Kate McFarland

I decided early in my graduate career that I would not pursue a career in teaching philosophy. However, I went on to finish my PhD, and I retain a special affinity for the discipline.

My AOS was philosophy of language (under the influence of pragmatics, speech act theory, politeness theory, interactional sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, and rhetoric). I am recently returning to study LLS in my free time, but more S than L&L this time around. My current interests include epistemological issues in reconstructions of ecosystems from the deep past, especially, and issues of knowability in the natural and physical sciences more generally. I read much more in science than in philosophy TBH.

I work as a virtual assistant for ethicists. I dabbled in environmental ethics, where I was interested in questions of what it would truly mean to have an ecocentric ethic, before deciding it was not for me (largely due to colleagues in the “ecocentric community” who weren’t genuinely interested in philosophy and following the argument where it leads).

My dissertation, defended in March 2015, was entitled “Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes.” In it, I analyzed core cases of alleged “faultless disagreement” (beginning with disputes about matters of taste) and argued many such disputes arise in situations in which, given conversational aims, it is rhetorically effective for disputants to feign contradiction—posturing as if their dispute concerned the truth of an “objective” proposition even if this isn't the case. I argued that philosophical disputes have been hampered by uncritical application of the norms of philosophical and scientific disagreement to these disputes that arise in the course of everyday casual conversation.

I stopped writing about that topic after defending; however, I still feign objectivity when arguing about matters of taste.