Undergraduate Philosophy Conference 2018

Our Spring philosophy conference was a hit—a mini APA at Loyola! We had incredibly diverse and robust panels from students in philosophy and many other disciplines. Congratulations to all of the undergraduate students who presented, and thank you to the graduate coaches and organizers!

Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
Mundelein Center for the Fine and Performing Arts
March 24, 2018

8:00am
Breakfast

8:45am
Welcome & Opening Remarks - Joe Vukov, Yiran Zhang

9:00-10:15am
Panel Session 1

Responsibility Panel

Tim Boex: “On the Nature of Sovereign Beings”
Megan Fitzgerald: “Are We Responsible for Who We Become?”
Maya Sheikh: “Crafting Normative Messages on Protecting the Environment: Individual and Institutional Responsibility”

Decision-Making Panel

Husna Afzal: “The Misperception and Misinterpretation of Random Data”
Kaela Harber: “Free Will: Morality, Determinism, and Choices”
Jeffery Phonn: “Answers are Within Us”

Punishment Panel

Gabby Christian: “Shame Punishments for Juveniles?”
Keegan Sims: “Nutraloaf as Cruel and Unusual Punishment”

10:30-11:45am
Panel Session 2

Medicine Panel

Scellina Anwar: “Free Will: A Figment of Imagination?”
Alex Dispensa: “The Fluidity of Clinical Judgment: The Necessity of Aspects of the Embodied Self”
Katie Rogers: “Plato’s Harmony between Philosophy and Medicine”

Uncertainty Panel

Brett Byron: “Structural Realism: Consequences of Entanglement”
Mason Majszak: “Bayesian Probability and Scientific Inquiry”
Chloe Rigsby: “The Question of Randomness in Correlation with Quantum Bayesianism”

Ethics Panel

Melody Beltran: “The Price of Kindness”
Maxwell Klug: “Forgive me Father: A Catholic’s Perspective Arguing Against the Priest-Penitent Privilege”

12:00pm Lunch

1:00-2:15pm
Panel Session 3

Bioethics Panel

George Bate: “Differences in Ethical Decision-Making in Anxious and Depressed Individuals”
Greg Grigoropoulos: “CRISPR Germline Modification and its Threat to Human Morality”
Evan Pfeifer: “Seizing Organs Postmortem Through Use of Eminent Domain to Reduce Organ Transplant Deficits”

Subjective Experience Panel

Grace Dennin: “Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and the Cinematic Experience”
Sarah Eden: “An Outlook on Love”
Maria Kardasis: “The Role of Implicit Bias in Structural Injustice”

Surveillance Panel

Brett Kaufman: “A Foucauldian Perspective on Unwanted Surveillance”
Jennifer Lloyd: “I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me: An Argument in Favor of Drone Surveillance”

2:30-3:45pm
Panel Session 4

Decolonial Thought Panel

Usevalad Auramenka: “The Meaning of Frantz Fanon’s Idea of the Lived Experience of the Black Man”
Heather Slawny: “Personal Pronouns as Performative Utterances”

Law Panel

Olivia Houlihan: “Duty to Intervene: Combatting the Bystander Effect”

The Good Life Panel

Kurt Daill: “Penned People: What Fictional Selves Can Teach Us”
Kim Enrile: “Life - A Gift or Burden? Examining the Philosophical Implications of Suicide”
Patrick Ronan: “Freedom, Self, and Social Media”

4:00pm
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez, DePaul University
“Grammars of Listening: a Philosophical Approach to Memory after Trauma”
Chair: Rebecca Valeriano-Flores

5:00pm
Reception