May
10
Fri
Hannah Arendt and Reiner Schurmann Annual Symposium in Political Philosophy “Varieties of Intentionality” @ Theresa Lang Center, I202, New School
May 10 – May 11 all-day

Conference Schedule

Friday May 10

  • 1pm: Rachel Goodman (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
    Introductory Overview

    1:30pm: Jake Quilty-Dunn (University of Oxford)
    On Elisabeth Camp’s “Putting Thoughts to Work”

    4:30pm: John Kulvicki (Darmouth College)
    On Jacob Beck’s “Perception is Analog”

Saturday May 11

  • 1pm: Jacob Beck (York University)
    On Jake Quilty-Dunn’s “Perceptual Pluralism”

    4pm: Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
    On John Kulvicki’s “Modeling the Meanings of Pictures”

The Five Essential Readings for the Conference

The conference is predicated on the assumption that everyone in attendance will have read all five of these essays:

Some Helpful Background Readings

Here are ten additional readings that help to fill in some of the background to the topics that will be discussed at the conference. Those new to these topics might start with the Kulvicki, Camp, and Giardino and Greenberg readings, and then move on to the others.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Zed Adams at zed@newschool.edu.

Nov
14
Thu
Aristotle’s concept of matter and the generation of animals. Anna Schriefl @ Wolff Conference Room, D1106
Nov 14 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

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).

Dec
6
Fri
Symposium on Brian Cantwell Smith’s The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment (MIT Press, 2019) @ Kellen Auditorium, Room N101
Dec 6 all-day

Selected speakers:

Zed Adams

The New School

Brian Cantwell Smith

University of Toronto, St. George

Mazviita Chirimuuta

University of Pittsburgh
Apr
18
Sat
Mind, Body, Passion. NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy @ Fordham U. Philosophy Dept.
Apr 18 – Apr 19 all-day

The workshop, which is now in its 10th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy. This year’s workshop will focus on the topic of “Mind, Body, Passion” in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800).

We welcome submissions on the conference topic, which may be broadly construed to include mind-body identity, mind-body interaction, embodiment, philosophy of emotion, aesthetics, etc. For consideration, please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com no later than December 31, 2019.

Keynote speakers:

New York University
University of Toronto at Mississauga

Organisers:

Fordham University
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan
Fordham University
May
2
Sat
Eastern Division Meeting of the North American Kant Society @ Fordham U.
May 2 – May 3 all-day

The Eastern Study Group invites submissions for its 17th annual meeting to take place at Fordham University on Saturday and Sunday, May 2-3, 2020. Our host this year is Reed Winegar.

Keynote Speakers: Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)

Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu

Please submit a detailed abstract (1,000–1,200 words) with a select bibliography. Submissions should be prepared for blind review and include a word count. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.

The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Presentation time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion.

The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit. Papers submitted for the Herz prize should not exceed 6,000 words.

Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.

ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities.

For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu) or consult the ENAKS website at www.enaks.net.

Mar
30
Thu
Echoes. Beyond the opposition between appearance and reality. Jocelyn Benoist @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Mar 30 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Western metaphysics is based on the opposition between reality and appearance. This construction essentially rests on a visual model, or more exactly on some staging of what visual experience is.
I am going to question the basis of this metaphysics, by taking into account the reality of appearances and reflecting on their various uses, in particular artistic ones. This path will be taken in the first place by shifting the focus of philosophical analysis from visual to acoustic models. Thus, I will envisage a realism of echoes, as opposed to the metaphysics of shadows.

Biography:

Jocelyn Benoist, born in 1968, is Professor at the university Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where he teaches Contemporary Philosophy, and currently a member of the ‘Institut Universitaire de France’. He has dedicated his early work to phenomenology and the bridges between phenomenology and early Analytic philosophy. For some time he was the Director of the Husserl Archive of Paris at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Then, he developed a personal investigation into the meaning of realism in philosophy. He has published many books, including recently: Toward a Contextual Realism, H.U.P., 2021, and Von der Phänomenologie zum Realismus, Mohr Siebeck, 2022.

Sep
11
Mon
Mind-Dependent Artifacts: Artifact-Dependent Minds @ Starr Foundation Hall (UL102)
Sep 11 – Sep 15 all-day

Join us for a series of keynote presentations as part of the 2023 Institute for Philosophy and New Humanities: Mind-Dependent Artifacts: Artifact-Dependent Minds.

Artifacts are a primary object of study in the humanities. They are products and, thus, manifestations of human thought, action, and self-determination without which they cannot be understood. At the same time, human mindedness depends on artifacts, and as well as other objects – a dependence that is manifest in the form of artifacts. Human mindedness and the reality of artifacts are therefore intertwined in complex ways.

Our Fall institute meeting 2023 Institute will consider ways in which human mindedness and the reality of artifacts are dialectically intertwined. Of special interest will be automatically or mechanically produced artifacts, and AI systems as artifacts that are neither inert causal models of human thinking nor independently minded entities. The ontology of such products thus needs to be calibrated in light of their contribution to the deep diversity of the mutual dependence of mindedness and artifacts. Some questions our seminar will address include: How do AI-research and AI-systems structure and restructure the historical, diverse articulation of human mindedness? How does our understanding of these and other artifacts shape our self-conception at the most fundamental level?

 

We will explore these issues in the ontology, epistemology, and humanistic study of AI and other artifacts together with distinguished keynote speakers:

Monday, September 11, 4pm
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: UNFOLDING A FUZZY FUTURE? Dimensions for Thinking about “Singularity”

Tuesday, September 12, 10am
Cameron Buckner: Understanding Progress in AI Using Empiricist Philosophy of Mind

Wednesday, September 13, 3pm
Kanta Dihal

Wednesday, September 13, 5pm
David ChalmersForum Humanum Lecture

Thursday, September 14, 4pm
Nandi Theunissen: Rethinking Regress Arguments for the Value of Humanity

Friday, September 15, 4pm
Kalindi Vora

Oct
5
Thu
The World According to Kant, (Anja Jauernig) Book Symposium @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Oct 5 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
***In response to numerous requests, the event will now be streamed. Link to the stream (via Zoom) and additional details can be found here: https://event.newschool.edu/theworldaccordingtokant.***

Anja Jauernig’s recently published The World According to Kant (Oxford, 2021) defends an interpretation of Kant’s critical idealism as an ontological position, according to which Kant can be considered a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant’s case for critical idealism thus understood and clarifies Kant’s conception of appearances and things in themselves in relation to Kant’s Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.

Anja Jauernig (NYU)

Bio:

Anja Jauernig is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and held academic positions at the philosophy departments of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to NYU. Her research interests include Kant, Early Modern Philosophy, 19th and early 20th century German Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Animal Ethics.

Patricia Kitcher  (Columbia)

Bio:

Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor Emerita of Humanities and Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Columbia.  She has written two books on Kant’s theory of cognition and the self and is editor of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts volume on The Self.

Andrew Chignell (Princeton)

Bio:

Andrew Chignell is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton.  Prior to that he was a Professor of Philosophy at Penn and Associate and Assistant Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell.  His research interests are in early modern philosophy (especially Kant) and in philosophy of religion, moral psychology, epistemology, and food ethics.  From 2020-2023 he served as President of the North American Kant Society.

Desmond Hogan (Princeton)

Bio:

Desmond Hogan is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research interests include metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics, with a focus on the modern period and nineteenth century.

Mar
7
Thu
Metaphysical Society of America Conference: Identity, Difference, and the Difference that Metaphysics Makes @ Lowenstein Building, Fordham University, Lincoln Center
Mar 7 – Mar 10 all-day

Ideas about “identity” and “difference” proliferate in the news media, in higher education, in political disputations, and in critical theories of society.  Claims about “identity” and “difference” can readily be found at work in a wide variety of typologies, including those of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, political affiliation, ability and disability, animality and humanity, etc.  But what exactly do we mean when we speak of “identity” or “difference”?  And if we achieve greater clarity about the metaphysical presuppositions and implications of “identity” and “difference,” what difference would that make?

A serious metaphysical examination of “identity” and “difference” will expectedly generate a wide variety of questions.  Is discourse about what is “identical” reducible to discourse about what is “the same”?  Is discourse about what is “different” reducible to discourse about what is “other”?  Can something be “the same” without being “identical,” and can something be “other” without being “different”?  When we speak about “being,” does our speaking about it have many different senses (is it spoken of analogically), or instead does our speaking about being always have the same sense (is it spoken of univocally)?  Does the “identity” of a thing depend mainly on the thing’s status as an individual, or does it depend instead on the thing’s membership in a general kind?  Does an understanding of identity depend on some reference to what is different?  Or does an understanding of difference depend on some reference to identity?  What is the relation of knowing to being: is it one of identity, or difference, or some combination of both?  Is it possible for a knower to discern real differences between things without discerning intelligible differences, or does the indiscernibility of intelligible differences imply that there are no real differences at all but rather an identity?  Does difference depend on negation, or can one assert that there is difference without having to assert that something is “not”?  Does it make sense to speak of an ontological difference, i.e., a difference between Being and beings, or is it senseless  – maybe even useless – to speak of a difference between Being and beings?  Is “being” different from “nothing,” or is it possible for differences to exist only among beings (in which case there apparently cannot be a difference between “being” and “nothing”)?

In spite of the virtual ubiquity of discourses about identity and difference, there is a dearth of discourse about the metaphysical presuppositions and implications of “identity and difference.”  With its choice of conference theme for 2024 (“Identity, Difference, and the Difference that Metaphysics Makes”), the Metaphysical Society of America wishes to provoke deeper thinking about the metaphysics of identity and difference, with the hope that such deeper thinking will make a meaningful difference in both theory and practice.

Proposals for papers on the conference theme are especially encouraged, but papers on other metaphysical topics are also welcome.  Please note: when selecting which submissions to accept for this conference, the Program Committee will regard “relevance to theme” as one important criterion among others.

****************************************

Guidelines for the Submission of Abstracts, and for Aristotle and Plato Prize Candidates

Abstracts of approximately 500 words should be submitted electronically by September 30, 2023, to: secretary@metaphysicalsociety.org.

Aristotle Prize: Those wishing to be considered for the Aristotle Prize of the Metaphysical Society should submit full papers along with their abstracts.  Eligibility for the Aristotle Prize extends only to persons who have not yet earned a Ph.D..  Those wishing to be considered for the Aristotle Prize should express this wish clearly in the email note that accompanies their submission.  Papers submitted for the Aristotle Prize are subject to a 3,750 word limit; this word limit applies to the body of the text to be read at the meeting, and not to footnotes or other supporting material.  The Aristotle Prize carries a cash award of $500, inclusion in the program, and assistance with the costs associated with attending the meeting.  To be considered for the Aristotle Prize, full papers and abstracts must be submitted by September 30, 2023 to:secretary@metaphysicalsociety.org.

Plato Prize: Those wishing to be considered for the Plato Prize of the Metaphysical Society should submit full papers along with their abstracts.  Eligibility for the Plato Prize extends only to persons who received a Ph.D. degree within six years of the conference submission date (i.e., persons who hold a Ph.D. degree which was conferred after September 30, 2017).  Those wishing to be considered for the Plato Prize should express this wish clearly in the email note that accompanies their submission.  Papers submitted for the Plato Prize are subject to a 3,750 word limit; this word limit applies to the body of the text to be read at the meeting, and not to footnotes or other supporting material.  The Plato Prize carries a cash award of $500, inclusion in the program, and assistance with the costs associated with attending the meeting.  To be considered for the Plato Prize, full papers and abstracts must be submitted by September 30, 2023 to:secretary@metaphysicalsociety.org.

Travel Grants: Thanks to the generous support of past presidents of the MSA and a grant from the Hocking-Cabot Fund for Systematic Philosophy, the Metaphysical Society is pleased to be able to offer reimbursements for travel expenses up to $350 to graduate students whose papers are selected for the conference program (those wishing to receive such reimbursements must provide the Metaphysical Society with all relevant expense-receipts).

Those who submit abstracts, and those who submit full papers plus abstracts for the Aristotle Prize or Plato Prize, will receive notice of the Program Committee’s decision on their submission no later than December 1, 2023.

Apr
27
Sat
Kant, Smith, & The Scottish Enlightenment @ Fordham Lincoln Center Campus
Apr 27 – Apr 28 all-day
 The NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual conference hosted by Fordham University. Our aim is to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy. 

We are seeking submissions for our 14th annual conference hosted in Spring, 2024.​

Send abstracts to newyorkcityearlymodern [at] gmail.com by December 8, 2023.

https://philevents.org/event/show/114750

Speakers:

College of Charleston
Princeton University
Marquette University

Organisers:

Fordham University
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
Fordham University