May
17
Tue
NYC Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy: Expanding the Canon @ Zoom
May 17 – May 19 all-day

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:

University of Western Ontario
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
(unaffiliated)

Organisers:

Fordham University
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan
Fordham University

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.

Oct
1
Sat
Feminist Crisis? Philosophical Interventions @ Philosophy Dept., CUNY Graduate Center
Oct 1 all-day
24th Annual CUNY Graduate Student Conference

Is feminism in crisis? Recently, in the United States and abroad, historic events rendered ever more precarious the lives and well-being of people marginalized by their sex, gender, race, and class, often in complexly intersecting and regionally specific ways. The rise of right-wing populism transnationally and attacks on reproductive rights, for example, exacerbate the challenges feminists confront. At the same time, as external conditions shift, feminism’s own faultlines continue to deepen. Feminism’s rising trans-exclusionary contingent, certain feminists’ hesitancy to reckon with complicity in racial and colonial violence, and the ongoing cooptation of feminism by neoliberalism signal serious internal fractures.

As feminism faces external and internal pressures, how can philosophy help us understand this moment of potential crisis and what, if anything, can philosophy do to address it? To devise answers to these urgent questions, we welcome contributions that focus on:

1.     The relation between feminism and philosophy, including how feminism should intervene in philosophical debates, and how philosophy should intervene in feminist debates;

2.     Questions concerning the nature and practice of gender, sex, sexuality, race, class, and disability that draw on feminist literatures or methodologies;

3.     Perspectives that integrate different feminist traditions to build intersectional and transnational feminist coalitions;

4.     Analyses of discourses on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability in media, law, and the sciences;

5.     Translating feminist views on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability into public policy and social advocacy.

We welcome contributions from scholars working in philosophy and who draw on a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Scholars of all identities, especially those from groups underrepresented and/or marginalized in academia, are encouraged to submit contributions.

Please send anonymized abstracts of up to 500 words to cunygc.philosophy.conference@gmail.com, along with any questions you may have. The deadline for submissions is September 7th.

Mar
3
Fri
Identity and Difference. 2023 Fordham Graduate Student Conference  @ Philosophy dept
Mar 3 – Mar 4 all-day

Keynote: Naomi Zack (Lehman College, CUNY)
One of philosophy’s original questions still plagues us: to what extent are beings the same and to what extent do they differ? Arising in thinkers as diverse as Parmenides, Aquinas, and De Beauvoir and in arenas from social and political philosophy to phenomenology and metaphysics. This conference aims to gather graduate student scholars from a variety of specializations to discuss their work on identity and difference. Some of the many questions we may pursue together are the following:

What constitutes identity and difference? What makes someone who they are? How do we understand ourselves to be alike enough to communicate, yet different enough that we must work to understand another’s point of view? How do identity and difference shape belonging–within a community, within a social institution, within a political structure? Similarly, how do differences among the members of a group enrich the identity of that collective? How might overlapping identities of an individual give rise to one’s sense of self? How does identity inform a given group’s philosophical thought? How might one form their identity and sense of self when, as in the case of many marginalized groups/ minorities, the “self” is oppressed?

These questions additionally motivate ontological considerations. To what extent can we describe two objects that are in fact identical? What grants an object’s or a person’s identity over time: metaphysical characteristics, temporal continuity, or certain brain states? Upon what aspects of an entity do we predicate differences? When are two things metaphysically or logically identical? Are mereological composites more than the sum of their parts? Are they identical to matter? To what extent do beings differ from Being? How might experiences or acts of reason help ground an identity claim such as A=A?

Other questions broadly related to “Identity and Difference” are also welcome.

Please submit a 300-500 word abstract prepared for blind review to fordhamgradconference@gmail.com in PDF format. In the body of the email, please include:

  • Name
  • Email
  • Paper title
  • Institutional Affiliation

Submissions are due by Friday, December 30, 2022. After anonymous review, applicants will be notified by Tuesday, January 17, 2023. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes.

The conference will take place in person on March 3-4, 2023 on Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus located at 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458.

For questions, please contact the conference organizers at fordhamgradconference@gmail.com

Mar
25
Sat
The Philosophy of Deep Learning @ Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness
Mar 25 – Mar 26 all-day

A two-day conference on the philosophy of deep learning, organized by Ned Block (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University) and Raphaël Millière (Columbia University), and jointly sponsored by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program at Columbia University and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University.

About

The conference will explore current issues in AI research from a philosophical perspective, with particular attention to recent work on deep artificial neural networks. The goal is to bring together philosophers and scientists who are thinking about these systems in order to gain a better understanding of their capacities, their limitations, and their relationship to human cognition.

The conference will focus especially on topics in the philosophy of cognitive science (rather than on topics in AI ethics and safety). It will explore questions such as:

  • What cognitive capacities, if any, do current deep learning systems possess?
  • What cognitive capacities might future deep learning systems possess?
  • What kind of representations can we ascribe to artificial neural networks?
  • Could a large language model genuinely understand language?
  • What do deep learning systems tell us about human cognition, and vice versa?
  • How can we develop a theoretical understanding of deep learning systems?
  • How do deep learning systems bear on philosophical debates such as rationalism vs empiricism and classical vs. nonclassical views of cognition.
  • What are the key obstacles on the path from current deep learning systems to human-level cognition?

A pre-conference debate on Friday, March 24th will tackle the question “Do large language models need sensory grounding for meaning and understanding ?”. Speakers include Jacob Browning (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University), Yann LeCun (New York University), and Ellie Pavlick (Brown University / Google AI).

Conference speakers

Call for abstracts

We invite abstract submissions for a few short talks and poster presentations related to the topic of the conference. Submissions from graduate students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged. Please send a title and abstract (500-750 words) to phildeeplearning@gmail.com by January 22nd, 2023 (11.59pm EST).

 

https://philevents.org/event/show/106406

Mar
30
Thu
2023 Telos Conference: Forms of War @ John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
Mar 30 – Apr 1 all-day

One of the most challenging aspects of the war in Ukraine is the way in which the conflict has been constantly shifting in its form. In the first place, there is a conventional ground war between Russia and Ukraine, in which the identity and will of the two peoples is at stake. Yet Russia has used weapons supplied by Iran, and Ukraine depends on NATO for its own supplies, indicating that this war depends on the maintenance and expansion of alliances. The stability of these alliances in turn depends on a combination of Realpolitik and shared values as the glue that holds them together. This logic of alliances motivates the energy war that Russia is waging with Europe, revealing that, unbeknownst to Europe, Russian energy policy over the last decade was an early form of the war. Similarly, the threat of nuclear war also tests the resolve of NATO, forcing it to consider the values at stake in the conflict. Is the war about Ukraine’s sovereignty or the principle of nation-state sovereignty itself? Is it about human rights for Ukrainians or the entire human rights project? For Russia, is it about self-defense or a pan-Slavic identity? Is it about the protection of Russian minorities in Ukraine or the threat of Western secularization?

The material form of the war—economic, conventional, nuclear—will depend on the way in which the participants on all sides and in all parts of the world come to an understanding about these questions concerning the moral and spiritual stakes in the war. If it is just a matter of giving up Ukraine, then the economic costs for Europe may not be worth the fight, and Russia’s victory in the energy war could lead to a general NATO capitulation. But if the freedom and security of central and western Europe are also at stake, then even a severe economic recession would be a small price to pay for the reestablishment of a NATO-dominated security order. Is freedom worth the risk of annihilation? Is peace worth the indignities and repression of authoritarianism? As the most serious global conflict since World War II, the war in Ukraine risks going beyond the bounds of all other forms of war before it. What are the resources that are necessary for meeting its challenges? How can the shifting forms of the war be contained and channeled toward a future lasting peace?

These types of questions are not specific to the war in Ukraine but arise in any situation of war. Every war forces us to reconsider the character of war and the forms that it can take. In the first place, the insight that leads to a war is one about the nature of a conflict. War only begins once the parties determine that there is an otherwise irresolvable conflict about the basis of order. The course of a war also results in a practical insight into the form of a postwar order. Peace and stability cannot arrive until all come to an agreement about the new understanding of order. This intertwining of practical and theoretical gains means that the time of war is also a time of shifting manifestations of the forms by which war is fought, as well as the forms of order to be established by the outcome of the war. The course of a war will be decided by our understanding of the kind of world we want to live in, the risks we are willing to take to establish such a world, and our belief in its practical possibility. A war will necessarily change in form depending upon where we are in the movement from the conflict of competing ideas to the victory of a particular conception of order. Since the result of the conflict would be an establishment of sovereignty based on some understanding of order, the conflict is not just a material one but also a theoretical and spiritual one about the metaphysical basis of order. In the process of war, insight leads to conflict, and conflict leads to insight.

At the 2023 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference on forms of war, we will consider different ways of understanding the relationship between conflict and insight in war as well as examples of how the conceptualization of conflict affects the outbreak, progress, and outcome of wars. On the one hand, we will consider the way in which the experience of war, both on the battlefield and on the home front, affects the outcome of the war. On the other hand, we will look at how this importance of the experience of war in turn affects the strategy of war. Such strategizing begins already at the nascent stages of conflict, before any actual fighting begins, but in which the possibility of conflict can already lead to concessions by one side or the other that lead to a transformation of the basis of order. Similarly, fears and hopes for the future also determine the course of a war, helping the participants to end a war by offering them a mutually acceptable vision of the terms of peace.

Questions include:

  • What are the different causes of war in any particular case? How do these causes attain such significance that they become a casus belli? Were there alternatives to war that were not taken?
  • In what situations does the refusal of war lead to an outcome that is tantamount to surrender in war? How can the threat of war be used as a political tool?
  • To what extent is war a continuation of politics? Or is war the breakdown of politics?
  • How have different wars been experienced on the battlefield and on the home front? How have the different experiences of war affected the outcomes?
  • How does our understanding of world order affect the turn to war?
  • What is the relationship between war and peace in terms of international order?
  • How do fictional or historical representations of war affect the conduct of war?
  • What is the relationship between war and the collective identity of a people?
  • How are wars between nation-states linked to their domestic politics? In what situations does an external enemy create unity or division in domestic politics?
  • How is war used as a tool in domestic politics, for instance, as a way to divert attention from domestic political problems?
  • What are the characteristics of different types of war, such as limited war, absolute war, civil war, cold war, proxy war, phony war, trade war, guerilla war, war on terror, nuclear war? What factors lead to a war being fought in a particular way?
  • To what extent can a representation of war replace a real war, for instance, when single combat is supposed to substitute for the combat of armies, or when war is televised?
  • What is the relationship between spiritual concerns and the forms of war? Are all wars in some sense religious wars?

Conference Location

The conference will take place at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City from Thursday, March 30, to Saturday, April 1, 2023.

Abstract Submissions

Please note: Abstracts for this conference will only be accepted from current Telos-Paul Piccone Institute members. In order to become a member, please visit our membership enrollment page. Telos-Paul Piccone Institute memberships are valid until the end of the annual New York City conference.

If you are interested in making a presentation, please submit a 200-word abstract and 50-word bio by December 15, 2022, to telosnyc2023@telosinstitute.net. Please place “The 2023 Telos Conference” in the email’s subject line.

Apr
15
Sat
Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experiences Conference @ Center for Philosophy of Religions, Rutgers
Apr 15 – Apr 16 all-day

The Center for Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University is pleased to host an in-person, working-papers conference on the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experience. We are seeking abstracts (150-350 words) from those interested in participating. The tentative date is 15-16 April 2023. And the deadline for submission is 28 February 2023. Participants with accepted submissions will be given hotel accommodations and a modest honorarium to help defray travel costs.

Theme

The overall theme of the workshop is the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experiences. Philosophers of religion frequently assign religious experiences important epistemic roles, such as justifying religious beliefs. But religious experiences of the kind philosophers are interested in are also studied in other fields as well, such as psychology and religious studies. However, the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences are presumably not independent; studying them together is likely to be insightful in various ways. To that end, we are interested in bringing together scholars working on the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences. Potential topics include:

·       The nature of religious experiences

·       Taxonomies of religious experiences

·       Potential psychological mechanisms and accounts of religious experience

·       The relation between perception and religious experiences

·       The epistemology of religious experience

·       The interactions between the psychology and epistemology of religious experience

·       The relation of cognitive science of religion to religious experience

Any proposed papers on these topics, or similar ones, are welcome. Papers exploring interdisciplinary approaches are also welcome.

Instructions

Please submit an abstract (150-350 words), long abstract (350-650 words), or full paper to Timothy Perrine at tp654@scarletmail.rutgers.edu. Submission should be prepared for blind review. In a separate document please provide your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and contact information. Submission deadline is 28 February; acceptances will be decided by 5 March; and the workshop will be held 15-16 April.

Sep
1
Fri
First Conference of the Society for Philosophers of the Pandemic Generation @ CUNY Grad Center
Sep 1 – Sep 2 all-day

After the stimulating discussion at the Conference on Philosophy in the Pandemic Generation, participants decided then and there to begin something bigger: The Society for Philosophers of the Pandemic Generation. This group is open to any and all who feel that the pandemic influenced them during their formative years of philosophical training.

The First Conference of the Society for Philosophers of the Pandemic Generation welcomes abstracts:

That explicitly engage with the role of pandemics, epidemics, and the unique challenges, academic or otherwise, of 2020-2023.

That are the result of a research project in philosophy conceived or written during, or affected by, said challenges.

That may be on a range of topics that need not be limited by content, this includes topics on the crossroads of philosophy and another discipline.

We encourage PhD students and early career researchers to submit an abstract, particularly those whose philosophical research overlaps with the timing of the pandemic. The objective of the conference is to provide a platform for graduate and postgraduate philosophers to present their work to peers, and to discuss experiences and research from the past three years. Ideas do not have to be finished or perfect; it can be work in progress. We also encourage undergraduate students of philosophy affected by the pandemic to submit research for a special showcase portion of the conference.

Formal requirements:

Abstracts should be suitable for a 30-minute presentation.

Abstracts should be written in English.

Abstracts for papers should be fully anonymised.

Abstracts should not exceed 500 words, including references.

Your abstract will be anonymously reviewed.

There is no registration fee for this conference. However, travel and stay costs cannot be reimbursed.

The deadline for submissions is

15 August 2023 to: pandemicgenerationphilosophy@gmail.com

The conference will be held:

September 1 and 2, the CUNY Graduate Center

Organizers:

V Alexis Peluce

Liam D. Ryan

Sep
29
Fri
Nature’s Vicissitudes: Richard J. Bernstein’s final pragmatic naturalism @ Fordham University at Lincoln Center
Sep 29 – Sep 30 all-day

Richard J. Bernstein first encountered John Dewey’s pragmatist naturalism as a graduate student at Yale University, where  “Dewey’s naturalistic vision of the relation of experience and nature—how human beings as natural creatures are related to the rest of nature—spoke deeply to me.” This early enthusiasm for Dewey’s naturalistic vision never left him. During the final years of his long life, Bernstein finished two books that return to issues of pragmatist naturalism.

·       His Pragmatic Naturalism: John Dewey’s Living Legacy (2020), traces differing versions of Deweyan naturalism in the works of contemporary philosophers, including Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Richard Rorty, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Philip Kitcher, Bjorn Ramberg, David Macarthur, Steven Levine, Mark Johnson, Robert Sinclair, Huw Price, and Joseph Rouse.

·       In his final book, The Vicissitudes of Nature (2022), Bernstein clarifies his own pragmatist naturalism in relation to the thinking of earlier modern philosophers: Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.

This conference will critically assess and expand the legacy of Bernstein’s final pragmatic naturalism as expressed in these two books. Accepted papers will be collected for publication.

The New York Pragmatist Forum

Paper topics may include: 

●      Bernstein’s discussion of Dewey’s thinking in relation to contemporary philosophers’ formulations of naturalism in Pragmatic Naturalism: John Dewey’s Living Legacy.

●      Bernstein’s interpretation of an earlier thinker’s understanding of naturalism or nature in The Vicissitudes of Nature (Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, or Freud).

●      A larger theme or problem that brings one of these Bernstein’s texts into conversation with philosophical naturalism, either particular expressions or conceptual issues.

●      The consequences of one or both of these texts for questions of naturalism in relation to wider social and political questions, e.g., democracy, praxis, critique.

Abstracts: Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to tara@newschool.edu.

Submission Deadline: May 22, 2023 

NYPF Conference Committee:

Sergio Gallegos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Judith Green, Fordham University
Brendan Hogan, New York University

Tara Mastrelli, New School for Social Research

David Woods, New York University

Oct
4
Wed
Philosophy of the City—Brooklyn. 10th Anniversary Conference @ tba
Oct 4 – Oct 6 all-day

Keynote Speakers: Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut), Michael Nagenborg (Twente University), and Paula Cristina Pereira (Universidade do Porto)


The Philosophy of the City Research Group (POTC RG) is a global community of scholars dedicated to understanding the city and urban affairs. We invite you to join us for our tenth-anniversary conference.

Presentations on any philosophical issue about cities are welcome.  Some topics include urban aesthetics, housing, local governance, conceptualizing cities, policy, infrastructure, distribution, recognition, urban technologies, nonhuman considerations, water issues, feeding the city, street art, energy, mobility, city life, urban culture, justice, the city in philosophy’s history, discrimination, public space, immigration, examining specific cities, urban expansion, and defining the city.

For individual submissions, provide abstracts of 300 words. For panels of 3-4, each abstract should be 200 words. The submission portal is available here. Deadline: May 1, 2023.

We are pleased to offer a Graduate Student Presentation Award of 300 USD and refunded registration ($50) to be given at the concluding ceremony. To be eligible, indicate a desire for consideration at the end of the submission. All participants are encouraged to submit revised versions of presentations to the Philosophy of the City Journal.

A special panel featuring Shane Epting, Michael Menser, and guests will discuss philosophy of the city’s progress, and possible future directions will be announced. For more information and questions, visit The Philosophy of the City Research Group’s website.

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.