Professor Teresa Castelao-Lawless (left), Professor Alycia LaGuardia-LoBianco (center), and Professor Andrew Spear (right) at the Tenure and Promotion Reception on September 11, 2025 in the GVSU Alumni House. 

Grand Valley State University

Department of Philosophy

2026 Dewey J. Hoitenga

Philosophy Essay Contest

The Department of Philosophy invites you to submit your entry to the 2026 Dewey J. Hoitenga Philosophy Essay Contest. The winning paper will receive both recognition and a prize.

Papers on any philosophical topic and from any student enrolled at GVSU are welcome. Submit one copy of your paper to Allyssa Wetzel ([email protected] / MAK B-3 105) by Noon on Friday April 17, 2026. Papers must be unpublished, at least 10 pages (double spaced, 12-point font), and may not have been submitted unmodified to previous philosophy department essay contests. Please have your paper ready for “blind review,” that is, do not write your name on it, but rather attach a separate sheet or file with your name, email address, and the paper’s title, and remember to write your title at the top of your paper as well.

With questions contact: Prof. Spear, Department of Philosophy, [email protected]

Philosophy Colloquium Series Presents...

How Practical Might Reflection Be?

A Talk By Itai Marom (GVSU Philosophy)

April 17, 2026, From 3:00 PM-4:30 PM

in Mackinac Hall B-1-138

The capacity for practical reflection is generally considered to be a distinctive feature of human rational agency. While other animals might be capable of acting for reasons, it is a distinctive feature of human agency that we can turn our attention on our own motivations, subjecting what we thus take there to be reason for us to do to rational scrutiny. The capacity for practical reflection is commonly characterized metaphorically, as the capacity to “step back” from our actions, intentions, and desires, stopping or distancing ourselves from them, and evaluating whether they are rational (good, right, worthwhile, supported by reasons, etc.) to do or to have. The use of this metaphor, I argue, represents an overly contemplative conception of our capacity for practical reflection. It depicts the reflecting agent as a detached observer meditating on the way things are independently of them. The resulting picture is of practical thought as something we do in-between actions and by which we determine what those actions should be. But what is distinctive of practical thought is precisely the dependence of the object of thought on our thinking of it—of what is done on our reasons for doing it. It is thought manifested in action. What the contemplative conception thus seems to exclude is the possibility that practical reflection might constitute a more thoroughly practical affair, which is to say, something we do, and sometimes can only do, through action. The aim of this talk is to develop the latter possibility. Noting some key structural differences between practical and theoretical thought, I present a conception of practical reflection in which action figures not only as the object at which it is directed but as the medium in which it takes place. It is, I will argue, sometimes only by acting that we can subject our understanding of our practical lives to rational evaluation. The position we occupy with respect to the objects of reflection is, in those cases, not one of contemplative detachment, but of active attachment. It is not, as it were, a position we come to inhabit by “stepping back” from the relevant aspects of our practical lives but by “stepping in” to them.

About Itai Marom: Itai Marom is an Adjunct Professor in the Philosophy Department at GVSU. His areas of specialization are Metaethics and the Philosophy of Action. In his research, he developed a conception that human agents capable of pursuing their ends, in which their ends are not given to them but rather must be produced by them. Human agents can make sense of their existence, and they stand to their ends mediated by what they themselves make possible by developing the tools with which to think and act. Itai is also interested in the broader issues in moral psychology and practical rationality, especially as they pertain to self-consciousness and self-deception, the relation between moral and non-moral values, between ethics and aesthetics, and in the role of imagination in moral thought.

Questions: Please email Alycia LaGuardia-LoBiaco 

PHI 102: Ethics

PHI 102-01

May 11, 2026-June 24, 2026

Fulfills Foundations-Philosophy and Literature

Course Description: What is good? What is evil? Are there objective standards for right and wrong? What ae these objective standards? How can they be applied to important contemporary moral problems? This course considers the answers philosophers give to these and related questions. 

Days: Mondays and Wednesdays

Times: 12:00 PM to 3:20 PM

Location: Mackinac Hall A1151

Professor: Professor John August

Email Professor John August (Leads to email pop-up)

Professor Judy Whipps