Calendar

I am a friend of supervaluationism. A statement lacks a determinate truth value if, and only if, it comes out true on some admissible precisifications of the relevant vocabulary and false on others. In this talk I want to focus on the special cases of identity statements. There is, I think, a potentially devastating objection that can be raised against the supervaluationist treatment of such statements—in fact two objections. Luckily, both can be resisted. But seeing how requires that we take a closer look at the ontological presuppositions of supervaluationism, allowing for more leeway than is usually supposed.

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room TBD of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 18. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

The Logic and Metaphysics Workshop will be meeting on Mondays from 4:15 to 6:15 in room 7314 of the Graduate Center, CUNY (365 5th Avenue). The (provisional) schedule is as follows:

Feb 4. Melvin Fitting, CUNY

Feb 11. Benjamin Neeser, Geneva

Feb 18. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Feb 25. Achille Varzi, Columbia

Mar 4. Eric Bayruns Garcia, CUNY

Mar 11. Jeremy Goodman, USC

Mar 18. Romina Padro, CUNY

Mar 25. Kit Fine, NYU

Apr 1. Elena Ficara, Paderborn

Apr 8. Chris Scambler, NYU

Apr 15.  Jenn McDonald, CUNY

Apr 22. GC CLOSED. NO MEETING

Apr 29. Tommy Kivatinos, CUNY

May 6. Daniel Durante, Natal

May 13. Martina Botti, Columbia

May 20. Vincent Peluce, CUNY

We’re a community of philosophers of language centered in New York City. We have a meeting each week at which a speaker presents a piece of their own work relating to the philosophy of language.

28 January
Luca Incurvati (ILLC/Amsterdam)

4 February
Dan Hoek (NYU)

11 February
Peter Klecha (Swarthmore)

25 February
Ginger Schultheis (NYU/Chicago) and
David Boylan (Rutgers)

4 March
Chris Tancredi (Keio University, Tokyo)

11 March
TBD

25 March
Yael Sharvit (UCLA)

1 April
Thony Gillies (Rutgers)

8 April
Yale Weiss (CUNY)

15 April
Friederike Moltmann (CNRS)

22 April
Amir Anvari (Institut Jean Nicod, ENS)

29 April
David Balcarras (MIT)

6 May
Nadine Theiler (ILLC, Amsterdam)

13 May
Valentine Hacquard (Maryland)

Science is by far the most powerful approach to the investigation of the natural world ever devised. Still, it has limits, and there are many areas and questions where the scientific approach is ill suited, or at best provides only pertinent information rather than full answers. The denial of this modest attitude about science is called scientism, which declares science to be the only form of human knowledge and understanding, attempting to subsume everything else, including all the humanistic disciplines, into “science” very broadly (mis-)construed. In this talk, I argue that this is a mistake, and that it moreover has the potential to undermine public trust in science itself.

There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.

Upcoming Metro Area Philosophers Talks

===============================================================

AY 2018 – 19 Workshop Schedule

Our topic for Spring 2018 will be Formal Frameworks for Semantics and Pragmatics. We’ll be investigating a range of questions in semantics and/or pragmatics which involve or are relevant to the choice between different kinds of overall structure for theories in these areas.

In most sessions, the members of the seminar will receive a week in advance, copies of recent work, or work in progress from a thinker at another university. After reading this work, students discuss it with one of the instructors on the day before the colloquium. Then at the Tuesday colloquium, the instructors give a summary review and raise criticisms or questions about the work. The author responds to these, and also to questions from the audience.

Meetings

The main seminar meetings are on Tuesday from 4-7, in the second floor seminar room of the Philosophy Department. Additionally, there will be a supplementary meeting open to all students participating in the seminar (whether enrolled or not) on Mondays from 4-5, in the same location in the fifth-floor seminar room.

This seminar is open to all interested parties.

There is a googlegroups mailing list for the class. If you want to receive announcements, please add yourself to that list. (To be able to access the mailing list’s web interface, you’ll need to log into Google’s systems using an identity Google recognizes, like a Gmail address, or a NYU email address because of how NYU’s authentication systems are connected to Google. But there’s no real need to see the mailing list’s web interface. You just need some email address to be added to list, then any messages we send to the list will get forwarded to all the email addresses then registered on the list. If you want us to add an address to the list that you can’t log into Google’s systems with, just send us a message with the address you want registered.)

Schedule and Papers

Papers will be posted here as they become available. Some may be password-protected; the password will be distributed in class.

23 Jan

Introductory session (no meeting on Monday 22 Jan), Jim’s handoutSome people asked for more background reading. Here are two useful textbooks: Heim & Kratzer, then von Fintel & Heim. Here is a survey article about different treatments of pronoun anaphora. Here is a course page with links to more reading.

30 Jan

Jim Pryor (NYU, web, mail), “De Jure Codesignation“

6 Feb

Mandy Simons (CMU, web, mail), “Convention, Intention, and the Conversational Record” and (with Kevin Zollman) “Natural Conventions and the Semantics/Pragmatics Divide“(Mandy is also speaking in the NYPL on Monday 5 Feb at 6:30.)

13 Feb

Paul Pietroski (Rutgers, mail), “Semantic Typology and Composition” (minor updates posted on Friday 9 Feb at 1:06 AM).

20 Feb

Karen Lewis (Columbia/Barnard, web, mail), “Anaphora and Negation” and “Discourse dynamics, pragmatics, and indefinites“

27 Feb

Daniel Rothschild (UCL, web, mail), “A Trivalent Approach to Anaphora and Presupposition” and (with Matt Mandelkern) “Projection from Situations“(Daniel is also speaking in the NYPL on Monday 26 Feb at 6:30.)

6 Mar

John Hawthorne (USC, mail), (with Cian Dorr) Selections from If… : A Theory of Conditionals

13 Mar

Spring Break

20 Mar

Lucas Champollion (NYU, web, mail), (with Dylan Bumford and Robert Henderson) “Donkeys under discussion”
Lucas suggests that readers who are short on time might skip or skim section 6, which is exclusively devoted to discussion of previous work.

27 Mar

Matthew Mandelkern (Oxford, web, mail), “Bounded Modality“

3 Apr

Paolo Santorio (UC-San Diego, web, mail), “Conditional Excluded Middle in Expressivist Semantics” (primary) and “Nonclassical counterfactuals” (secondary)

10 Apr

Una Stojnić (Columbia, web, mail), “Discourse and Argument“

17 Apr

Seth Yalcin (UC-Berkeley, web, mail), “Conditional Belief and Conditional Assertion” and “Notes on iffy knowledge“

24 Apr

Stephen Schiffer (NYU, web, mail), “When Meaning Meets Vagueness (Accommodating Vagueness in Semantics and Metasemantics)” (revised 20 April)

1 May

Maria Aloni (ILLC and Philosophy/Amsterdam, web, mail), “FC disjunction in state-based semantics“(Maria is also speaking in the NYPL on Monday 30 Apr at 6:30.)

Each colloquium is held on Wednesday at 4:15 P.M. All colloquia will take place at the Graduate Center in rooms 9204/9205 except as otherwise noted. Please call (212) 817-8615 for further information.

Download an interactive PDF version of the schedule here.

February 6 • Jerrold Katz Memorial Lecture
Ned Block (New York University)
“Perception is Non-Propositional, Non-Conceptual and Iconic”

February 13
Francesco Pupa (Nassau Community College)
“Determiners are Phrases”

February 20
Robert Rupert (University of Colorado, Boulder)
“There Is No Personal Level: On the Virtues of a Psychology Flattened from Above”

February 27
Reed Winegar (Fordham University)
“Kant on Infinity”

March 6 • Marx Wartofsky Memorial Lecture
David Schweickart (Loyola University Chicago)
TBD

March 13
Manolo Martinez (University of Barcelona)
“A Rate-Distortion Theory of Concepts”

March 20
Vanessa DeHarven (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
“The Distinctness of the Three Distinct Goods in Republic II”

March 27
Eli Friedlander (University of Tel Aviv)
“The Intuitive Intellect from Kant to Goethe”

April 3 • Prospectives’ Day
CUNY GC Faculty Panel

April 10
Daniel Harris (CUNY Hunter College)
“Indirect Communication”

April 17 • Logic Panel

• Romina Padro (CUNY Graduate Center)
  “The Adoption Problem in Logic”
• Saul Kripke (CUNY Graduate Center)
  “The Adoption Problem and the Quinean Conception of Logic”
• Michael Devitt (CUNY Graduate Center)
  “The Adoption Problem: A Quinean Picture”

April 24 — No Colloquium (Spring Recess)

May 1
Arindam Chakrabarti (SUNY Stony Brook)
“Some Problems Concerning Touch, Touching and the Self-Aware Body”

May 8
Briana Toole (CUNY Baruch College)
“The Not-So-Rational Racist: Articulating a New Epistemic Duty”

Join us for a conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer as she helps us rethink, reimagine and, renarrate our relationship to the sacred and the natural world. Can the objective, data-driven approach of science be enriched by non-anthropocentric spiritual worldviews? As a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Dr. Kimmerer draws on both indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge to enrich and animate our understanding of the natural world. This expansive way of seeing and relating to creation privileges regeneration and reciprocity, and offers novel solutions for ecological restoration and climate change resilience.

Dr. Kimmerer will be joined in conversation with Union faculty member John Thatamanil, and Geraldine Ann Patrick Encina, Scholar in Residence for Union’s Center for Earth Ethics.

RSVP Here

About Robin Wall Kimmerer:
Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. Read More.

About The Insight Project:
The Insight Project is a new multi-year program series that explores modern conceptions of theology and spirituality through a diverse array of thought-provoking lectures, screenings, performances, and on-stage conversations. Click HERE to learn more.

The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor at 3:00 p.m. Please see the Department Calendar for scheduled speakers and more details.

• 01/31  Department Colloquium-Prof. Brian Epstein (Tufts)
• 02/07  Inclusive Pedagogy by Prof. Zoë Johnson-King (NYU)
• 02/28  Climate Lecture-Prof. Teresa Blankmeyer Burke (Gallaudet University)
• 03/14  Mesthene Lecture-Prof. Lara Buchak (UC Berkeley)
• 03/28  Break It Down Lecture-Prof. Paul Pietroski, “Human Languages: What are They?”
• 04/11  Class of 1970s Lecture: Prof. Gideon Rosen (Princeton) Alexander Teleconf. Lecture Hall, 4:30-7:30 pm
• 04/18  Break It Down Lecture-Prof. Larry Temkin, “Population Ethics: Forty Years On”
• 04/25 – 04/27 Semantics Workshop (Lepore)
• 04/27  Rutgers Day 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
• 05/03  Epistemology Conference
• 05/04  Epistemology Conference
• 07/21 – 07/26 Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy

A number of philosophers working on Buddhist traditions have recently explored similarities between the cultivated experience of not-self, and the clinical experience of depersonalization. In this talk, I will offer some reflections on this theme. But my primary aim will be to push a similar kind of exploratory project one step further. Drawing on tools from cognitive and computational neuroscience, as well as insights from Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy, I will explore some of the most significant similarities and differences between anomalous experiences evoked by meditation, and anomalous experiences that are commonly labeled as hallucinations. I will then argue that understanding how such experiences are produced offers a powerful framework for thinking about the socially and historically situated nature of everyday experience.