Calendar

Reification is the systematic association of a non-object with an object that encodes it. Therefore the reificationist must be a trans-objectist – i.e., anyone who thinks that there are instances of reification must also think that some items are not objects. As exemplified by Frege’s puzzle of the concept horse, non-objects and reification are notoriously difficult to talk about. Therefore I will begin my presentation by outlining a formal language that enables the trans-objectist and the reificationist to speak in a way that is not self-undermining. I will go on and employ the framework to give a uniform diagnosis of the set theoretic and semantic paradoxes in terms of static reification that is an alternative to Graham Priest’s Inclosure Schema, and sketch how dynamic reification can provide a uniform solution to the paradoxes as well as a general account of the constitution of abstract objects. In order to achieve this it will be crucial to import some tools of Procedural Postulationism, a dynamic account of the ontology of mathematics developed by Kit Fine.

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

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)

Contact Stephen Grimm for more information.

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”

I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there’s something right about Boltzmann’s attempt to ground the 2nd law of thermodynamics in deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what’s right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann’s explanatory project one has to fully apprehend the nature of (a) microphysical causal structure, (b) time-reversal invariance, and (c) the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.

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 denise.dykstra@rutgers.edu.

Professor Etienne Balibar and Bernard E. Harcourt discussing the Louis Althusser and Reading Capital

This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française.

Reading and discussing

Reading Capital By Althusser et al.

These events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP.

Thursday, September 12th, 2019
Amie Thomasson (Dartmouth)
Title: “TBA”
4:10 PM – 6:00 PM, 716 Philosophy Hall
Reception to follow

Thursday, October 10th, 2019
Luvell E. Anderson (Syracuse)
Title: “Laughing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Comedic Imagination”
4:10 PM – 6:00 PM, 716 Philosophy Hall
Reception to follow

Thursday, November 14th, 2019
Frances Egan (Rutgers)
Title: “TBA”
4:10 PM – 6:00 PM, 716 Philosophy Hall
Reception to follow

There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.

Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.