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).
New Narratives in 17th Century Philosophy: The Philosophy of Anne Conway
Contact Professor Christia Mercer for more info.
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:
Organisers:
NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE CONFERENCE
Keynote Speakers: Cary Wolfe (Rice) and Lori Gruen (Wesleyan)
This conference seeks to explore the relationship between animals and their environs, as well as the philosophical traditions that speak to these complex notions. We invite participants to question if and how philosophy’s treatment of animals and their environs can help us make sense of our current ecological situation. How have considerations of habitat, dominion, and domesticity determined the (ethical, ontological, rhetorical) status of animals? Conversely, how have presuppositions about “the animal” informed what environs are proper to “man”? What would it mean for an animal to be “at home” in the current world? Can philosophical approaches to animals be more than an instrumentalizing procedure? How will climate change alter not only the vitality of a species but the very grounds from which it lays claim to a home?
We welcome paper submissions of no more than 2500 words, that are prepared for a blind review, and suitable for a 15-20 minute long presentation.
Email your submission (in PDF format) to tns.animalhouse@gmail.com with “Animalhouse Submission” in the subject line. In your email, please include the following details: (a) author’s name; (b) paper title; (c) institutional affiliation; (d) contact information; and (e) abstract of no more than 250 words. Please do not include your name on the paper you are submitting. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2019. Accepted speakers will be notified by February 1, 2020.
Questions can be directed to Aaron Neber at tns.animalhouse@gmail.com.
For updated program information and full CFP, see: https://animalhouse2020.weebly.com/
https://philevents.org/event/show/77650
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
If you’re interested in finding out more, or if you’d like to give a talk, please e-mail Ian Olasov at his first and last name at gmail.com.
Registration for the conference is free, but required. To register, click here. Note that, as of now, NYU still has several COVID safety protocols in place. In order to be allowed to enter an NYU building, proof of full vaccination against COVID, including a booster shot, must be uploaded to NYU’s COVID portal in advance of the visit. Upon submitting your registration, you will receive an email with instructions for how to upload your proof of vaccination. Your registration will not be valid until you have received an email of approval from NYU Campus Safety informing you that you have been cleared for building access. Moreover, a high-quality mask (such as a disposable surgical mask, an N95, KN95, or KN94) must be worn at all times while indoors. Because of the extra time required to process the vaccination documentation, registration for the conference will close on April 29; no exceptions. It may be that NYU will loosen its mask requirement between now and the conference; we will post an update if that happens. For now, you should only register for the conference if you are firmly planning to attend, and if you are prepared to comply with the indicated requirements.
Saturday, May 14
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Allen Wood (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“Kant on Friendship”
Commentator: Colin Marshall (University of Washington)
Chair: Paul Guyer (Brown University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Gary Hatfield (University of Pennsylvania)
“The Subjectivity of Visual Space: Descartes and After”
Commentator: Nick Stang (University of Toronto)
Chair: Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Pat Kitcher (Columbia University)
“Kant’s Conscience and Freud’s Superego”
Commentator: Karl Schafer (University of Texas at Austin)
Chair: Sally Sedgwick (Boston University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Hannah Ginsborg (University of California, Berkeley)
“Self-consciousness, Normativity, and the Agential Perspective”
Commentator: Stefanie Grüne (Free University, Berlin)
Chair: Karl Ameriks (University of Notre Dame)
Sunday, May 15
9:30–11:10 Speaker: Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Humboldt University Berlin)
“Hegel on Subjects as Objects (according to the Phenomenology of Spirit)”
Commentator: Scott Jenkins (University of Kansas)
Chair: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
11:25–1:05 Speaker: Richard Moran (Harvard University)
“Swann’s Medical Philosophy: Pessimism and Solipsism in Proust”
Commentator: Nick Riggle (University of San Diego)
Chair: Chris Prodoehl (Barnard College)
2:55–4:35 Speaker: Tyler Burge (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Kant on Primacy of Practical Reason”
Commentator: Anja Jauernig (New York University)
Chair: Christopher Peacocke (Columbia University)
4:50–6:30 Speaker: Béatrice Longuenesse (New York University)
“A Philosophical Journey”
Chair: Don Garrett (New York University)
Our 12th annual workshop will take place entirely on-line. The workshop will focus on the topic of “Expanding the Early Modern Canon.” We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of early modern philosophy; e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels.
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
Speakers:
Organisers:
Details
The workshop, which is now in its 12th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800). This year’s workshop will be entirely online. We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of Early Modern Philosophy (e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels).
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
This talk explores the reflexive nature of consciousness, which consists primarily in the fact that a state of consciousness has a reflexive relation to the subject who has that state, so that the subject can typically be aware of itself as having that state. Comparing Kant’s, Fichte’s, and selected contemporary analytic theories of this reflexivity shows that there is a crucial difference in the way the relation between form (or mode) and content of a state of consciousness is conceived. The first part examines Kant’s formal theory of consciousness: reflexivity is understood not in terms of a self-referential content resulting from a reflection on the state of the subject, but as the universal transcendental form that any content must have in order to be representationally significant and potentially conscious to the subject. The second part examines Fichte’s departure from Kant in his theory of a self-positing consciousness: in the original act of self-positing, the mere form of reflexivity is turned into a self-referential content that determines the subject as an object from the absolute standpoint of consciousness. The third part examines analytic theories that explain the reflexivity (or what is often called the subjective character) of consciousness on a model of mental indexicality. These theories tend to reduce reflexivity to an objective constituent of content that, although often implicit, can be read off from the subject’s contextual situatedness in nature. In conclusion, Kant’s theory can be understood as a moderate, human-centered kind of perspectivism that navigates between Fichtean absolute subjectivity and a naturalist absolute objectivity.
Registration is free but required. A registration link will be shared via email with our department mailing lists a few weeks before the event. Please contact Jack Mikuszewski at jhm378@nyu.edu if you did not receive a registration link.
The Philosophy Department provides reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Requests for accommodations should be submitted to philosophy@nyu.edu at least two weeks before the event.
A conference hosted by the Motherhood and Technology Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference on the theme of “Conception and Its Discontents.”
Medical technologies have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood. Advances in genomic and reproductive care, the circulation of novel kinship structures, the entrenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege, and the politics of contested bodily sites mark this emerging constellation.
Technological advancements have in particular impacted not just the understanding of conception, but the very process by which a human embryo is created, implanted, and matured. Egg freezing, embryo storage, IVF, and surrogacy afford women new freedoms in choosing when and how to become mothers, while also raising troubling questions about the pressures of capitalism and the extension of worklife, as well as the global inequalities present in the experience of motherhood. In addition, technologies have arisen allowing for unprecedented control over not just who becomes a mother, but what kind of embryo is allowed to be implanted and to grow. Technologies such as CRISPR and NIPT have re-introduced the question of eugenics, radically shifting the very epistemology of motherhood and what it means to be “expecting.” And contemporary abortion debates draw on technology in order to make arguments both for and against access, with imaging technologies being instrumentalized in the building of a sympathetic case for the unborn, and the very notion of a “heartbeat bill” reliant on the misreading of technologies for measuring fetal activity.
While these problems are urgent today, questions of conception and technology are by no means recent developments. The 18th century saw a flourishing of philosophical and scientific theories regarding the start of human life and its formation within the womb. Such theories relied on modern technologies, such as autopsy, to atomize and visualize the body. In the 19th and 20th centuries, eugenic medical science produced theories of reproductive difference between differing racial and social groups, leading to forced sterilization laws in both the US and in Germany. This long history of racializing the rhetoric of fertility and motherhood continues to influence political debates on immigration and demographic changes in the present.
Full conference details and schedule to come.
Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs
Program
May 23, 2023
9:25–9:30: Welcome
9:30-10:50: Keynote Talk by Michael Della Rocca (Yale)
10:50-11:00: Break
11:00-1:00: Spinoza Panel, featuring talks by Karolina Hübner (Cornell), Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins), and John Morrison (Barnard)
1:00-3:00: Lunch break
3:00–4:20: Keynote Talk by Elizabeth Radcliffe (William and Mary)
4:20–4:30: Break
4:30–6:30: Hume Panel, featuring talks by Rachel Cohon (SUNY Albany), Peter Millican (Oxford), and Karl Schafer (UT Austin)
May 24, 2023
9:30–10:50: Keynote Talk by Christia Mercer (Columbia)
10:50–11:00: Break
11:00–1:00: Early Modern Women Philosophers Panel, featuring talks by Maité Cruz (Union College), David Landy (SFSU), and Antonia LoLordo (Virginia)
1:00–3:00: Lunch break
3:00–4:20: Keynote Talk by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (UNC Chapel Hill)
4:20–4:30: Break
4:30–6:30: Naturalism panel, featuring talks by Angela Coventry (Portland State), Louis Loeb (Michigan–Ann Arbor), and Justin Steinberg (CUNY, Brooklyn College)