responsible for what they do. This means that we can hold them accountable in both a legal and a moral sense, can blame and sanction them, and can require certain behaviors of them as corporate citizens.

Granting Corporate Bodies Rights

Tuesday, February 16, 2016
4:00 pm, Samuelson Chapel

Watch Video

If corporate bodies are to have responsibilities in their own name, however, shouldn’t they also have rights in their own name? Yes, but only under strict limits. There is a tradition in U.S. jurisprudence that suggests otherwise, arguing that corporate bodies are legal persons and that the 14th Amendment protects them, as persons, in the way in which it was designed to protect emancipated slaves. Against that tradition, I maintain that the concerns and interests of individual citizens should always take primacy. Corporate bodies should be given rights, but not on the same basis or in the same range as individual human beings.

Philip Pettit

Philip Pettit is L. S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, and Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra. His books include Republicanism (1997), The Economy of Esteem (2004) with G. Brennan; Group Agency (2011) with C. List; On the People’s Terms (2012); Just Freedom (2014); and The Robust Demands of the Good (2015). He is a Fellow of the Australian academies of Humanities and Social Sciences as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy and the Royal Irish Academy. He gave the Tanner Lectures in Berkeley in 2015 and will give the Locke lectures in Philosophy at Oxford in 2019. Common Minds: Themes from the Philosophy of Philip Pettit appeared from Oxford University Press in 2007.