Philosophy Publications: 2015
Faculty in the Department of Philosophy shared thoughts about their recent work.
Zed Adams
Zed Adams, Associate Professor of Philosophy, recently published On the Genealogy of Color: A Case Study in Historicized Conceptual Analysis (Routledge, 2015). About this new book, Zed shared the following:
“In this book, I argue against the idea that philosophical problems are timeless and ahistorical. I do this by giving a detailed case study of the historically contingent presuppositions underlying one contemporary philosophical debate (namely, the problem of color realism). My ultimate goal is to challenge the assumption that philosophical concepts are ‘autonomous’ in the sense of being independent of broader developments in our knowledge of the world. The concept of color has seemed like something timeless and ahistorical to many philosophers, such that if I can show that it rests upon historically contingent presuppositions, we should be open to the possibility of that being more generally true.”
Other publications include “On the Ontology of Mechanically Reproduced Artworks” (Popular Music and Society, 2015) and “Against Moral Intellectualism” (Philosophical Investigations, 2014).
Choose a publication below to learn more.
Bio | Adams received his PhD from the University of Chicago. Adams’s work focuses on moral skepticism, the philosophy of color, and realism in art. He explores the relationship between variation in judgment or perception in different domains (moral, color, aesthetic) and the possibility of truth and knowledge in these domains. Currently he is working on a project about the significance of recording for how we make and appreciate music, with a special focus on the use of sampling in hip hop.