Oct
24
Thu
Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) @ Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building
Oct 24 – Oct 26 all-day

Ian Hacking wrote that probability is a Janus-faced concept with one face looking toward the world and the other toward the mind. The face looking toward the world is central to laws and explanations in physics (especially quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics) and the special sciences. The face looking toward the mind is central to epistemology and decision theory. This conference concerns both aspects and especially their relation to each other. What is probability that it possesses both aspects? This three-day conference will focus on answering this and related questions.

There is no registration fee and attendance is open to all; however, RSVP is required. Please RSVP here before Oct 15, if you plan to attend. All are welcome!

General information is available here.

Conference Organizers

Barry Loewer (Rutgers)
Denise Dykstra (Rutgers)

Invited Participants

David Albert (Columbia)
Valia Allori (NIU)
Katie Elliott (UCLA)
Ned Hall (Harvard)
Carl Hoefer (Barcelona)
Jenann Ismael (Columbia)
Christopher Meacham (Amherst)
Wayne Myrvold (Western)
Richard Pettigrew (Bristol)
Jack Spencer (MIT)

Schedule Overview

(A detailed schedule is available here.)

Thursday, October 24

  • 3:00 – 6:00: Metaphysics of Objective Probability: Ned Hall (Harvard); Jenann Ismael (Columbia).

Friday, October 25

  • 9:00 – 9:50: Breakfast in the philosophy department
  • 9:50 – 10:00: Welcome & Introductory Remarks (Barry Loewer)
  • 10:00 – 1:00: Chance: Katie Elliott (UCLA); Christopher Meacham (Amherst).
  • 1:00 – 2:30: Lunch
  • 2:30 – 5:30: Probabilities in the Special Sciences: Carl Hoefer (Barcelona); Wayne Myrvold (Western Ontario).

Saturday, October 26

  • 9:00 – 10:00: Breakfast in the philosophy department
  • 10:00 – 1:00: Chance-Credence Principles: Richard Pettigrew (Bristol); Jack Spencer (MIT).
  • 1:00 – 2:30: Lunch
  • 2:30 – 5:30: Typicality and the Statistical Postulate: David Albert (Columbia); Valia Allori (NIU).

Please contact the conference organizers (LawsAndChanceProject@gmail.com) if you have any questions.

Conference Poster

Oct
28
Mon
Benacerraf’s Non-Problem. Barbara Gail Montero @ CUNY Grad Center, 7314
Oct 28 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

Research in philosophy of mathematics over roughly the past half century can be understood, to a large degree, as a series of responses to what is commonly known as the Benacerraf problem: Given the abstract nature of mathematical entities, how can we come to have mathematical knowledge? How are we, in Benacerraf’s words, “to bridge the chasm. . . between the entities that form the subject matter of mathematics and the human knower?” In this talk, I aim to share with you some of the reasons why I think that Benacerraf’s problem—as he presents it and as Field restates it—just may be nothing to worry about.


Logic and Metaphysics Workshop:

September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING

September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA

September 16  Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen

September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews

September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC

October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING

October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC

October 28 Barbara Montero, GC

November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC

November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster

November 18

November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto

December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney

December 16  MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT

Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy: Jeff McMahan (Oxford) @ Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building
Oct 28 @ 4:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Rutgers Philosophy 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.

  • 10/18  Holly Smith book launch, location TBD (Guerrero)
  • 10/18  Workshop on Meaning (Pietroski)
  • 10/19  Workshop on Meaning (Pietroski)
  • 10/24  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 3:00-5:00 pm
  • 10/25  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 9:00 am-5:30 pm
  • 10/26  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 9:00 am-3:00 pm
  • 10/28, 10/30, 11/01 Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy: Jeff McMahan (Oxford) 4:30-7:00 pm, Archibald S. Alexander Library, 169 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ
  • 12/05  End of Year Reception 5:30-8:00 pm, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton St, New Brunswick, NJ
Philosophy of Language Workshop @ NYU Philosophy Dept. rm 302
Oct 28 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

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.

Sept 9
Donka Farkas (Santa Cruz)

Sept 16
John Maackay (U Wisconsin–Madison)

Sept 23
Andrew Bacon (USC)

Sept 30
Eleonore Neufeld (USC)

Oct 7
Eli Alshanetsky (Temple)

Oct 21
Gabe Dupre (UCLA)

Oct 28
Dorit Bar-On (UConn)

Nov 4
Sam Berstler (Princeton)

Nov 11
Robert Henderson (Arizona)

Nov 18
Sam Cumming (UCLA)

Nov 25
Harvey Lederman (Princeton)

Dec 2
Sarah Fisher (Reading)

Dec 9
Michael Glanzberg (Northwestern)

Oct
29
Tue
Structural Rationality – Julian Nida-Rümelin (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) @ NYU Philosophy Dept. 6th flr. lounge
Oct 29 @ 12:15 pm – 2:00 pm

In my talk, I will present my account of practical reason that is based on the idea of embedding an act into an intended (diachronic and/or interpersonal) structure of agency. It is compatible with bayesian decision and game theory, but refrains from consequentialist optimization. Its main scope is to integrate practical reasons of different kinds and reconcile ethical realism with bayesian decision theory.

Literature, Julian Nida-Rümelin:

  1. Economic Rationality and Practical Reason (Kluwer 1997)
  2. Structural Rationality and other Essays on Practical Reason (Springer Int Publ 2019).

 

Generous support provided by Prof. Paul Boghossian.

Lunch will be served.

Sullivan Lecture: Jenann Ismael (Columbia) @ McNally Amphitheater, Fordham
Oct 29 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Contact Brian Johnson for more information.

The Ethics of Immigration. Andrea Sangiovanni @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 9205/6
Oct 29 @ 6:15 pm – 8:00 pm

Presented by the Center for Global Ethics & Politics, The Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies

Andrea Sangiovanni, European University Institute

Oct
30
Wed
CUNY Colloquium @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 9205/6
Oct 30 @ 4:15 pm – 6:15 pm

Each colloquium is held on Wednesday at 4:15 P.M. All colloquia will take place at the Graduate Center in rooms 9205/9206 except as otherwise noted. Please call (212) 817-8615 for further information.

Download an interactive PDF version of the schedule here.


September 11 • Jonathan Adler Memorial Lecture
Philip Kitcher (Columbia University)
“Progress in the Sciences—and in the Arts”

September 18 • Note: colloquium will begin at 5:45pm
Jason Stanley (Yale University)
“Hustle: The Politics of Language”

September 25 • Note: colloquium will be held in C201/C202
Noël Carroll (CUNY Graduate Center)
“Forget Taste”

October 2
Zoë Johnson King (New York University)
“Radical Internalism”

October 23
Michelle M. Dyke (New York University)
“Could Our Epistemic Reasons Be Collective Practical Reasons?”

October 30
Stephen Grover (CUNY Queens College | Graduate Center)
“The Problem of Ugliness”

November 6
Sari Kisilevsky (CUNY Queens College)
“The Ethics of Punishment in the Age of Mass Incarceration”

November 13
Taylor Carman (Columbia University)
“Heidegger’s Nietzsche”

November 20
Luvell Anderson (Syracuse University)Co-hosted by Minorities and Philosophy (MAP), CUNY GC Chapter
“Navigating Racial Satire”

November 27 • All-day Workshop for Practice Job Talks (Note: attendance limited to CUNY community)
TBD (CUNY Graduate Center)
TBD

December 4 • All-day Workshop for Practice Job Talks (Note: attendance limited to CUNY community)
TBD (CUNY Graduate Center)
TBD

December 11 • Alumni Day
Elvira Basevich (University of Massachusetts Lowell)
“Du Bois’s Theory of Justice”

 

Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy: Jeff McMahan (Oxford) @ Seminar Room at Gateway Transit Building
Oct 30 @ 4:30 pm – 7:00 pm

Rutgers Philosophy 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.

  • 10/18  Holly Smith book launch, location TBD (Guerrero)
  • 10/18  Workshop on Meaning (Pietroski)
  • 10/19  Workshop on Meaning (Pietroski)
  • 10/24  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 3:00-5:00 pm
  • 10/25  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 9:00 am-5:30 pm
  • 10/26  Philosophy of Probability Conference (Loewer) 9:00 am-3:00 pm
  • 10/28, 10/30, 11/01 Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy: Jeff McMahan (Oxford) 4:30-7:00 pm, Archibald S. Alexander Library, 169 College Ave, New Brunswick, NJ
  • 12/05  End of Year Reception 5:30-8:00 pm, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton St, New Brunswick, NJ
Oct
31
Thu
Empirical and Normative Truth in Democracy – Julian Nida-Rümelin (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) @ NYU Philosophy Dept. 6th flr. lounge
Oct 31 @ 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm

In public discourse, but also in political theory, the opinion prevails, that democracy is incompatible with aspirations of truth. Some assume, in the Hobbesian tradition, that civic peace requires that truth assertions be restricted to science and religion (normative positivism), whereas the political sphere is constituted by interests, bargaining and collective decisions based on interests, bargaining and rules of aggregation, be they implicit or explicit. In this perspective Collective Choice as preference aggregation is paradigmatic for the understanding of democracy. Postmodernist and neo-pragmatist thought dismisses truth, because it threatens solidarity and belonging. Libertarian political thought relies on market mechanisms reducing citizens to consumers and producers of material and immaterial goods like security and welfare. Accounts of deliberative democracy focus on reasoning in the public sphere but dismiss a realistic understanding of truth, because it is thought to threaten collective and individual self-determination.

In my talk I will argue that a realistic understanding of empirical and normative truth is compatible, even necessary, for an adequate understanding of democracy, that truth assertions do not threaten civic peace, that postmodernist relativity undermines democratic practice, that libertarian market-orientation is incompatible with the status of citizens in democracy and that even deliberative, but anti-realist, accounts of democracy do not allow for an adequate understanding of democracy. My argument is based on a Davidsonian, or pragmatist, understanding of truth, therefore one might say: it critizises normative positivism, postmodernism, libertarianism, and critical theory using pragmatist insights.

Julian Nida-Rümelin presently holds a chair for philosophy and political theory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, was president of the German Philosophical Association (DGphil) and state-minister for culture and media in the first government of Gerhard Schröder. The topics of his books include Democracy as Cooperation (1999); Democracy and Truth (2006), translated in Chinese and Italian, Philosophy and the form of Life (2009), Realism (2018) and A Theory of Practical Reason (2020, forthcoming, de Gruyter and PUP).

 

Generous support provided by the New York Institute of Philosophy.