Mar
2
Sat
NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy: Freedom and Evil @ Fordham Lincoln Center
Mar 2 – Mar 3 all-day

The workshop, which is now in its 9th 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 “Freedom and Evil” in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800).

We welcome submissions on the conference topic, which may be broadly construed to include the problem of free will, theodicy, political and social liberty, and evil practices and institutions. For consideration, please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com no later than December 31, 2018.

Keynote speakers:

(unaffiliated)
Boston University

Organisers:

(unaffiliated)
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan
Fordham University
Mar
29
Fri
Celebrating Yirmiyahu Yovel @ Wolff Conference Room, D1103
Mar 29 – Mar 30 all-day

The Philosophy Department of The New School for Social Research invites you to a conference in honor of the life and work of Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy Yirmiyahu Yovel.

The conference will be on March 29th and 30th in the Wolff Conference Room, D1103, 6 E 16th Street.

Celebrating Yirmiyahu Yovel

Friday, March 29th

Chair: Richard J. Bernstein

9 AM – 11 AM: Agnes Heller “The Other Within”

11 AM – 1 PM: Jay Bernstein “Yovel and Hegel’s Phenomenology

Lunch

2 PM – 4 PM: James Dodd “The Historical Antinomy”

4PM – 6PM: Jonathan Yovel “Normativity as a Poetic Quality”

 

Saturday, March 30th

Chari: Dmitri Nikulin

9 AM – 11 AM: Joel Whitebook “Immanence, Finitude, and Emancipation: A Psychoanalytic Perspective”

11 AM – 1 PM: Omri Boehm “Immanence, Knowledge, and Immortality: Spinoza’s Ethics as an Inversion of the Biblical Fall”

Lunch

2 PM – 4 PM: Chiara Bottici “Marrano of Reason”

4 PM – 6 PM: Eli Friedlander “On the Different Ways to the Highest Good”

Thinking and Living the Good Life @ Philosophy Department, Fordham U
Mar 29 – Mar 31 all-day

The theme of our conference, “Thinking and Living the Good Life,” asks participants to think upon what it means to live well in contemporary society, how we can know the right or best way to live, and the role of thought in the enterprise of human life. Evocative of ancient theories of virtue, the theme of the good life also bears on prominent areas of discussion in contemporary political philosophy, epistemology, and metaphysics. Papers topics may include, but are not limited to: the relationship between political structures and the shared goal of realizing a common good; the complexities that arise in trying to achieve knowledge of the good; and the nature of the good in and of itself. Our conference aims to bring together graduate students that work in different areas in order to think through this singular theme of the good life and to search for commonalities and intersections amongst a broad array of approaches.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted to fordhamredstarline@gmail.com by December 20, 2018. Authors of selected papers will be notified by January 10, 2019.

Keynote speakers:

Fordham University

Organisers:

Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University
Apr
6
Sat
Rutgers-Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference @ Rutgers Philosophy Dept
Apr 6 all-day
Rutgers-Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
Saturday, April 06, 2019, 09:30am – 06:00pm
TBA
Location Rutgers Philosophy Department, 106 Somerset St, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
May
3
Fri
Rutgers Epistemology Conference 2019 @ Hyatt Regency, Conference rm. BC
May 3 – May 4 all-day

The REC is a pre-read conference. The papers will be made available on April 15.

Friday, May 3, 2019

1:30 – 3:15 pm

    Alex Byrne (MIT)

    Chair: TBD

Coffee Break

3:45 – 5:30 pm

    Susanna Rinard (Harvard)

    Chair: TBD

Dinner

7:30 – 9:15 pm

    Jonathan Kvanvig (Washington University St Louis)

    Chair: TBD

Reception 9:30 – 11:00 PM

Saturday, May 4, 2019

9:30 – 11:15 am

    Anil Gupta (University of Pittsburgh)

    Chair: TBD

Coffee Break

11:45 – 1:30 pm      Winner of the Young Epistemologist Prize

    TBD

    Chair: TBD

Lunch

2:45 – 4:30 pm

    Maria Lasonen-Aarnio (University of Helsinki)

    Chair: TBD

Discussants

Heather Battaly (University of Connecticut)

John Bengson (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Annalisa Coliva (University of California Irvine)

Thomas Kelly (Princeton)

Participants

Chris Copan, Andy Egan, Megan Feeney, Peter Klein, Matthew McGrath, Susanna Schellenberg, Ernie Sosa

The REC is a pre-read conference, so papers are to be read in advance. There is no registration fee for the conference, but please notify Megan Feeney, the conference manager, if you plan to attend by sending an email to rutgersepistemologyconference@gmail.com. If you wish to participate in the meals, please send a check made out to “Rutgers University” to Megan Feeney by April 15 ($80 if you are a faculty member or a postdoc; $60 if you are a graduate student or an undergraduate): Megan Feeney; Rutgers Epistemology Conference; 106 Somerset St, 5th Floor; New Brunswick, NJ 08901.

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.

May
16
Thu
Conference in Honor of Jerry Fodor @ Academic Building, Room 1180, Rutgers
May 16 – May 17 all-day

Thursday, May 16th

9:00-9:30 am Breakfast (Provided)
9:30-9:45 am Opening Remarks, James Swenson, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
9:45-10:45 am Session 1 – Tom Bever, “Foundational cognitive science themes that Jerry explored”
10:45-11:00 am Coffee Break
11:00 am – Noon Session 2 – Rochel Gelman, “Innate learning and beyond: The case of number”
Noon – 2:30 pm Lunch (Not provided, see below for options)
2:30-3:30 pm Session 3 – Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini“What Jerry and I got right about what Darwin got wrong”
3:30-3:45 pm Coffee Break
3:45-4:45 pm Session 4 – David Rosenthal“Fodor’s Representationalism”
4:45-5:45 pm Session 5 – Terry Horgan“Morphological content and chromatic illumination in belief fixation”
6:00 pm Dinner Reception Open to All (6th Floor WEST Wing of the Academic Building)

 

Friday, May 17th

9:00-9:15 am Breakfast (Provided)
9:15-10:15 am Session 6 – Louise Antony, “Not psychological, but not brutely causal either”
10:15-10:30 am Coffee Break
10:30-11:30 am Session 7 – Kevan Edwards“Fodor* on concepts, Frege’s Problem, and the division of explanatory labor”
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Session 8 – Eric Margolis, “Understanding concept nativism”
12:30-3:00 pm Lunch (Not provided, see below for options)
3:00-4:00 pm Session 9 – Susan Schneider, “Conscious machines? A sober-minded approach”
4:00-4:15 pm Coffee Break
4:15-5:15 pm Session 10 – Georges Rey, “Fodor’s mis-guided Quineanism”
5:15-6:15 pm Session 11 – Randy Gallistel“It’s numbers all the way down”
6:15-6:30 pm Closing Remarks

 

Space is limited, so if you plan to attend, please click here to RSVP.

May
31
Fri
Humane Understanding Conference @ Fordham Lincoln Center
May 31 – Jun 1 all-day

As work on the nature of understanding has expanded in recent years, there has been increasing interest in the question of what might be distinctive about our understanding of other people, or humane understanding.

Our conference will explore this question, and consider how recent debates might be enriched by insights from areas such as epistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of social science, the hermeneutical tradition, and the “verstehen” tradition in Continental philosophy.

Confirmed Speakers:

Olivia Bailey (Tulane)

Kristin Gjesdal (Temple)

Stephen R. Grimm (Fordham)

Kareem Khalifa (Middlebury)

Michael Strevens (NYU)

Karsten Stueber (Holy Cross)

Call for Abstracts:

3-4 spots on the program will be filled via a call for abstracts. Submitted abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, and should be emailed to sgrimm@fordham.edu by December 1, 2018. Meals at the conference will be covered, but scholars whose abstracts are selected will cover their own travel and lodging costs. Abstracts should try to engage with the following questions:

How does understanding people differ from other kinds of understanding, such as the understanding of concepts, language, or natural phenomena? Do these various types of understanding bring different cognitive resources to bear, or have different epistemic profiles?

Is there a deep unity among these types of understanding, or not?

What are the distinctive ways in which the study of literature or art or history enhance our understanding of other people?

What role does the reenactment of another’s perspective play in humane understanding? Is it merely a heuristic for discovering a person’s mental states (as Hempel seemed to think) or does it play a more epistemically robust role? Is reenactment of this sort indispensable to intentional-action explanation?

How does recent research on social cognition and mindreading bear on older debates about Verstehen?

How does the hermeneutical tradition shed light on these issues? Is it engaged with different questions, or does it pursue them from a distinctively different angle?

How do we adjudicate between competing interpretations of people’s actions?

What contribution does memory make to humane understanding?

Jun
10
Mon
Rutgers-Bristol Workshop on the Metaphysical Unity of Science @ Rutgers U, Newark. Conklin Hall 455
Jun 10 – Jun 11 all-day

Schedule – June 10th 

(Talks are aprox. 45 minutes with 30 minutes for Q&A)

9:00    Mazviita Chirimuuta, Emergence in Science & the Unity of Science

10:15  Joyce Havstad, TBA

12:00  Lunch, Marcus P&B.  Part of RUN and Newark’s Community Development.

2:00    Ricki Bliss, Fundamentality: From Epistemology to Metaphysics

3:15    Tuomas Tahko, Laws of Metaphysics for Essentialists

 

Schedule – June 11th 

9:00    Kelly Trodgon, Grounding and Explanatory Gaps

10:15  Stuart Glennan, Rethinking Mechanistic Constitution 

12:00  Lunch, Mercato Tomato Pie.

2:00    Alex Franklin,  How Do Levels Emerge?

3:15    Ken Aizawa, New Directions in Compositional Explanation: Two Cases Studies

Abstracts


Mazviita Chirimuuta – Emergence in Science & the Unity of Science

This paper considers the implications of recent accounts of emergent phenomena for the question of the unity of the sciences. I first offer a historical account of physicalism in its different guises since the mid 19th century. Two threads connecting these otherwise quite different views have been the rejection of emergent phenomena and the commitment to the unity of science. In section two I provide an exposition of emergence as presented in recent philosophy of science, where the key claim is that “parts behave differently in wholes”, based on the empirical finding of what Gillett (2016) calls “differential powers.” Gillett argues that the empirical evidence does not yet support the strong emergentist claim that there is downward causation or any other form of influence from the whole system to its constituent parts, but that such evidence might be obtained. In section 3 I propose instead that the question of whether or not the finding of differential powers is taken to provide overwhelming evidence for strong emergence depends on the further interpretation of differential powers, and ultimately on very broad metaphysical commitments. The interpretation of differential powers that is most resistant to objections from opponents of strong emergence involves a rejection of substance ontology, and hence the rejection of physicalism. Thus, as I conclude in section 4, philosophers should not wait in expectation for empirical results that will settle the question of whether or not there is strong emergence.  I offer a preliminary costs/benefits analysis of the different ontologies of differential powers, intended to aid the reader in their decision over the status of strong emergence. On the most radical interpretation, the usual physicalist conception of the unity of science must be rejected, while a different kind of metaphysical wholism stands in its place.

Joyce Havstad, TBC

Ricki Bliss – Fundamentality: from Epistemology to Metaphysics

In this talk, I explore what might follow for the metaphysics of fundamentality if we take seriously certain reasons to believe there is anything fundamental in the first place.

Tuomas Tahko – Laws of Metaphysics for Essentialists

There is a line of thought gathering momentum which suggests that just like causal laws govern causation, there needs to be something in metaphysics that governs metaphysical relations. Such laws of metaphysics would be counterfactual-supporting general principles that are responsible for the explanatory force of metaphysical explanations. There are various suggestions about how such principles could be understood. They could be based on what Kelly Trogdon calls grounding-mechanical explanations, where the role that grounding mechanisms play in certain metaphysical explanations mirrors the role that causal mechanisms play in certain scientific explanations. Another approach, by Jonathan Schaffer, claims to be neutral regarding grounding or essences (although he does commit to the idea that metaphysical explanation is ‘backed’ by grounding relations). In this paper I will assess these suggestions and argue that for those willing to invoke essences, there is a more promising route available: the unificatory role of metaphysical explanation may be accounted for in terms of natural kind essences.

Kelly Trogdon – Grounding and Explanatory Gaps

 Physicalism is the thesis that all mental facts are ultimately grounded by physical facts. There is an explanatory gap between the mental and physical, and many see this as posing a challenge to physicalism. Jonathan Schaffer (2017) disagrees, arguing that standard grounding connections involve explanatory gaps as a matter of course. I begin by arguing that Schaffer and others mischaracterize the explanatory gap between the mental and physical—it chiefly concerns what I call cognitive significance rather than priori implication or related notions. The upshot is that standard grounding connections normally don’t involve explanatory gaps. Then I consider two grounding-theoretic proposals about how to close explanatory gaps in the relevant sense, one involving structural equations (Schaffer 2017) and the other mechanisms (Trogdon 2018). While each of these proposals seeks to illuminate grounding connections, I argue that neither is helpful in closing the explanatory gap between the mental and physical.  

Stuart Glennan – Rethinking Mechanistic Constitution

  

The relationship between a mechanisms and its working parts is known as mechanistic constitution.   In this paper we review the history of the mechanistic constitution debate, starting with Salmon’s original account, and we  explain what we take to be the proper lessons to be drawn from the extensive literature surrounding Craver’s mutual manipulability account.  Based on our analysis, we argue that much of the difficulty in understanding the mechanistic constitution relation arises from a failure to recognize two different forms of mechanistic constitution — corresponding to two different kinds of relationships between a mechanism and the phenomenon for which it is  responsible.  First, when mechanisms produce phenomena, the mechanism’s parts are diachronic stages of the process by which entities act to produce the phenomenon.  Second, when mechanisms underlie some phenomenon, the phenomenon is a activity of a whole system, and the mechanism’s parts are those of the working entities that synchronically give rise to the phenomenon.  Attending to these different kinds of constitutive  relations will clarify the circumstances under which mechanistic phenomena can be said to occur at different levels.

Alex Franklin – How Do Levels Emerge?

 Levels terminology is employed throughout scientific discourse, and is crucial to the formulation of various debates in the philosophy of science. In this talk, I argue that all levels are, to some degree, autonomous. Building on this, I claim that higher levels may be understood as both emergent from and reducible to lower levels. I cash out this account of levels with a case study. Nerve signals are on a higher level than the individual ionic motions across the neuronal membrane; this is (at least in part) because the nerve signals are autonomous from such motions. In order to understand the instantiation of these levels we ought to identify the mechanisms at the lower level which give rise to such autonomy. In this case we can do so: the gated ion channels and pumps underwrite the autonomy of the higher level.

Ken Aizawa – New Directions in Compositional Explanation: Two Cases Studies

The most familiar approach to scientific compositional explanations is that adopted by the so-called “New Mechanists”. This approach focuses on compositional explanations of processes of wholes in terms of processes of their parts. In addition, the approach focuses on the use of so-called “interlevel interventions” as the means by which compositional relations are investigated. By contrast, on the approach I adopt, we see that there are compositional explanations of individuals in terms of their parts and properties of individuals in terms of the properties of their parts. In addition, I draw attention to the use of abductive methods in investigations of compositional relations. I illustrate my approach by use of Robert Hooke’s microscopic investigations of the cork and the development of the theory of the action potential.

Sep
12
Thu
International Merleau-Ponty Circle: Affect / Emotion / Feeling @ 12th Floor Lounge
Sep 12 – Sep 14 all-day

Thursday, September 12 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
9 – 9:15 a.m. Opening remarks: Shiloh Whitney, Conference Director
Session 1 – Organic Affectivity and Animality
Moderator: Emilia Angelova, Concordia University
9:15 – 10 a.m. Hermanni Yli-Tepsa, University of Jyväskylä: “How to feel like our eyes: tracing the theme of instinctive affectivity in Phenomenology of Perception”
10 – 10:45 a.m. Sarah DiMaggio, Vanderbilt University: “Flesh and Blood: Reimagining Kinship”
10:45 – 11 a.m. Break
Session 2 – Passivity
Moderator: Philip Walsh, Fordham University
11 – 11:45 a.m. David Morris, Concordia University: “The Transcendentality of Passivity: Affective Being and the Contingency of Phenomenology as Institution”
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Rajiv Kaushik, Brock University “Merleau-Ponty on Passivity and the Limit of Philosophical Critique”
12:30 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break
Session 3 – Theorizing Emotion 1: Outside-in, Inside-Outside
Moderator: Duane H. Davis, University of North Carolina at Asheville
2 – 2:45 p.m. Ed Casey, Stonybrook University: “Bringing Edge to Bear: Vindicating Merleau-Ponty’s Nascent Ideas on Emotion”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Ondřej Švec, Charles University Prague: “Acting out one’s emotion”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 4 – Theorizing Emotion 2: Intersubjective Dimensions
Moderator: April Flakne, New College of Florida
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Jan Halák, Palacky University Olomouc: “On the diacritical value of expression with regard to emotion”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Corinne Lajoie, Penn State University: “The equilibrium of sense: Levels of embodiment and the (dis)orientations of love”
Winner of the M. C. Dillon Award for best graduate essay
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Thursday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Alia Al-Saji, McGill University
“The Affective Flesh of Colonial Duration”

Friday, September 13 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 5 – Affective Pathologies and Empathy
Moderator: Lisa Käll, Stockholm University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Ståle Finke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim: “Structuring Affective Pathology: Merleau-Ponty and Psychoanalysis”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Catherine Fullarton, Emory University: “Empathy, Perspective, Parallax”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 6 – Eating and Breathing
Moderator: Ann Murphy, University of New Mexico
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Whitney Ronshagen, Emory University: “Visceral Relations: On Eating, Affect, and Sharing the World”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Amie Leigh Zimmer, University of Oregon: “Rethinking Chronic Breathlessness Beyond Symptom and Syndrome”
12:15 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break (and graduate student Mentoring Session in Lowenstein 810)
Session 7 – Critical Phenomenologies 1: Work and Freedom
Moderator: Whitney Howell, La Salle University
2 – 2:45 p.m. Talia Welsh, University of Tennessee Chattanooga: “Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Work and Its Discontents”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University: “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 8 – Critical Phenomenologies 2: The “I Can”
Moderator: Cheryl Emerson, SUNY Buffalo
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Kym Maclaren, Ryerson University: “Criminalization and the Self-Constituting Dynamics of Distrust”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Joel Reynolds, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lauren Guilmette, Elon University: “Rethinking the Ableism of Affect Theory with Merleau-Ponty”
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Friday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Matthew Ratcliffe, York University
“Towards a Phenomenology of Grief: Insights from Merleau-Ponty”

Saturday, September 14 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 9 – Feeling Beyond Humanism
Moderator: Wayne Froman, George Mason University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Marie-Eve, Morin, University of Alberta. “Merleau-Ponty’s ‘cautious anthropomorphism’”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Jay Worthy, University of Alberta: “Feelings of Adversity: Towards a Critical Humanism”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 10 – Art and Affect
Moderator: Stephen Watson, Notre Dame
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Veronique Foti, Pennsylvania State University. “Body, Animality, and Cosmos in the Art of Kiki Smith”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Rebecca Longtin, State University of New York New Paltz: “From Stone to Flesh: Affect and the Poetic Ambiguity of the Body”
12:15 – 2:15 p.m. Lunch Break (and Business Lunch at Rosa Mexicano, 61 Columbus Ave)
Session 11 – Voice and Silence
Moderator: Gail Weiss, George Washington University
2:15 – 3 p.m. Susan, Bredlau, Emory University. “Losing One’s Voice: Merleau-Ponty and the Lived Space of Conversation”
3 – 3:45 p.m. Martina, Ferrari, University of Oregon. “The Laboring of Deep Silence: ‘Conceptless Opening(s),’ the Suspension of the Familiar, and the Dismemberment of the Ego”
3:45 – 4 p.m. Break
Session 12 – Affectivity and Language
Moderator: Galen Johnson, University of Rhode Island
4 – 4:45 p.m. Silvana de Souza Ramos, University of São Paulo. “Merleau-Ponty and the Prose of Dora’s World”
4:45 – 5:30 p.m. Katie Emery Brown, University of California Berkeley. “Queer Silence in Merleau-Ponty’s Gesture”
Banquet
7 – 10 p.m. At Salam, 104 W 13th St.