Coffee Chat with Hyoung Kim

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Hyoung Kim on the bottom left. (Ah, Zoom! Communicating virtual joy even through some closed eyes ;) )

Hyoung Kim on the bottom left. (Ah, Zoom! Communicating virtual joy even through some closed eyes ;) )

Thoughts from Michelle Ly ‘21

I invited Hyoung to our SymSys Coffee Chat with high expectations -- and I was not disappointed. Though I have never taken a course on Kant in my three years at Stanford, Hyoung gave a great crash course on his work (with the skill one would expect from a 7th year Ph.D. philosophy student focusing on Kant). 

Here’s a list of my takeaways from the coffee chat:

  • There are 3 types of philosophers: Wittgenstein (someone who did not read much philosophy but had great ideas), Kant (someone who read philosophy selectively that matched his beliefs and had great ideas), and someone who is interested in history for its own sake and the development of ideas (well-read and versed)

  • Kant argues we need some notion of God to believe we all have the same morality; an individual cannot be the sole source of moral rules

  • Animals have reasoning, but humans have special capacity to distinguish between reasons for reflection purposes

  • For arguments against categorical imperative that state someone is doing good just for their own self-love, the very fact you think self-love is a problem is itself kind of a sign that there’s something deeper than self-love motivating you!

Thoughts from Miles McCain ‘24

Philosophy as a discipline is new to me, so I thought having a coffee chat with Hyoung Kim—who teaches PHIL 1, the intro philosophy class—would be a great way to learn more about the field. Kim specializes on Kant, so we started by discussing Kant's legacy and role in modern philosophy. Kim proposed that Kant is to modern philosophy as the C programming language is to modern programming, in the sense that both are foundational and set the framework for what came after. 

The most impactful moment in the coffee chat for me was when Kim noted that essentially everyone is hardworking, but only a subset of people are recognized (by society, others, or even themselves) as hardworking. He made this comment during a discussion on meta-reasoning, which then turned to a discussion on the categorical imperative. 

I walked out of the coffee chat with a strong feeling that philosophy classes are in my future!