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
We live in an era of aesthetics. Art has become both pervasive and powerful – it is displayed not only in museums and galleries but also on the walls of corporations and it is increasingly fused with design. But what makes art so powerful, and in what does its power consist?
According to a widespread view, the power of art – its beauty – lies in the eye of the beholder. What counts as art appears to be a function of individual acts of evaluation supported by powerful institutions. On this account, the power of art stems from a force that is not itself aesthetic, such as the art market and the financial power of speculators. Art expresses, in a disguised form, the power of something else – like money – that lies behind it. In one word, art has lost its autonomy.
In his talk, Markus Gabriel rejects this view. He argues that art is essentially uncontrollable. It is in the nature of the work of art to be autonomous to such a degree that the art world will never manage to overpower it. Ever since the cave paintings of Lascaux, art has taken hold of the human mind and implemented itself in our very being. Thanks to the emergence of art we became human beings, that is, beings who lead their lives in light of an image of the human being and its position in the world and in relation to other species. Due to its structural, ontological power, art itself is and remains radically autonomous. Yet, this power is highly ambiguous, as we cannot control its unfolding.
Markus Gabriel holds the chair for Epistemology, Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Bonn and is also the Director of the International Center for Philosophy in Bonn as well as the director of the Center for Science at Thought at Bonn.
Presented by The New School for Social Research and Philosophy Department and it is co-sponsored with the Liberal Studies Department.
Selected speakers:
“Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Ethics and Religion” is an exciting one-day conference to be held on January 30, 2020, at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York, in conjunction with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), the Riverside Church and the Greater Good Initiative.
New technologies are transforming our world every day, and the pace of change is only accelerating. In coming years, human beings will create machines capable of out-thinking us and potentially taking on such uniquely-human traits as empathy, ethical reasoning, perhaps even consciousness. This will have profound implications for virtually every human activity, as well as the meaning we impart to life and creation themselves. This conference will provide an introduction for non-specialists to Artificial Intelligence (AI):
What is it? What can it do and be used for? And what will be its implications for choice and free will; economics and worklife; surveillance economies and surveillance states; the changing nature of facts and truth; and the comparative intelligence and capabilities of humans and machines in the future?
Leading practitioners, ethicists and theologians will provide cross-disciplinary and cross-denominational perspectives on such challenges as technology addiction, inherent biases and resulting inequalities, the ethics of creating destructive technologies and of turning decision-making over to machines from self-driving cars to “autonomous weapons” systems in warfare, and how we should treat the suffering of “feeling” machines. The conference ultimately will address how we think about our place in the universe and what this means for both religious thought and theological institutions themselves.
UTS is the oldest independent seminary in the United States and has long been known as a bastion of progressive Christian scholarship. JTS is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studies. The Riverside Church is an interdenominational, interracial, international, open, welcoming, and affirming church and congregation that has served as a focal point of global and national activism for peace and social justice since its inception and continues to serve God through word and public witness. The annual Greater Good Gathering, the following week at Columbia University’s School of International & Public Affairs, focuses on how technology is changing society, politics and the economy – part of a growing nationwide effort to advance conversations promoting the “greater good.”
Schedule
Introduction to AI: 9:00 – 10:30 a.m.
Mark C. Taylor (Moderator)
Chair, Department of Religion, Columbia University. A leading figure in debates about post-modernism, Taylor has written on topics ranging from philosophy, religion, literature, art and architecture to education, media, science, technology and economics.
Daniel Araya
Consultant and advisor to companies within tech industry, focusing on innovation, public policy, and business strategy, chairs annual conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society for Commonground Publishing.
Michael Kearns
Professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds the National Center Chair, as well as the departments of Economics, Statistics, and Operations, Information and Decisions (OID) in the Wharton School; Founding Director of the Warren Center for Network and Data Sciences; faculty founder and former director of Penn Engineering’s Networked and Social Systems Engineering (NETS) Program, external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute; author, The Ethical Algorithm.
Vikram Modgil
Founder of Pi Square AI – a decision design company specializing in AI based systems & algorithms, IoT, Augmented Reality & Robotic Process Automation; founder of The Good AI org to drive awareness and consciousness towards transparency in AI.
Ethical Implications: 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Serene Jones (Moderator)
A highly respected scholar and public intellectual, the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones is the 16th President of the historic Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. The first woman to head the 182-year-old institution, Jones occupies the Johnston Family Chair for Religion and Democracy. She is a Past President of the American Academy of Religion, which annually hosts the world’s largest gathering of scholars of religion. She is the author of several books including Trauma and Grace and, most recently, her memoir Call It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World. Jones, a popular public speaker, is sought by media to comment on major issues impacting society because of her deep grounding in theology, politics, women’s studies, economics, race studies, history, and ethics.
Thomas Arnold
Researcher at Tufts University Human-Robot Interaction Laboratory (HRILab) working on AI ethics and human-robot interaction while drawing upon background in philosophy of religion and theology. Lecturer, Tufts University Department of Computer Science; PhD. ABD Committee on the Study of Religion, Harvard University; Co-author, “Ethics for Psychologists: A Casebook Approach,” (Sage, 2011); Member, IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems.
Brian Green
Director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara Univ. His work is focused on the ethics of technology, including such topics as AI and ethics, the ethics of technological manipulation of humans, the ethics of mitigation of and adaptation towards risky emerging technologies, and various aspects of the impact of technology and engineering on human life and society, including the relationship of technology and religion (particularly the Catholic Church). Green teaches AI ethics in the Graduate School of Engineering and formerly taught several other engineering ethics courses. He is co-author of the Ethics in Technology Practice corporate technology ethics resources.
Michael J. Quinn
Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Seattle University. In the early 2000s his focus shifted to computer ethics, and in 2004 he published a textbook, Ethics for the Information Age, that explores moral problems related to modern uses of information technology, such as privacy, intellectual property rights, computer security, software reliability, and the relationship between automation and unemployment. The book, now in its eighth edition, has been adopted by more than 125 colleges and universities in the United States and many more internationally.
Wendell Wallach
Consultant, ethicist, and scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, where he has chaired the Center’s working research group on Technology and Ethics. Senior advisor to The Hastings Center, fellow at the Center for Law, Science & Innovation at the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law (Arizona State University), fellow at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technology. Author, A Dangerous Master: How to keep technology from slipping beyond our control and Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.
Ethical/religious implications: 12:30 – 2:00 p.m.
John Thatamanil (Moderator)
Associate Professor of Theology & World Religions, John eaches a wide variety of courses in the areas of comparative theology, theologies of religious diversity, Hindu-Christian dialogue, the theology of Paul Tillich, theory of religion, and process theology. He is committed to the work of comparative theology—theology that learns from and with a variety of traditions. Professor Thatamanil’s first book is an exercise in constructive comparative theology. The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament. An East-West Conversation provides the foundation for a nondualist Christian theology worked out through a conversation between Paul Tillich and Sankara, the master teacher of the Hindu tradition of Advaita Vedanta.
Levi Checketts
Adjunct professor at Holy Names University, PhD in ethics with focus on theological and technological issues.
Mark Goldfeder
Orthodox Rabbi, fellow at Emory University’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion, working on a book with Yeshiva University on robots in the law tentatively titled “Almost Human.”
Ted Peters
Distinguished Research Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics, Graduate TheologicalUniversity; His systematic theology, God – The World’s Future, now in its 3rd edition, has been used as a text book in numerous seminaries around the world. For more than a decade he edited Dialog, A Journal of Theology. Along with Robert John Russell he is the co-founder and co-editor of the journal, Theology and Science, at the GTU’s Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
Jason Thacker
Associate Research Fellow and Creative Director at The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also the author of The Age of AI: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. He writes and speaks on various topics including human dignity, ethics, technology, and artificial intelligence. His writing has been featured at Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Providence Journal, Light Magazine, and many more.
religious and theological implications: 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Arnold M. Eisen (Moderator)
Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. Since taking office in 2007, Chancellor Eisen has transformed the education of religious, pedagogical, professional, and lay leaders for North American Jewry, with a focus on graduating highly skilled, innovative leaders who bring Judaism alive in ways that speak authentically to Jews at a time of rapid and far-reaching change.
Vincent Bacote
Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. Professor Bacote‘s areas of teaching and research include theology and culture, theological anthropology, and faith and work. His numerous published works include The Political Disciple: A Theology of Public Life and Erasing Race: Racial Identity and Theological Anthropology – Black Scholars in White Space. Professor Bacote is a graduate of the Citadel, holds a master’s degrees in divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and a master’s degree in philosophy and PhD in theological and religious studies from Drew University.
Robert Geraci
Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College and author of Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics (Oxford University Press, 2010), Virtually Sacred: Myth and Meaning in World of Warcraft and Second Life (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Temples of Modernity: Nationalism, Hinduism, and Transhumanism in South Indian Science (Lexington 2018).
Noreen Herzfeld
Reuter Professor of Science and Religion at St. John’s University and The College of St. Benedict where she teaches Computer Ethics and Doing Ministry in a Technological Age. She is the author of In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit; Technology and Religion: Remaining Human in a Co-Created Age; andThe Limits of Perfection; and editor of Religion and the New Technologies.
Hannah Reichel
Associate Professor of Reformed Theology Princeton Theological Seminary. She holds degrees in divinity and economics. Interests and work includes poststructuralist theory, scriptural hermeneutics, political theology, surveillance studies, feminist and queer theologies.
The Politics department at the New School for Social Research will host its 1st Graduate Conference in Political Theory on March 6-7th, 2020.
We are launching this event to provide graduate students in the history of political thought, political theory and political philosophy an opportunity to present and receive feedback on their work. A total of six (6) papers will be accepted and each of them will receive substantial comments from a New School graduate student, to be followed by a general discussion. We welcome submissions from all traditions, but we are particularly interested in providing a venue for those students working on critical approaches. We would also like to encourage applications from under-represented groups in the field.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Robyn Marasco (Hunter College, City University of New York) will deliver the inaugural keynote address.
Submissions for the conference are due by December 10th, 2019. Papers should not exceed 8,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and should be sent in PDF format with the help of the electronic form provided below. Papers should be formatted for blind review with no identifying information. Abstracts will not be accepted. A Google account is needed in order to sign-in to the submission form; if you don’t have one, please email us. Papers will be reviewed over the winter break and notifications will be sent out early January 2020.
For any questions, please contact NSSRconferencepoliticaltheory@gmail.com
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfqJWRPS5DBI-zlmS4-3m-FpZA3suckmInHSIlvayKoibzQYg/viewform
https://philevents.org/event/show/77746
What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event, the Zuckerman Institute explores the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.
Event Speakers
Please visit the event webpage to view the speaker list.
Event Information
Free and open to the public, registration is required by January 28, 2022. This event will also be live-streamed. Please email zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu with any questions.
This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
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.
This talk will develop the idea that racial identities are best understood as formed through large scale historical events, and that this genesis can only be obscured by disavowals of racial categories as conceptually mistaken and inevitably morally pernicious. In this sense, races are formed not simply as ideas, or ideologies and policies, as many social constructivists about race argue, but as forms of life with associated patterns of subjectivity including, as a wealth of social psychology has shown, presumptive attitudes and behavioral dispositions (Jeffers 2019; Steele 2010; Sullivan 2005). Because they are historical formations, racial identities are thoroughly social, contextual, variegated internally, and dynamic. It is history that will alter them, not merely policy changes.
This conference aims to initiate dialogues between philosophy and the arts. Philosophers and thinkers/ scholars across disciplines of humanities and social sciences will meet with artists and scholars from a wide variety of visual and visual artistic disciplines, including painting, photography, and literature, as well as travel, dance, and fashion. Rather than taking art as a mere object of philosophical study, this conference will explore the manifold confluences and intersections of philosophy and art, exploring how each can become the object of the other and how the boundary between the philosophical and the artistic can be sharpened or blurred. The motive is specifically to explore the “visual” and “movement” element in art of, and in everyday life and theorize it – both philosophically and critically.
Co-sponsored by: Office of Deans: New School for Social Research and School of Art & Design History & Theory; University Student Senate and Graduate Faculty Student Senate
Schedule and Location
The conference will meet on The New School campus in New York City.
On March 24th, we will meet in room B500 at 65 W 11 Street.
On March 25th, we will meet in Starr Foundation Hall UL105 at University Center (63 Fifth Avenue).
Following is the schedule for both days, (please see the website for details on panels and speakers):
11:00 am Panel 1 Speaker presentations.
12:00 pm Panel 1 roundtable and audience Q&A.
1:15 pm Lunch break.
2:15 pm Panel 2 Speaker presentations.
3:15 pm Panel 2 roundtable and audience Q&A.
4:30 pm Evening reception with free food and drinks for attendees!
A two-day conference on the philosophy of deep learning, organized by Ned Block (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University) and Raphaël Millière (Columbia University), and jointly sponsored by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program at Columbia University and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University.
About
The conference will explore current issues in AI research from a philosophical perspective, with particular attention to recent work on deep artificial neural networks. The goal is to bring together philosophers and scientists who are thinking about these systems in order to gain a better understanding of their capacities, their limitations, and their relationship to human cognition.
The conference will focus especially on topics in the philosophy of cognitive science (rather than on topics in AI ethics and safety). It will explore questions such as:
- What cognitive capacities, if any, do current deep learning systems possess?
- What cognitive capacities might future deep learning systems possess?
- What kind of representations can we ascribe to artificial neural networks?
- Could a large language model genuinely understand language?
- What do deep learning systems tell us about human cognition, and vice versa?
- How can we develop a theoretical understanding of deep learning systems?
- How do deep learning systems bear on philosophical debates such as rationalism vs empiricism and classical vs. nonclassical views of cognition.
- What are the key obstacles on the path from current deep learning systems to human-level cognition?
A pre-conference debate on Friday, March 24th will tackle the question “Do large language models need sensory grounding for meaning and understanding ?”. Speakers include Jacob Browning (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University), Yann LeCun (New York University), and Ellie Pavlick (Brown University / Google AI).
Conference speakers
- Cameron Buckner (University of Houston)
- Rosa Cao (Stanford University)
- Ishita Dasgupta (DeepMind)
- Nikolaus Kriegeskorte (Columbia University)
- Brenden Lake (New York University / Meta AI)
- Grace Lindsay (New York University)
- Tal Linzen (New York University / Google AI)
- Raphaël Millière (Columbia University)
- Nicholas Shea (Institute of Philosophy, University of London)
Call for abstracts
We invite abstract submissions for a few short talks and poster presentations related to the topic of the conference. Submissions from graduate students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged. Please send a title and abstract (500-750 words) to phildeeplearning@gmail.com by January 22nd, 2023 (11.59pm EST).
https://philevents.org/event/show/106406