Calendar

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?

Categories: Fordham Tags: cfp conference epistemology

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.

Categories: Rutgers Tags: conference epistemology metaphysics science

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.

Categories: Fordham Tags: conference continental emotion mind perception phenomenology

13

Balzan Conference: Dworkin’s Late Work @ Lester Pollack Colloquium Room, 9th Flr Furman Hall

Sep 13 – Sep 14 all-day

Ronald Dworkin’s work always spanned a wide array of topics, from the most abstract jurisprudence through the details of American constitutional law all the way over to political philosophy and theories of justice and equality. In the last decades of his life, however, Dworkin’s work flowered in ways that went beyond even this prodigious range. Though he continued his central work in the philosophy of law and constitutional theory, he also addressed issues in international law, human dignity, the philosophy of religion, the relation between ethics, morality and legal theory, and the unity of practical thought generally. This conference will explore some of these themes in Dworkin’s late work. Beginning with a panel on his understanding of religion, we will also convene discussions of his work on legal integrity, international law, and the relation between law and morality. There will be a total of nine presentations, with plenty of time for discussion. All are welcome.

Panel 1 (Friday 1:30 p.m.): Dworkin’s Religion without God.
Eric Gregory (Princeton),
Moshe Halbertal (NYU and Hebrew U.) Ronald Dworkin Religion Without God: Morality and the Transcendent
Larry Sager (Texas) Solving Religious Liberty

Panel 2 (Friday 4:30 p.m.): Dworkin on international law.
Samantha Besson (Fribourg)
The Political Legitimacy of International Law: Sovereign States and their International Institutional Order

John Tasioulas (King’s College, London)

Panel 3 (Saturday 10 a.m.): The idea of integrity in Law’s Empire.
Andrei Marmor (Cornell) Integrity in Law’s Empire
Jeremy Waldron (NYU) The Rise and Decline of Integrity

Panel 4 (Saturday 2:15 p.m.): Law and morality in Justice for Hedgehogs.
Mark Greenberg (UCLA)
What Makes a Moral Duty Legal? Dworkin’s Judicial Enforcement Theory Versus the Moral Impact Theory

Ben Zipursky (Fordham)

Categories: NYU Tags: conference legal political religion

20

Anti-Exceptionalism about Logic Workshop @ CUNY Grad Center

https://philevents.org/event/show/74778

Sep 20 – Sep 21 all-day

Logic has frequently played an exceptional role in philosophical projects. The laws of logic have been considered self-evident, obvious or a priori, and therefore epistemologically foundational. As a result, logic has been set apart from the other sciences.

According to anti-exceptionalism, however, the privileged epistemological status of logical laws has been exaggerated. Instead, both logical theories and theory-choice in logic are continuous with the theories and methods of other sciences. But what does that tell us about theory-choice in logic, and does it help us adjudicate in the many disputes between rival logical theories?

Speakers:

Jc Beall (UConn)

Christopher Blake-Turner (UNC Chapel Hill)

Ole Hjortland (University of Bergen)

Saul Kripke (CUNY)

Ben Martin (University of Bergen)

Romina Padro (CUNY)

Graham Priest (CUNY)

Marcus Rossberg (UConn)

Lionel Shapiro (UConn)

Stewart Shapiro (OSU)

Gillian Russell (UNC Chapel Hill)

Registration

Registration deadline: September 1, 2019, 9:00am EST

How to register: ole.hjortland @@@@ uib.no

Categories: CUNY Tags: conference logic

26

Thu

How To Be An Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century: A Conference in Memory of Erik Olin Wright @ Wolff Conference Room

Sep 26 all-day

ERIK OLIN WRIGHT spent the last years of his life thinking about ways to challenge and transform capitalist societies. He distilled his thinking in a book, How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century (Verso, 2019). The symposium is designed to launch a debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Wright’s approach. We seek to both honor our colleague’s memory and assure that his ideas become part of current discussions of socialism and socialist strategy. The event will consist of three panels during the day and an evening session that will include tributes to Wright and a keynote by his friend, Ira Katznelson.

For full program and to RSVP please visit capitalismstudies.org/anti-capitalist/

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Schedule

9:00 – 9:30 am | Welomc

William Milberg, The New School for Social Research

Magali Sarfatti-Larson, Temple University

9:30 – 11:30 am | Session 1: Conceptualizing Capitalism

Vivek Chibber, NYU

Stephanie Mudge, University of California, Davis

Michael Dawson, University of Chicago

Discussant: Gianpaolo Baiocchi, NYU

1:00 – 2:45 pm | Session 2: Oppositional discourses and strategies

Stephanie Luce, City University of New York

Glen Coulthard, University of British Columbia

Teresa Ghilarducci, The New School for Social Research

Discussant: Angela Harris, University of California, Davis

3:15 – 5:00 pm | Session 3: Socialism, Human Rights, and Sites of Contestation

Nancy Fraser, The New School for Social Research

Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, University of los Andes

Sabeel Rahman, Brooklyn Law School

Discussant: TBA

7:00 – 8:00 pm | Remarks on E.O. Wright’s Legacy

Friends and colleagues of Erik Olin Wright will deliver

remarks on his legacy.

8:00 – 9:30 pm Keynote

Ira Katznelson, Columbia University

This event is co-sponsored by the Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies at The New School for Social Research, and the journal, Politics & Society.

Categories: New School for Social Research Tags: conference political social

28

Sat

Isaac Levi Conference and Memorial @ Columbia University, Philosophy rm tba

https://philevents.org/event/show/75850

Sep 28 all-day

Conference Schedule

10AM Teddy Seidenfeld – Conditional Probability, Conditionalization, and Total Evidence

11AM Eleonora Cresto – Beyond Indeterminate Utilities. The Case of Neurotic Cake-Cutting

11:20AM Ignacio Ojea Quintana – Unawareness and Levi’s Consensus as Common Ground

11:40AM Rush Stewart – Uncertainty, Equality, Fraternity

1PM Nils-Eric Sahlin – Levi’s Decision Theory: Lessons Learned

1:45PM Wilfried Sieg – Scientific Theories as Set-Theoretic Predicates?

2:45PM Panel Discussion – Learning from Levi

Abstracts available in attached documents under “Supporting material.”

Memorial

A memorial service will be held at 5PM at St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus. Reception to follow on the 7th floor of Philosophy Hall.

Categories: Columbia U Tags: conference epistemology probability science social

Oct

4

The Moral Imagination of the Novel @ Columbia U Philosophy Dept.

https://philevents.org/event/show/74726

Oct 4 – Oct 5 all-day

Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy, the Morningside Institute, and the Thomistic Institute invite graduate students in philosophy, theology/religious studies, literature, and related disciplines to submit papers for “The Moral Imagination of the Novel.” The conference will examine the ways in which individual novels and the novel as a literary genre can be understood both to depict the search for moral, philosophical, and religious truth and to engage in this very search themselves. Is the novel a realistic or idealistic genre? Can novels expand our sense of moral possibilities? Can they contract them?

The conference will begin with four twenty-minute graduate student papers on Friday, October 4, followed by talks that day and the next from faculty. Confirmed speakers include:

Paul Elie (Georgetown)

Ann Astell (Notre Dame)

Thomas Pavel (Chicago)

Lauren Kopajtic (Fordham)

Dhananjay Jagannathan (Columbia)

Limited financial assistance is available to defray the cost of travel for student presenters, but students are encouraged to seek funds from their own institutions as well.

One-page proposals should be emailed to Molly Gurdon at mcg2197@columbia.edu by Saturday, August 31 to be considered. Invitations to present papers will be sent by Friday, September 6. Submissions should not contain any identifying information except for a title, but the author’s institution and program, along with the title of their proposed submission, should be noted in the e-mail submission.

Categories: Columbia U Tags: cfp conference ethics literature religion

Oct

19

Sat

New Materialist Approaches to Sound @ Music Department, Columbia U