Garrett Pendergraft
B.S., University of Southern California
M.A., University of Missouri-Columbia
gpend002@ucr.edu
I have a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (back when they were bad at football) and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Missouri (which also happens to be better at football since I left). I’m now in my third year at UCR (which doesn’t have a football team [which is probably for the best]), and when I’m not watching football or hanging out with my family, I like to read and write about Action Theory (free will, moral responsibility, and related practices), Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophy of Religion. If I had a motto, it would be “Eschew obfuscation.” Here are a few highlights from my CV:
Publications:
- “In Defense of a Causal Requirement on Explanation,” forthcoming in Causality in the Sciences, edited by Phyllis McKay Illari, Federica Russo, and Jon Williamson(Oxford University Press). Abstract: I consider two powerful challenges to the causalist claim that to explain an event is to provide information about the causal history of that event. The first challenge is the “equilibrium challenge” which relies on the claim that the best available explanations for the behavior of certain dynamical systems do not appear to provide any causal information. I argue that, despite appearances, these equilibrium explanations are fundamentally causal, and I provide a formulation of the causalist thesis that is immune to the equilibrium challenge. I then show how the insights gleaned from the equilibrium challenge also provide a way of responding to the second challenge—the “epistemic challenge”—thus vindicating (a properly formulated version of) the causalist thesis.
- “The Explanatory Power of Local Miracle Compatibilism” (forthcoming in Philosophical Studies). Abstract: Local miracle compatibilists claim that we are sometimes able to do otherwise than we actually do, even if causal determinism obtains. When we can do otherwise, it will often be true that if we were to do otherwise, then an actual law of nature would not have been a law of nature. Nevertheless, it is a compatibilist principle that we cannot do anything that would be or cause an event that violates the laws of nature. Carl Ginet challenges this nomological principle, arguing that it is not always capable of explaining our inability to do otherwise. In response to this challenge, I point out that this principle is part of a defenseagainst the charge that local miracle compatibilists are committed to outlandish claims. Thus it is not surprising that the principle, by itself, will often fail to explain our inability to do otherwise. I then suggest that in many situations in which we are unable to do otherwise, this can be explained by the compatibilist’s analysis of ability, or his criteria for the truth of ability claims. Thus, the failure of his nomological principle to explain the falsity of certain ability claims is no strike against local miracle compatibilism.
Work in Progress
- “No (New) Troubles with Ockhamism” (with Justin Coates; under review). Abstract: David Widerker rejects Ockhamism on the basis of a scenario in which an agent’s ability to alter the fact that God knows that a future action will be performed apparently implies an impossible ability to alter a hard fact about the past. This is an indirect argument insofar as it de-emphasizes the question of whether God’s beliefs are soft. But this strategy succeeds only if the fact under consideration is truly (and clearly) a hard fact about the past. Moreover, the fact has to be such that refraining from the relevant future action will require altering that clearly hard fact. Unfortunately, in the scenario Widerker presents, the posited fact is not what it needs to be. It either entails the occurrence of the action in question or it does not—but, as we demonstrate, in neither case should the Ockhamist conclude that our freedom to do otherwise is in danger.
Teaching Experience
Instructor
- University of California, Riverside:
- LWSO 193: Senior Seminar in Law and Society (Summer 2009)
- PHIL 005: Evil (Summer 2009)
- PHIL 159: Philosophy of Religion (Summer 2008)
- University of Missouri-Columbia:
- PHIL 1200: Introduction to Logic (Spring 2007, Fall 2005)
- PHIL 1100: Introduction to Ethics (Fall 2006, Summer 2006)
Teaching Assistant
- University of California, Riverside:
- PHIL 003: Ethics and the Meaning of Life (Winter 2010, Winter 2009)
- PHIL 001: Introduction to Philosophy (Fall 2009)
- PHIL 005: Evil (Spring 2009)
- PHIL 009: Biomedical Ethics (Fall 2008)
- PHIL 116: Business Ethics (Fall 2007)
- University of Missouri-Columbia: PHIL 1100: Introduction to Ethics (Spring 2006)
Professional Membership and Service
- Organizer, UC Riverside Alumni Conference, March 2010.
- Organizer, UC Riverside Conference: “Secularism and the Sacred,” February 2009
- Organizer, UC Riverside Conference in Honor of John Perry, April 2009.
- Organizer, UC Riverside Alumni Conference, March 2009.
- Organizer, Pacific Division Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, October/November, 2008.
- Session Chair, Invited Symposium on Epistemic Bootstrapping, American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division Meeting), March 2008.
- Member, American Philosophical Association
- Member, APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers, July 2008–June 2011.
- Member, Society of Christian Philosophers