EMU UCiP

2026 UCiP Schedule

Saturday, November 14th, 2026

• 8:00 AM - 8:50 AM | WELCOME

  • Tower Room (348):

    Join Dr. John Koolage for a brief welcome message and breakfast!

• 9:00 AM - 9:50 AM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    Emma Jones, Eastern Michigan University: “Social Epistemological Themes in the Film Sinners”
    Comments: Ellie Johnson, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    Daniel Shitandi, St. John's College Sante Fe: "Accepting Extinction: Beyond the Fossil Record"
    Comments: Andre Kolak, Stony Brook University

• 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    David Harris, McMaster University: “The Right to Make a World: Communication, Social Facts, and the Limits of the Cosmopolitan Right”
    Comments: Zoey Patten, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    Justice Dunn, University of Wyoming: “Counterexamples Against Revisionary Ontologies: What Is and What Should Never Be”
    Comments: Stephen Armstrong, Eastern Michigan University

• 11:00 AM - 11:50 AM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    Nerea Vidal Arrieta, University of Minnesota: "Democracy and collective well-being"
    Comments: RJ (Ronald) Gurunian, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    Penelope Sanchez, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor: “On Human Rights and the Necessity of Open Borders”
    Comments: Elijah Card, Eastern Michigan University

• 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM | LUNCH & KEYNOTE

  • Guild Room (330):

    Dr. Brandon E. Polite, Knox College: Collective Listening, Social Virtues, and Popular Music

    Abstract: In this lecture, I will explore how popular music contributes to the cultivation of social virtues—such as solidarity, trust, and mutual recognition—through practices of collective listening. In doing so, I resist Roger Scruton’s (1997) claim that popular music signals a decline in moral culture, arguing instead that it can sustain morally significant forms of engagement. Concerts, fan communities, and digitally mediated listening environments create shared affective spaces in which individuals experience themselves as part of a “we.” These practices, I argue, provide structured contexts in which socially oriented dispositions can be exercised and reinforced, allowing participants to rehearse forms of attunement and responsiveness that extend beyond the musical context. In doing so, I develop a framework for understanding how such shared practices shape character over time. At the same time, I offer a realistic account that treats musical communities as ethically ambivalent. The same dynamics that support solidarity can also structure and channel collective identification in ways that encourage conformity, exclusion, or uncritical allegiance to an artist or fandom. Pop music’s ethical significance thus lies not only in cultivating social dispositions but also in shaping how agents understand themselves as participants in shared normative spaces, where social virtues are continuously exercised, negotiated, and contested.

• 1:30 PM - 2:20 PM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    Yushi Bai, Cranbrook Kingswood Upper School: "The Unfinished Case for God"
    Comments: Isaac Jensen, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    Mason Sanchez-Lassos, Western Michigan University: "An Unwilling Subjugation: Alien Disclosure and the Crisis of Higher Reason"
    Comments: Eric Ellerbe, Eastern Michigan University

  • Guild Room (330):

    A2 Ethics Bowl Presenters

    • Amelia Bai: “The Monetization of One's Own Suffering”
    • Solmin Kim: “Must a Meaningful Life Be Self-Chosen?”
    • Samir Rao: “Performance Enhancing Engineering”

• 2:30 PM - 3:20 PM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    Cici Zhang, Vassar College: "Can Consciousness Change Reality? Manifestation and Yogācāra"
    Comments: Mary Kushner, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    George Bowyer, University of Cambridge: "Empirical Adequacy Is an Incomplete Defence of the Proximate-Ultimate Distinction"
    Comments: Daniel Shitandi, St. John’s College

  • Guild Room (330):

    A2 Ethics Bowl Presenters

    • Amy Yang: “The Ethics of Larping”
    • Luca Abudeye: “The Start of a Healthy and Fulfilling Life”
    • Ryanna RePass: “The Legitimacy of Morality”

• 3:30 PM - 4:20 PM | PRESENTATIONS

  • Tower Room (348):

    Delaney McNear, University of Mississippi - Twin Cities: “Condemned to Be Free, Free to Have Hope: Optimism and Authenticity in Sartrean Existentialism”
    Comments: Brooke Bender, Eastern Michigan University

  • Alumni Room (342):

    Jonathan Huynh, Oakland University: "Syntax, Semantics, and the Impossibility of Strong AI"
    Comments: Everett Peabody, Eastern Michigan University

  • Guild Room (330):

    A2 Ethics Bowl Presenters

    • Sakshi Sivakumar: “The Ethics of Capitalism”
    • Hrudya Pingili: “Obligation Without Condemnation: Suicide, Human Nature, and the Ethics of Intervention”
    • Peter Johnson: “Axiarchism and Comedic Value”