Dylan Flint is a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University, where he is working on a dissertation in Leibniz. He completed an MA in philosophy at Simon Fraser University in 2019.
What excites you about philosophy?
I love arguing. I first got into philosophy because it was the first time that arguing with the teacher was encouraged. I want to understand things, and it bothered me that I was supposed to accept a bunch of claims just on the teacher’s authority. In philosophy, everything must be backed up by reasons, and I love that. What really excites me about philosophy now is igniting the passion I have for it with my students. I love that moment when a student finally understands the reasons why an opponent holds the views that they do, or when they see the reasons for what looked like a good argument crumble before them, or when they grasp that, while any argument can be refuted, the stronger an argument, the more costly it will be to refute. One last thing that excites me is the fact that anyone can do philosophy. As long as you’ve got reasons to back up what you’re saying, you have a seat at the table. And that is true regardless of where you come from or what you look like. In philosophy, we judge the argument, not the person, and I love that.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
I have a paper now that is forthcoming in the History of Philosophy Quarterly (HPQ) that I am quite proud of. It argues against a long-standing interpretation of Leibniz which says that he should never have said that God can do otherwise, absolutely speaking. The basic worry is that it seems like when one supposes that God does otherwise that God would in some sense not be perfect, since it seems like his perfect nature, in some sense, determines him to do what he in fact does. But if it implies that God is in some sense not perfect, then supposing God does otherwise would seem to be inconsistent with Leibniz’s own conception of God as the ens perfectissimum, or the most perfect being.
Nearly everyone since Russell has thought the same thing about Leibniz, but it’s false! The best argument on offer which seeks to demonstrate the inconsistency between God doing otherwise and his perfect nature actually begs the question. I point this out in the paper, and then I do some other things to show how Leibniz can accommodate the problematic intuition that nearly everyone has when they are asked to suppose that the most perfect being does something less than the very best. Basically, what I say is that what is actually being denied is God’s praiseworthiness, but that this an okay thing to deny, because praiseworthiness is best understood, for Leibniz, as merely a contingent, or inessential, perfection of God. If I am right, then this opens up a nice way of preventing Leibniz’s system of philosophical theology from collapsing into necessitarianism.
Once the paper is published it will be linked to my PhilPeople page, which can be accessed here
What common philosophical dilemma do you think has a clear answer?
The Problem of Evil! For this is the best of all possible worlds.
What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?
Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But I am engaged to be married this July! For a philosopher, finding someone who is willing to marry you is quite the accomplishment. But if you’re not into fronts, then my greatest accomplishment to date has to be being accepted to the University of Washington for my undergrad. I did not do well in high school. In fact, I dropped out, got a GED, and went to ski school in Colorado! (I wanted to be professional skier before I fell in love with philosophy and before I had 7 surgeries from various skiing injuries :/). Anyways, so I didn’t do well in school, but when I moved back to Washington from Colorado, I really wanted to go back and get my undergraduate degree. I enrolled at the local community college and worked my tail off. This is where I took my first philosophy class and got hooked. Long story short, I excelled at the community college, pulled out a 3.9 while I was there, and successfully transferred to UW after completing my associates. I will never forget the feeling when I received that acceptance letter.
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
Is anyone going to hire me after my PhD?
If you could have a one-hour conversation with any philosopher or historical figure from any time, who would you pick and what topic would you choose?
Kant, so that I could ask him to clarify himself, though I am worried that this would take much longer than an hour.
If you could only use one condiment for the rest of your life, which condiment would you pick and why?
Is peanut butter a condiment? Because I literally put it on everything.
Where would you go in a time machine?
This is a toss-up between Athens in 399 BC and Jerusalem in 33 AD. Athens, because I would have loved to have seen one of the most epic stands of truth to power of all time, though I probably would have been like “come on, Socrates, just apologize and be done with it.” And Jerusalem, because witnessing the death and resurrection of Christ would have been, well, pretty special. Actually seeing that transpire would no doubt help to reconcile one of, I think, the hardest parts of my faith to accept. But, then again, who knows. Maybe I would still doubt what my senses were telling me.
What’s your poison? (Favorite drink.)
Ginger beer.
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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.
