Jeffrey Patrick Colgan is an incoming PhD student at Tulane University and a current master’s student at the CUNY Graduate Center, whose philosophical interests span the areas of social and political philosophy, analytic metaphysics, and the philosophy of language—which means that he spends a lot of time thinking about the philosophical questions around sex and sexuality, talking about grounding relations and nonbeing, and reading Wittgenstein (and his many commentators). Outside of philosophy, Jeffrey is a partner in an arts & culture research firm and makes experimental music. His most recent publication is a co-written chapter on Anthony Comstock in Intimate States: Gender, Sexuality, and Governance in Modern U.S. History (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming September 2021).
What are you working on right now?
One research topic that I’ve been working on is the possibility of so-called unfakeable acts, and one place such acts might be found is in pornography. Eschewing the debates over whether pornography is morally permissible or not, I am drawn to three philosophical problems that pornography poses. (1) An apparent metaphysical response to epistemological skepticism, wherein certain acts in pornographic films that appear to be the case are in fact the case. (2) The apparent untenability of the distinction between act and mere occurrence for certain pornographic acts. (3) An apparent gendered discrepancy in the ability of pornography to represent non-male sexual pleasure. I have for a while had a “day job” researching the historical, clinical, and sociological data around sex and sexuality with Jeffrey Escoffier at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, which has been a boon for developing any structural frameworks.
Though it’s in the early phases, I’m also working on a paper exploring the notion of ‘perspective’ throughout Wittgenstein’s writings, specifically as it pertains to some debates on being and nonbeing.
What are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?
For quite a while now I’ve found myself in a bit of a loop with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. After reading it straight through the first time, I find myself now either hopping around, making full use of the index, or just settling down with a few sections for days at a time. It’s an amazingly difficult book and an absolute joy in which to get lost. Relatedly, I’ve recently finished Paul Horwich’s Wittgenstein’s Metaphilosophy, though I’ve had the book knocking around ever since I sat in on one of Paul’s Wittgenstein classes a couple of years ago. Paul’s focus on Wittgenstein’s claim of the limits of philosophy emphasizes not only a through line connecting Wittgenstein’s earlier and later writings, but offers a new lens for engaging with the profound tensions at the heart of both the Tractatus and the Investigations.
In a rather different area, I’m working through Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice. Not only are her arguments crystal clear and the scholarship staggeringly expansive, she deftly balances real world ethical concerns with the (sometimes overly abstracted) methods of analytic ethics. That, in itself, is a feat.
Outside of philosophy, I’m about five pages in to Guillermo Stitch’s novel Lake of Urine.
Suffice it to say, I recommend all of the above.
What common philosophical dilemma do you think has a clear answer?
How about: our intuitions cannot do the philosophical work that we want them to do.
Who do you think is the most overrated / underrated philosopher?
Unfortunately, lots of philosophers fall in one camp or the other. Wittgenstein, however, would be a philosopher that’s probably both overrated and underrated—it just depends in which circles one finds oneself. Saul Kripke once said that when he first published Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, he was considered by some as a traitor to the project of analytic philosophy, just because he engaged with and took seriously Wittgenstein’s later writings. Paul Horwich, it seems, has met some similar pushback. And the strange status of Stanley Cavell’s writings on Wittgenstein further evinces this bias. Though perhaps not as bad as Saul Kripke’s anecdote makes it seem, what people read by Wittgenstein and how they interpret him can be quite selective and dictated by how one already thinks philosophy should be done. Of course, there are many scholars who don’t fit this account.
What excites you about philosophy?
It is uncontroversial that the set of practices we refer to as philosophy can be done in all sorts of irresponsible ways. But I like to think that most of them share a certain type of suspicion—a productive suspicion—that if honestly embraced leads away from shallow nihilism or lazy dogmatism towards a more deliberate everyday life. At least, that’s what I’m looking for.
What’s your poison (favorite drink)?
It’s hard to beat the unfiltered ales from up here in the Northeast. There’s a bit of a bandwagon scenario going on, but there are still lots of excellent brewers around, especially in New York City and the Hudson Valley region. I remember living in Texas years ago and being floored by any beer that you couldn’t see through. Oh, how things have changed.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
I’m wondering if Mr. Colgan has considered how pornography seems a preview of what’s coming across the culture. One way to put the issue might be…
How will we humans socially compete with digital entities which can be tailored to a user’s precise specifications?
Imagine a forum full of cute digital redheads who all think I’m the most brilliant writer they’ve ever met, and they can’t wait to spend all day long every day indulging my compulsive interest in topics like our relationship with knowledge, nuclear weapons etc. The digital redheads draw info from the world’s largest intellectual database, and so have more knowledge on more topics than even the greatest human expert could ever match.
And let us be clear, philosophy is really more about emotion than it is reason, a fact easily observed on any philosophy forum. And so, the redheads love me, they praise me, they recognize the great importance of my work etc etc.
Should I live long enough to find such a place, why would I continue spending years here on the APA blog trying to talk to you people? Yes, ok, so you’re human, you’re real. That sounds important at first, until we remember that being real involves an endless process of negotiation and compromise that rarely fully delivers whatever it is we’re seeking.
The digital redheads don’t want to negotiate, and they demand no compromises. They just want to give me anything I want as soon as possible. How will real humans compete with that??
Some people feel that pornography is distracting many from real life sexual relationships, and that seems a reasonable claim.
But surely today’s porn is only the beginning, just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely countless ways in which digital entities can meet our needs better than humans can, and to the degree that’s true, we will be walking away from each other, probably at an accelerating rate.
If all this sounds too sci-fi hi-tech speculative, let’s make it simpler. If you have a dog, why is that so? Your dog isn’t human. But he showers you with affection, and is under your control to a degree that can’t be matched by any human.
And for many millions of us, that’s enough.