PoPRocks (formerly known as ‘WoPoP’) is an ongoing series in the NYC area for early career researchers – typically grad students and postdocs – working on philosophy of psychology/mind/perception/cognitive science/neuroscience/… . We usually meet roughly once every 2 weeks to informally discuss a draft paper by one of our members. Typically presenters send a copy of their paper around 1 week in advance, so do join the mailing list (by emailing poprocksworkshop@gmail.com or one of the organizers) or email to ask for a copy of the paper. We aim for a friendly, constructive discussion with the understanding that the drafts discussed are typically work in progress.
Summer Program:
Friday May 25th – Stephan Pohl (NYU)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday July 13th – Kate Pendoley (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
“What’s So Special About Cognitive Reappraisal? Problems with the empirical work on emotion regulation”
If you find that you are despondent over a minor rejection, or excessively guilty about making an inconsequential mistake, you might try to reduce the intensity of your emotion by ‘looking on the bright side’ and taking a different perspective on the situation at hand. The empirical literature calls this strategy of emotion regulation cognitive reappraisal, and it is the most studied form of emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal is also widely lauded in the empirical literature as the most effective strategy for regulating emotions, and enjoys a foundational role in cognitive behavioral therapy partially on this basis. However, my paper argues that the experimental design of most of these studies is ecologically invalid: Experimenters prompt and train subjects such that the subjects are not performing the kind of cognitive reappraisal that we use outside the laboratory. Hence these studies fail to illuminate the target phenomenon. Moreover, the empirical literature’s notion of effectiveness is overly narrow and fails to appreciate the important relationship between effectiveness, ecological validity, and healthiness in the domain of emotion regulation. In light of these concerns I suggest improvements to experimental design and propose a more nuanced notion of effectiveness.
Friday August 3rd – Nicolas Porot (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday August 24th – Olivia Odoffin (Rutgers)
Room TBA
Friday August 31st – David Barack (Columbia)
Room TBA
PoPRocks (formerly known as ‘WoPoP’) is an ongoing series in the NYC area for early career researchers – typically grad students and postdocs – working on philosophy of psychology/mind/perception/cognitive science/neuroscience/… . We usually meet roughly once every 2 weeks to informally discuss a draft paper by one of our members. Typically presenters send a copy of their paper around 1 week in advance, so do join the mailing list (by emailing poprocksworkshop@gmail.com or one of the organizers) or email to ask for a copy of the paper. We aim for a friendly, constructive discussion with the understanding that the drafts discussed are typically work in progress.
Summer Program:
Friday May 25th – Stephan Pohl (NYU)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday July 13th – Kate Pendoley (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
“What’s So Special About Cognitive Reappraisal? Problems with the empirical work on emotion regulation”
If you find that you are despondent over a minor rejection, or excessively guilty about making an inconsequential mistake, you might try to reduce the intensity of your emotion by ‘looking on the bright side’ and taking a different perspective on the situation at hand. The empirical literature calls this strategy of emotion regulation cognitive reappraisal, and it is the most studied form of emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal is also widely lauded in the empirical literature as the most effective strategy for regulating emotions, and enjoys a foundational role in cognitive behavioral therapy partially on this basis. However, my paper argues that the experimental design of most of these studies is ecologically invalid: Experimenters prompt and train subjects such that the subjects are not performing the kind of cognitive reappraisal that we use outside the laboratory. Hence these studies fail to illuminate the target phenomenon. Moreover, the empirical literature’s notion of effectiveness is overly narrow and fails to appreciate the important relationship between effectiveness, ecological validity, and healthiness in the domain of emotion regulation. In light of these concerns I suggest improvements to experimental design and propose a more nuanced notion of effectiveness.
Friday August 3rd – Nicolas Porot (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday August 24th – Olivia Odoffin (Rutgers)
Room TBA
Friday August 31st – David Barack (Columbia)
Room TBA
PoPRocks (formerly known as ‘WoPoP’) is an ongoing series in the NYC area for early career researchers – typically grad students and postdocs – working on philosophy of psychology/mind/perception/cognitive science/neuroscience/… . We usually meet roughly once every 2 weeks to informally discuss a draft paper by one of our members. Typically presenters send a copy of their paper around 1 week in advance, so do join the mailing list (by emailing poprocksworkshop@gmail.com or one of the organizers) or email to ask for a copy of the paper. We aim for a friendly, constructive discussion with the understanding that the drafts discussed are typically work in progress.
Summer Program:
Friday May 25th – Stephan Pohl (NYU)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday July 13th – Kate Pendoley (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
“What’s So Special About Cognitive Reappraisal? Problems with the empirical work on emotion regulation”
If you find that you are despondent over a minor rejection, or excessively guilty about making an inconsequential mistake, you might try to reduce the intensity of your emotion by ‘looking on the bright side’ and taking a different perspective on the situation at hand. The empirical literature calls this strategy of emotion regulation cognitive reappraisal, and it is the most studied form of emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal is also widely lauded in the empirical literature as the most effective strategy for regulating emotions, and enjoys a foundational role in cognitive behavioral therapy partially on this basis. However, my paper argues that the experimental design of most of these studies is ecologically invalid: Experimenters prompt and train subjects such that the subjects are not performing the kind of cognitive reappraisal that we use outside the laboratory. Hence these studies fail to illuminate the target phenomenon. Moreover, the empirical literature’s notion of effectiveness is overly narrow and fails to appreciate the important relationship between effectiveness, ecological validity, and healthiness in the domain of emotion regulation. In light of these concerns I suggest improvements to experimental design and propose a more nuanced notion of effectiveness.
Friday August 3rd – Nicolas Porot (CUNY)
716 Philosophy Hall, Columbia (Morningside Heights Campus)
Friday August 24th – Olivia Odoffin (Rutgers)
Room TBA
Friday August 31st – David Barack (Columbia)
Room TBA
Babette Babich (Fordham University)
Nietzsche on “the Triumph of Scientific Method over Science”
Flom Auditorium
Walsh Family Library
Rose Hill Campus
Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
“The Structure of Olfactory Appearance”
Philosophy, University of Bayreuth
“Persons, First-Person Authority, and Self-Knowledge”
Philosophy and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness
New York University
“Content Plurality in Mental Action”
Philosophy, Central European University and
Visiting Scholar, CUNY Graduate Center
“On the Nature of Representational Relation in the
Higher-Order Thought Theory: Extrinsicality,
Directness and Transitivity”
Philosophy, City College of New York, CUNY
“Transparency and Cognitive Phenomenology”
**NOTE DIFFERENT ROOM THIS ONE DAY: 9-206**
Music, CUNY Graduate Center
“Graphical Representations of Timbre Similarity:
Problems and Prospects”
Psychology and the Center for Neural Science,
New York University
“The Dynamics of Temporal Attention”
November 23: No talk—Thanksgiving
Inflationary cosmology’s account for the emergence of the seeds of structure in the universe out of primordial quantum fluctuations is empirically successful as far as the so called scalar modes is concerned, but not so regarding the tensor modes. On the other hand, the usual account has some serious conceptual problems, connected to the quantum macro-objectification question. In the search for an approach to resolve the latter, we find substantially modified predictions (with respect to the standard ones) for one of the observables, specifically the estimates for the amplitude and shape of the spectrum primordial gravity waves. This is an interesting example, where considerations that might have initially thought to be “just of philosophical interest” actually led to novel and (so far better) predictions for empirical facts.
There will be at least three MAPS talks this semester (I am still waiting to hear back regarding a fourth). The preliminary schedule below should convey a sense of the basic plan.
A number of invited speakers asked to visit in Spring 2019 or Fall 2019 instead of this fall. In case you are interested, I list those future speakers below.
Best,
Isaac
Upcoming Talks
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Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Tuesday Oct 16; 5307 CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave.).
Title: The variety of scientism and the limits of science
Abstract: Science is by far the most powerful approach to the investigation of the natural world ever devised. Still, it has limits, and there are many areas and questions where the scientific approach is ill suited, or at best provides only pertinent information rather than full answers. The denial of this modest attitude about science is called scientism, which declares science to be the only form of human knowledge and understanding, attempting to subsume everything else, including all the humanistic disciplines, into “science” very broadly (mis-)construed. In this talk, I argue that this is a mistake, and that it moreover has the potential to undermine public trust in science itself.
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Mario Hubert (Columbia)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Tuesday Nov20; location TBD.
Title: When Fields Are Not Degrees of Freedom (joint work with Vera Hartenstein).
Abstract: 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 and philosophical consequences for the ontological status of the electromagnetic field. In particular, fields cannot be taken as independent degrees of freedom, which suggests that one should not add them to the ontology.
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Spring 2019
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Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke)
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Fall 2019
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Quayshawn Spencer (UPenn)
Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
“The Structure of Olfactory Appearance”
Philosophy, University of Bayreuth
“Persons, First-Person Authority, and Self-Knowledge”
Philosophy and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness
New York University
“Content Plurality in Mental Action”
Philosophy, Central European University and
Visiting Scholar, CUNY Graduate Center
“On the Nature of Representational Relation in the
Higher-Order Thought Theory: Extrinsicality,
Directness and Transitivity”
Philosophy, City College of New York, CUNY
“Transparency and Cognitive Phenomenology”
**NOTE DIFFERENT ROOM THIS ONE DAY: 9-206**
Music, CUNY Graduate Center
“Graphical Representations of Timbre Similarity:
Problems and Prospects”
Psychology and the Center for Neural Science,
New York University
“The Dynamics of Temporal Attention”
November 23: No talk—Thanksgiving
There are numerous books about the philosophy of science, but relatively few focus on the philosophy of engineering. Why has the philosophy of engineering been undeveloped in contrast to science? While many engineers prefer to build new things rather than philosophize, a key explanation for the neglect of engineering is an unjustified misconception about the importance of abstract theoretical and scientific knowledge versus engineering knowledge.
The speaker will talk about his experiences in engineering and policy, to show how these philosophical ideas shape engineering, which in turn shapes the world around us. Philosophical claims about engineering date back to at least Socrates, who argued for the value of abstract, theoretical knowledge. The history of U.S. science policy based its post-World War II funding policies off of the linear model of innovation, where advances in engineering are assumed to be traceable to earlier advances in science. Historians and philosophers have shown many of these philosophical views are wrong-headed. In particular, Vincenti’s What Engineers Know and How They Know It illuminates the richness of engineering knowledge, showing that it is not merely applied science. After reviewing how these philosophical ideas manifest in the real world of engineering, the presentation will show how a better understanding of what engineers know also offers a way to better push engineering towards more ethical ends.
Zachary Pirtle recently co-chaired the 2018 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering and Technology. He has worked as an engineer to support exploration systems for human space flight, and was previously a Fulbright scholar to Mexico and a Mirzayan science and technology policy graduate fellow at the National Academy of Engineering.
Co-presented with Brooklyn Public Philosophers.
Neurogenetics and Behavior, The Rockefeller University
“The Structure of Olfactory Appearance”
Philosophy, University of Bayreuth
“Persons, First-Person Authority, and Self-Knowledge”
Philosophy and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness
New York University
“Content Plurality in Mental Action”
Philosophy, Central European University and
Visiting Scholar, CUNY Graduate Center
“On the Nature of Representational Relation in the
Higher-Order Thought Theory: Extrinsicality,
Directness and Transitivity”
Philosophy, City College of New York, CUNY
“Transparency and Cognitive Phenomenology”
**NOTE DIFFERENT ROOM THIS ONE DAY: 9-206**
Music, CUNY Graduate Center
“Graphical Representations of Timbre Similarity:
Problems and Prospects”
Psychology and the Center for Neural Science,
New York University
“The Dynamics of Temporal Attention”
November 23: No talk—Thanksgiving
From basic arithmetic to the calculation of rocket trajectories, mathematics provides an elegant means of systematically understanding and quantifying the world around us. Beyond its computational functions, however, mathematics serves an even more vital purpose: It illuminates the most fundamental knowledge of our universe, furnishing the tools that classical physics, quantum mechanics, and astronomy use to develop and build upon their findings.
But why should mathematics be so effective in explaining our universe, as first noted by Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner? Why have fundamental laws discovered through pure mathematics turned out to describe the behavior of our physical world with such remarkable precision, from the fundamental law of gravitation to Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations? Given that our physical universe is comprised of mathematical properties, some have posited that mathematics is the language of the universe, whose laws reveal what appears to be a hidden order in the natural world. But are there also limits to what mathematics can reveal about the mystery of our universe?
Theoretical physicist S. James Gates Jr. and science writer Margaret Wertheim join Steve Paulson to explore the mystery of our universe and the uncanny potential of mathematics to reveal the laws of nature.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019