Luke Golemon is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Arizona. He works primarily on ethics of all flavors, but has been drawn recently to philosophy of science, including the parallels and analogies between the study of ethics and the study of science.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
I am very proud of what ended up being my qualifying paper, whose title changes from day to day. Basically, I argue that we can get substantive empirical evidence for moral theses, something most think impossible due to the descriptive/normative divide. The common objection argues that the empirical can only tell us how things are, not how things should be. So how can the empirical give any evidence towards how things should be?
The path I take to this “impossible” conclusion is to draw an analogy to how we treat observables and unobservables in science. Normative theses are just another kind of unobservable, and it makes sense that you could get at them in the same way. What is this way? Any good theory has a number of auxiliary hypotheses that connects the core of the theory to practical and empirical predictions. I argue that, given the right kind of auxiliary hypotheses to connect the normative to the empirical, we can do the same thing for moral theories and theses. I give several prima facie very plausible examples, but I won’t spoil them here. It’s currently under review, but the draft is available if anyone wishes to read it.
What are you most proud of in your professional life?
I’m most proud of my productivity. I have the good fortune to be able to read quickly and I was mentored early and well in the ways of writing in my master’s program at Western Michigan University, especially by Charlie Kurth and Fritz Allhoff. Being able to write term papers early and quickly was huge for my quality of life during coursework and also picking up jobs on the side—I’ve taken more grading and proofing jobs than I can keep track of. Now that I’m in a more research-focused phase, it’s even more obvious how helpful it is. Having many projects going at once is both good for the content (all kinds of little connections show up!) and is especially good in philosophy, where a paper might take 18 months to get published. Having five or six out at a time also significantly decreases my writing burnout, since I can switch to a new task when I get frustrated with the current one.
What excites you about philosophy?
The field of philosophy covers so many enticing topics, and very few of them require the kind of nitty-gritty work that, say, astrophysics requires to “do” anything big in it. I’m required to list my official interests on my CV, but you can really interest me in any topic or argument in philosophy.
That’s not all, though. Like many others, I’m sure, I’m very interested in the truth. I (a) want to believe the truth, even if I have to change my mind, and (b) want others to do the same. Philosophy not only shares this overall goal, but many disagreements boil down to very fundamental differences in worldviews, something that philosophy is especially well-equipped to handle (or at least investigate).
What’s your favorite quote?
My favorite quote is part of a story, though I’ve used it many times without the story. The story goes that C.S. Lewis was walking with a friend when a disheveled man asked for money. His friend continued, but Lewis emptied his wallet. Once Lewis had caught up, his friend asked “Why would you give him that money? You know he’ll just spend it on ale.” Lewis promptly replied: “That’s all I was going to do with it.” It’s a nice quip to defend what others take as naïve generosity. It goes hand in hand with another piece of genuine wisdom from Aristotle: best to hedge toward the vice that comes more unnaturally to humans. Rarely are we overgenerous, more often are we miserly!
What are you working on right now?
Currently, I’m working on figuring out which of my projects I should pursue for my dissertation. Actually, I hope to make a decision in the next week! I have the problem of being awash in a surfeit of riches and now face the problem of option paralysis. One would continue to pursue the project of empirically confirming moral theses. Another would look closely at a new way to defend certain kinds of reasoning, from scientific reasoning (realism) to moral reasoning, usually from evolutionary debunking arguments or other kinds of skepticism. A third would look at the way memory can ground all sorts of moral and political obligations that are underexplored in the literature, including claims to territory. I’m quite likely to choose the first, however, and table the others as “to do after getting a job.”
Name a trait, skill, or characteristic that you have that others may not know about.
I’m pretty obsessed with getting good at the competitive games that I play. I only play one or two at a time because of this, but I really like the feeling of learning and honing a new skill. I’m happy to report that, over the years, I’ve gotten to the 99th percentile in Hearthstone’s card game and its autochess variant, hit the ceiling of Elite Smash in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, was a decent player of Warcraft III back in the day, was Diamond for a season in Teamfight Tactics, placed well in a few (minor) Magic: the Gathering tournaments, and more. Right now, I’m playing chess, and trying to get to 2000 rating on Lichess by the end of the summer. (Want to play a game with me? Shoot me an email! I’m always looking to expand my friendlist. :D)
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.
