“Seth and Kate [McFarland] were in my Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy,” says Ben. “Now that’s a talented class. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to discuss the mode of being of impossible or otherwise nonexistent Meinongian objects with.” Perhaps his favorite philosophy experience was in Professor Lisa Downing’s class on scientific realism, which examined the ontological status of unobservables. Professor Downing spent a great deal of time on Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and his thesis that the history of science reveals a series of “paradigm shifts,” rather than a progressive trend toward understanding unobservable phenomena.
FORMER UNDERGRADUATE SETH ROKOSKY
In tension with this view was the “Argument from the Best Explanation,” which essentially posits that science must be getting closer to truth because it is increasingly able to predict observable phenomena (i.e. how else could planes fly?).
Seth Rokosky came to Ohio State Professor Don Hubin’s normative from Canton McKinley Senior High ethics class introduced him to the School to major in English because he devastating value of hypotheticals wanted to improve his writing. During and counterexamples, as well as freshman orientation, his mother to the oddities of Jeremy Bentham’s Professor Downing exhibited what is, suggested that he enroll in an preserved body and the in Seth’s view, the paradigmatic virtue introductory philosophy course with “forbidden donut.” of a philosopher: encouragement to Larry Sanger. think for oneself. Rather than Don recalls that Seth was in just his constantly asserting her own Sanger’s class, which centered on second quarter at Ohio State when arguments, Professor Downing Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and he took Don’s upper-division course carefully nurtured a combined group Hume, convinced Seth within weeks in moral philosophy. “Despite being a of philosophy and science majors, to switch his major. relative newcomer to philosophy, and who think very differently, and helped indeed to the university, Seth them vet their own complicated “My love for philosophy would not performed at the very top of a theories about a simple topic they all have begun if it were not for the generally very strong class, one that could understand. incredible professors who nurtured it,” included students much further along Seth says. In Larry Sanger’s in their careers. Seth’s enthusiasm and “Seth was a noteworthy presence in an class, for example, he developed a energy, combined with his keen especially fun class,” Lisa states. “He love-hate relationship with David intellect, made it a joy to have him in showed the sort of genuine Hume, and Hume’s extreme the course.” intellectual curiosity that one always skepticism continues to affect Seth’s hopes to find in one’s students. He willingness to question even And Professor Ben Caplan’s dogged resolutely resisted the realist trend of commonly-held assumptions. emphasis on fluid concise writing the class, always in a polite, engaged, vastly improved the clarity and logic and reasoned way.” of Seth’s arguments.
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Department of Philosophy