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This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism” – that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat.

Response by César Cabezas Gamarra.

Presented by the German Idealism Workshop

*Zoom link can be requested if you are not on the email list, please send an email to ap3097@columbia.edu

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes you to an IN-PERSON meeting:

Allison Aitken (Columbia University)

« A Case against Simple-mindedness: Śrīgupta on Mental Mereology »

With responses from Alexander Englert (Princeton University)

ABSTRACT: There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers beginning with Śrīgupta (seventh-eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an ungrounded illusion. In this talk, I will present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s “neither-one-nor-many argument” against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses.

Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Christina Van Dyke (Barnard College)
Title “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes: Imaginative Meditation and Experience of Love in Medieval Contemplative Philosophy”
4:10-6:00 PM
716 Philosophy Hall

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to automate and scale solutions to perennial accessibility challenges (e.g., generating image descriptions for blind users). However, research shows that AI-bias disproportionately impacts people already marginalized based on their race, gender, or disabilities, raising questions about potential impacts in addition to AI’s promise. In this talk, Cynthia Bennett will overview broad concerns at the intersection of AI, disability, and accessibility. She will then share details about one project in this research space that led to guidance on human and AI-generated image descriptions that account for subjective and potentially sensitive descriptors around race, gender, and disability of people in images.

The COVID-19 pandemic is said to be a once-in-a-century incident, and it brought to us a sense of crisis at various levels. What is a crisis, though? Can any unnerving moment or period be called a crisis, or are there different dimensions of a crisis to which we need to be attentive? Is solidarity possible after experiencing a crisis like Covid-19? Can Buddhism make any contribution to facilitating solidarity? This presentation explores the meaning and nature of a crisis and our responses to it by drawing on modern Korean political thinker Pak Ch’iu’s (1909–1949) analysis of crisis and feminist-Buddhist thinker Kim Iryŏp’s (1896–1971) Buddhist philosophy. By doing so, this presentation considers what social, political, existential, and even religious meaning we can draw from our experience of crises, and what questions these insights present to us.

With responses from Karsten Struhl (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)

Presented by THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

RSVP is required for dinner. If you would like to participate in our dinner, a $30 fee is required. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.

When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of that state?  The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory.  I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish.  Here I examine different candidate directions of explanation between consciousness and inner awareness.  I interpret the metaphor of consciousness as a lamp that lights itself, and use the metaphor to distinguish between his view and contemporary higher-order theories of consciousness.  I then turn to explain why the memory argument fails.  The first main problem is that, contrary to Dignāga’s contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use the argument to reach a conclusion about all conscious states.  The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.

With responses from Lu Teng (NYU Shanghai)

How do we experience space? And what does this mean for the spaces we design? We explore these questions by bringing together speakers from Architecture, Neuroscience, and Virtual Reality, with two specific aims: First, we explore what Architecture and Virtual Reality can learn from each other, as two distinct approaches to “spatial design”. Whilst spatial experience has long been a central question of Architecture, Virtual Reality is only beginning to grapple with these questions, as technology transitions from 2D screens to 3D spatial interfaces. Second, we explore the nature of spatial experience itself, with two approaches to understanding the human mind. Whilst contemporary Architecture is influenced by Philosophy (specifically the “Phenomenological” tradition), the tools of Neuroscience are increasingly being applied to questions of Architecture as well. Through this multidisciplinary exchange we hope to deepen our understanding of spatial experience, and how it informs the physical and virtual spaces we design.

Event Speakers

• Nitzan Bartov, Designer at Meta Reality Labs Research
• Anjan Chatterjee, Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
• Steven Holl, Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University
• Moderated by Paul Linton, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience and Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University

Event Information

Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link from Eventbrite. Please email presidentialscholars@columbia.edu with any questions.

This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series. Co-sponsored by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University.

The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 854-0666 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.