Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. This is the first in our series of interview transcripts, courtesy of the awesomely talented Caroline Wall. Enjoy! Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman, and with me today is Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of numerous books in economics and numerous articles in philosophy. And we’re here to discuss his recently published moral philosophy book, Stubborn Attachments. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. This month, Henry Curtis and I sit down to talk to Stephanie Kapusta (Dalhousie University) about misgendering. Click here to download the episode. In the ordinary sense of the term, misgendering is when someone addresses someone else in a way that corresponds to the wrong gender. Like if Elizabeth Warren was on the street in front of me, dropped her wallet, and I picked it up and yelled: “Sir, you dropped your wallet,” then I would be misgendering her. Why? Presumably because sir is a form of address reserved for men, and she isn’t a man. Now, that probably doesn’t happen to Elizabeth Warren very often, if ever. But if it started happening to her constantly, such that lots of people completely stopped ever addressing her in the woman way, you could imagine it getting on her nerves. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. This month, we’re joined by Tyler Cowen (Professor of Economics at George Mason University), to talk about utilitarianism, economic growth, and the future. Click here to download the episode. Utilitarianism is the name we give a family of normative ethical theories, most of which are variations on the idea that doing the right thing involves imparting the greatest amount of benefit to the greatest number of people. How do I tell whether policy XYZ is the right policy to adopt? Simple! Numerically measure the amount of happiness that policy is going to cause, add all of it up, numerically measure the amount of suffering that policy is going to cause, add all of that up, subtract the suffering from the happiness, and go with the policy that yields the greatest amount of happiness. We find this idea intuitive, because we like to be generous and help other people. If there are surpluses of happiness anywhere in the world, we often feel it would be great if those surpluses could be transferred, somehow, to the less fortunate. ...

So first, Brian L. Frye’s own work on plagiarism is super interesting and I highly recommend it: “Plagiarism Is Not A Crime,” Brian L. Frye Next, Professor Frye recommends the following recent pieces of writing on the topic: “The Case for Plagiarism,” Andrew Carter “Against Academic Rentiership,” Steve Fuller “Neurologist Oliver Sacks on Memory, Plagiarism, and the Necessary “Forgettings of Creativity,” Maria Popova “Media Pranks,” Kembrew McLeod We’ll post a link to Brian L. Frye’s new paper, “Plagiarize This Paper,” when it comes out! ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk to Brian L. Frye (University of Kentucky College of Law) about how we deal with and react to plagiarism. Click here to listen to our conversation. Plagiarism is obviously terrible, and plagiarizers should be punished to the full extent of the law. Or should they? Our guest this month thinks there are a number of issues with that position. For one thing, plagiarism isn’t illegal–it’s a social rule that’s unofficially enforced–so it isn’t even clear that the law has much of an ’extent’ in this case. That is, plagiarists don’t go to jail; they’re just subject to other kinds of punishments, like expulsion from school or social ostracism. In the educational context, Brian L. Frye argues that punishing students for plagiarizing doesn’t contribute to the main purpose of education, which is to make as many students as possible learn as much as possible. If a student cheats on an assignment by copying an article written by someone else, the real problem is that they aren’t learning anything, because they aren’t doing the work they’re supposed to be doing. He thinks that what an instructor should do in that situation is tell the student they’re slacking off and that they need to do the work if they want to learn–rather than go ballistic and do what they can to ensure the student will never work in this town again. ...

Tommy Curry has very generously provided an ample list of reading recommendations, for those of you who are interested in following up on our previous episode. Chetty, Hendren, Jones, and Porter, ‘Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective’ Veenstra, ‘The Gendered Nature of Discriminatory Experiences by Race, Class, and Sexuality’ Purdie-Vaughs and Eibach, ‘Intersectional Invisibility’ Assari, ‘Educational Attainment Better Protects African American Women than African American Men Against Depressive Symptoms and Psychological Distress’ ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we sit down with Tommy Curry (University of Edinburgh currently; Texas A&M at the time of the recording) to discuss a new area of academic research called black male studies. You can see his full bio at the end of this entry, and you can click here to listen to our conversation. ...

If you want to explore our guest’s view on social groups in more detail, you can check out the following two papers: Social Structures and the Ontology of Social Groups, Katherine Ritchie The Metaphysics of Social Groups, Katherine Ritchie Happy reading! Matt Teichman ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, I sit down with Katherine Ritchie (CUNY Graduate Center, City College) to talk about what a social group is. Click here to listen to our conversation. What is there to being a group of people? Does being in a group basically just mean you’re on the list of people who are in the group, or is there more to it? Our guest this month argues that a group of people isn’t just a selection of people taken at random; rather, it’s a collection of people who stand in different relations to each other. So for example, on a baseball team there’s a pitcher and a catcher, and the pitcher stands in the “I throw the ball at” relation to the catcher. Or in a small company, the CEO stands in the “I am your boss” relation to their employees. What makes a group a group isn’t just who’s in it, but what role each person takes on relative to each other person. ...

For those of you who are curious to sink your teeth into Sally Haslanger’s incredible body of work, we recommend you visit her website, which features many of her writings: https://sallyhaslanger.weebly.com/ ...