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.
Serving as a response to Aimé Césaire’s call for a universal filled with particularity from his infamous resignation from the French Communist Party in 1956, I focus on the role of culture for a project of universal emancipation. To do so, I follow Sylvia Wynter’s statement that the Négritude movement is an example of a universal and cultural project. Recalling Césaire’s words in “Return to My Native Land,” culture that serves universal emancipation must be “free of the desire to tame but familiar with the play of the world.” To this end, I develop a conception of culture that is both local and universal, that centers on the importance of what it means to be human, as life, as being, and as experience by reading culture as necessarily local, collective, disenchanted, and related to play.
Bio:
Elisabeth Paquette is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her book, titled Universal Emancipation: Race beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020), engages French political theorist Alain Badiou’s discussion of Négritude and the Haitian Revolution to develop a nuanced critique of his theory of emancipation. Currently, she is working on a monograph on the writings of decolonial theorist Sylvia Wynter. She is also the Founder of the Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop, which takes place annually during the summer.