Mathieu Charbonneau (submitted, 2024)
The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce that Mathieu Charbonneau, BA Honours in Philosophy student, is among the recipients of a Concordia University Student Research Award (CUSRA).
His summer research project, "Authenticity, Vulnerability, and Epistemic Partiality in Friendship," will be supervised by Dr. Anna Brinkerhoff.
Dr. Brinkerhoff describes the research project:
"This project will explore fundamental questions about friendship, well-being, and the ethics of belief by way of engaging with epistemic partiality in friendship (EPF)--the view that, generally, friends ought to think highly, or at least be disinclined to believe badly, of one another. The plan is to approach EPF from a new angle, by considering vulnerability and authenticity as central features of friendship, and the conflicting ways they seem to bear on how we ought to think about our friends."
The research project will culminate in an essay, tentatively titled "Kindred Enchantment: Explaining Epistemic Partiality in Friendship."
The student describes the essay:
"Sarah Stroud's influential article, 'Epistemic Partiality in Friendship,' argues that positive doxastic practices feature as norms constitutive of good friendship. She justifies this by appealing to a definition of friendship as a commitment that is fundamentally esteem-based. [...] I find this definition of friendship too narrow and argue that it fails to justify epistemic partiality as a norm constitutive of good friendship. I propose that an affective basis among friends is more fundamental and crucial for explaining partiality as a natural tendency inherent in all close relationships."
The CUSRA program provides funding to undergraduate students in the fine arts, social sciences, humanities, engineering and computer science, business disciplines, and natural and health sciences. The goal of the awards is to stimulate interest in research, participatory research, or research-creation work that will complement coursework and enhance preparation for graduate studies or research-related careers.