Calendar

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Month
2017 Oct November 2018 Dec 2019
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Spontaneous Arising and an Ethics of Creativity in Early Daoism, Erica Brindley (Penn State) 5:30 pm
Spontaneous Arising and an Ethics of Creativity in Early Daoism, Erica Brindley (Penn State) @ Columbia University Religion Dept. 101
Nov 2 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Tickets
In the early part of the 20th century, Joseph Needham formulated a substantial claim concerning the Chinese predilection for self-generated creation rather than creator gods and myths. Half a century later, scholars working in the West like Frederick Mote, Derk Bodde, and Chang Kwang-chih picked up on Needham’s insight to discuss the so-called lack of a “creation myth” in early Chinese culture, basing their arguments on what they called the “inner necessity” or “spontaneously self-generating”[...]
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The Structure of Space and Time, and Physical Indeterminacy- Hanoch Ben-Yami (CEU) 4:30 pm
The Structure of Space and Time, and Physical Indeterminacy- Hanoch Ben-Yami (CEU) @ NYU Philosophy Dept. rm 302
Nov 20 @ 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Tickets
I introduce a sequence which I call indefinite: a sequence every element of which has a successor but whose number of elements is bounded; this is no contradiction. I then consider the possibility of space and time being indefinitely divisible. This is theoretically possible and agrees with experience. If this is space and time’s structure, then even if the laws of nature are deterministic, the behaviour of physical systems will be probabilistic. This approach might[...]
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When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom, Mario Hubert (Columbia) 4:30 pm
When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom, Mario Hubert (Columbia) @ CUNY Grad Center, 5307
Nov 28 @ 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
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We show that in the Maxwell–Lorentz theory of classical electrodynamics most initial values for fields and particles lead to an ill-defined dynamics, as they exhibit singularities or discontinuities along light-cones. This phenomenon suggests that the Maxwell equations and the Lorentz force law ought rather to be read as a system of delay differential equations, that is, differential equations that relate a function and its derivatives at different times. This mathematical reformulation, however, leads to physical[...]
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Can the Vaiśeṣika Individuate Universals? David Nowakowski (Union) 5:30 pm
Can the Vaiśeṣika Individuate Universals? David Nowakowski (Union) @ Columbia University Religion Dept. 101
Nov 30 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Tickets
The Vaiśeṣika school of Indian philosophy is known for its distinctive doctrine of “individuators” (viśeṣāḥ), by means of which the various entities of the mundane world—substances, qualities, and motions—can be distinguished as unique individuals on purely formal grounds. As straightforward as the account is for these entities, the problem of individuation becomes much more complicated for universals. This paper uses the question “Can the Vaiśeṣika individuate universals?” to explore the next three categories in the[...]
2017 Oct November 2018 Dec 2019