Kent Johnson Fund

Promoting undergraduate research in Philosophy

Kent Eric Johnson

1970 – 2017

WHY DO I WANT TO SUPPORT STUDENT RESEARCH?

After my son, Kent Johnson, died, it was important to me that he be remembered in a way that he would have appreciated. Setting up or contributing to an educational fund was the obvious choice. However, more than just a general fund, I wanted to honor Kent’s love of learning and exploring challenging issues, that is, his love and dedication to research. He was always curious. His inquisitiveness lead him to look for answers to questions that puzzled him. As an undergraduate at St. Olaf College, he was encouraged to look for answers through researching the questions. Therefore, I have chosen to donate financially to the Philosophy Department at St. Olaf to enable other students to go beyond a desire for knowledge to delving into ideas to produce knowledge, to go beyond thinking or believing in something to having the knowledge and evidence to explain those beliefs. Following are memories that I have of my son as a student in philosophy at St. Olaf who not only made research his profession, but used research to enrich his every-day life..

Kent’s experience at St. Olaf occurred when the college still had the Paracollege, which was a perfect situation for him. He was a self-starter and an independent learner. The faculty recognized his insatiable desire to learn, provided guidance, and encouraged him to pursue the research necessary for him to either answer the questions he posed to them or to lead him to other questions in pursuit of an answer.

One of the more important influences on his interest in research was spending a semester studying in England. Kent’s letters reflected his thoughts regarding the program of study and research he determined and the conferences he had with professors, as he had no prescribed classes. He also made use of the time off from his studies to travel. Because of research he had done concerning ancient Greek, he located a monastery in Greece where a monk, an expert in that old language, lived. Kent spent several days in conversation with the monk, ultimately leaving with more knowledge about the subject and more information that would require diligent research.

Because of the experiences at St. Olaf and because of the interest that his professors took in him, he decided to attend graduate school. Corliss Swain, a professor Kent mentioned many times, spent time and effort contacting people who she felt would keep him stimulated and challenged in terms of his interest in philosophy. On August 14, 1994, he left to attend the University of Florida to study philosophy. He valued his professors’ expertise, becoming more confident in his ability to question various philosophers’ thoughts that he had previously accepted. From there, he attended Rutgers University to further pursue studies and research in philosophy.

Following is a summary of Kent’s education and accomplishments. Before reading that, however, know that he wasn’t just a serious scholar 24/7. He was funny. He loved playing jokes on others. He had a dry sense of humor. He was a great water-skier. He worked out religiously at local gyms. He researched his Prius for a year before he bought it. And, a great pleasure, he would write in bed using a hospital tray.

Kent Johnson graduated from St. Olaf in 1994 with a B.A. in philosophy and ancient languages and went on to earn an M.A in philosophy from the University of Florida in 1996 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Rutgers University in 2001. From 2001-2017 he taught, engaged in research and wrote while in the Logic and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of California-Irvine. His publications appeared in Nous, Mind and Language, Philosophical Psychology, Language Sciences and Philosophy of Science. The articles highlighted his research and expertise in statistical methodology, modeling, and probabilistic inference, as well as his interests in philosophy of language, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive science.

Kathleen S. Sernak

(St. Olaf, 1965)

Finding Faith in Anxiety: An Interpretation of Søren Kierkegaard’s Exploration of the Paradox Between Reason and Faith Within Oneself

Kierkegaard Library CURI Project
Summer 2023 – Elie Kayobe

In this project, I undertake a thorough exploration of Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophical perspective on the intricate relationship between faith and anxiety.
By curating a digital exhibit on this topic (found here), I help bring to life the special collection of the St. Olaf Kierkegaard Library together with my peers in a summer CURI project. In today’s context, where anxiety is on the rise and often considered a medical condition, Kierkegaard’s insights take on renewed relevance. Throughout this study, I delve into Kierkegaard’s concepts of anxiety, faith, and rationality, arguing that faith and reason need not be mutually exclusive but can coexist cyclically within the journey of self-discovery, guided by the Divine perspective. Drawing from a comparative analysis of Kierkegaard’s works, Fear and Trembling and Concept of Anxiety, I demonstrate how he views anxiety as an essential facet of the human experience, one that can yield positive outcomes through faith. Within the digital exhibit, I use resources in the Kierkegaard Library and its Rare Book Room to help the viewer examine anxiety through the lens of the biblical narratives of Adam and Abraham. And I trace the trajectory from the psychological origins of anxiety to its profound religious implications, emphasizing the necessity of taking a leap in faith to address existential questions and avoid the despair that Kierkegaard warns against as the alternative.

A New Interpretation of Plato’s Example of the Jury: Avoiding a Paradox with an Appeal to Epistemic Humility

2022 Texas A&M University Philosophy Graduate Student Conference – Emma Dougherty

This paper offers a new interpretation of the example of the jury (201a-c), in which Socrates distinguishes knowledge from mere judgment in Plato’s Theaetetus. Though there is some textual support for the two common interpretations of the example, they are both inconsistent with other parts of the dialogue and are viewed by some, most notably Myles Burnyeat, as paradoxical. I argue that the jury example demonstrates that true judgment is not knowledge because we can have true judgments without being certain they are true, avoiding the paradox of previous interpretations. Further, I argue that this should be the preferred interpretation because it contextualizes other perplexing passages in the Theaetetus and invokes the importance of epistemic humility, a theme that can ultimately be traced throughout the dialogue.

Nietzsche’s Valuations of Resentment and Guilt

Summer 2020 – Hermon Werede

I am conducting research for a project on Nietzsche’s criticism of European morality, with a focus on Christian conceptions of resentment, guilt, and conscience. I plan to produce a publishable paper by the end of the research period that I can use for graduate school applications. Suffering is an intrinsic and an inevitable part of human existence. Every person who suffers seeks a way out of suffering or seeks to attribute the cause of suffering to a guilty perpetrator. I will explore the role of conscience in this process of eliminating suffering and the connection this has with the will to power.

An Alternate Possibility for the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Free Will

Common Ground and the Roots of Disagreement within the Church’s Homosexuality Debate

2018-2019 – Alexander Cavender

The first conference I attended which I got funding for was the 2018 Minnesota Philosophical Society Conference, Saturday October 13, at Rochester Community and Technical College in Rochester, MN. My presentation title was: “An Alternate Possibility for the Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Free WIll.” This was a long-running research project of mine that grew out of a paper I wrote for Professor Cunningham’s free will seminar. We received funding 2018-2019 to work jointly on this project from the Magnus the Good Collaborative Fellowship at St. Olaf, and this presentation was our first shot at getting some feedback on our project. In my presentation, I argue that most proposed solutions to the argument for theological fatalism are unsatisfactory and propose a solution based on a reanalysis of the ambiguous Principle of Alternate Possibilities commonly known in contemporary analytic literature on free will.

The second conference I attended was: “Is There Still A Secular Virtue of Chastity?” This was a Christopher Newport University virtue ethics conference held on March 29-30, 2019. The title of my presentation was “Common Ground and the Roots of Disagreement within the Church’s Homosexuality Debate.” This was a paper that grew out of my research (funded by the Graduate School Exploration Fellowship) from the previous summer (2018) at the University of Iowa with Professor Diana Fritz-Cates into contemporary moral theological debates among Catholic theologians regarding the morality of same-sex sexual acts. In this paper I explore the contemporary scholarly debate concerning the morality of same-sex sexual acts, seeking the underlying areas of disagreement as well as avenues of inquiry that could propel the often-stalemated debate forward and suggest solutions to key controversies.

Students who are interested in applying for a Kent Johnson grant should write an email to the Chair with the following information:

1. Title of the project and/or the conference
2. Brief description of the project and/or the conference
3. Significance of the project and/or the conference for the student’s interests in philosophy
4. Estimated costs for funding the project and/or trip to the conference