The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-1921688) and is aimed at bringing together academics who study the notion of mathematical explanation from philosophical and from educational/psychological perspectives. The idea is to bring together philosophers of mathematics, epistemologists, psychologists, and mathematics educators, to discuss how developments in their own fields could meaningfully contribute to the work on mathematical explanation where their fields intersect. In particular, we want to explore the ways in which mathematical explanation engenders understanding, by focusing on (1) the relationship between different types of philosophical accounts of mathematical explanation, (2) educational approaches to the characterization of effective explanations in the mathematics classroom, and (3) work at the intersection of these two perspectives.
All speakers:
Mark Colyvan
University of Sydney
Matthew Inglis
Loughborough University
Marc Lange
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Tania Lombrozo
Princeton University
Alexander Renkl
University of Freiburg
Keith Weber
Rutgers University – New Brunswick
Orit Zaslavsky
New York University
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)
We are excited to announce a public talk featuring Elie During as part of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s 60th death anniversary. On the face of it, The Dialectic of Duration, Gaston Bachelard’s 1936 essay, is a pungent—if often unfair—criticism of the Bergsonian doctrine of time and creative evolution. The constructive side of this Anti-Bergson has received less attention: it implies a genuine poetics of time based on the intuition of the sporadic and oscillatory nature of becoming. Bachelard’s rhythmic theme is consistent with the idea of “surrationalism” introduced that same year as a formal counterpart to the surrealist experiments carried out on the fringes of conscious experience. Inspired by the explosive potential of scientific revolutions already celebrated in Le Nouvel Esprit Scientifique, the surrationalist project can be interpreted as that of a poetics of reason. André Breton believed it would “act simultaneously as a stimulant and restraining influence” (“Crisis of the Object”). Insights from the scientific investigation of time as well as poetic and musical experience will help us see how this double action is in keeping with the eruptive dynamics of imagination and reason, as much as with Bachelard’s ideal of “self-surveillance”.
Elie During is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris Ouest. His research focuses on the philosophical implications of relativity theory. His publications include an introduction to Poincaré’s philosophy of science (La Science et l’Hypothèse, 2001), an essay on the nature of time (The Future does not Exist, 2014), two critical editions of Bergson, a coedited volume on contemporary metaphysics of realism (Choses en soi, 2018, English translation forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press), and most recently a critical edition of Bachelard’s Dialectique de la durée (2021).
Organized by
Julie Beauté, Aix-Marseille Université, ADES (France)
Alexander Campolo, Durham University (UK)
Jeanne Etelain, New York University (USA)
Sam Kellogg, New York University (USA)
Alexander Miller, Ghent University (Belgium)
Pierre Schwarzer, New York University (USA)
Meg Wiessner, New York University (USA)
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.
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)
riday, November 10
9:30–9:55 Check–in and Coffee
9:55 Welcome
10:00–12:00 Adam Smith
Speaker: Ryan Patrick Hanley (Boston College)
Commentator: Samuel Fleischacker (University of Illinois Chicago)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Immanuel Kant
Speaker: Marcia Baron (Indiana University Bloomington)
Commentator: Kyla Ebels–Duggan (Northwestern University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 German Romanticism
Speaker: Frederick Beiser (Syracuse University)
Commentator: Owen Ware (University of Toronto)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, November 11
9:30–10:00 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Friedrich Nietzsche
Speaker: Andrew Huddleston (University of Warwick)
Commentator: Claire Kirwin (Northwestern University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Simone De Beauvoir
Speaker: Michelle Kosch (Cornell University)
Commentator: Susan J. Brison (Dartmouth University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Contemporary
Speaker: Simon May (King’s College London)
Commentator: Alecxander Nehamas (Princeton University)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Registration is free but required. Registration will open online in early October. All questions about the event should be sent to philo.modernconference@nyu.edu.
Friday, November 15
9:30–9:55 Check–in and Coffee
9:55 Welcome
10:00–12:00 Baruch Spinoza
Speaker: Kristin Primus (University of California, Berkeley)
“Spinoza and Our Eternal Mind”
Commentator: John Grey (Michigan State University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Margaret Cavendish
Speaker: Marcy Lascano (University of Kansas)
“‘There is nothing I Dread More than Death’: Cavendish on Death and the Afterlife”
Commentator: Deborah Boyle (College of Charleston)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:00 Immanuel Kant
Speaker: Andrew Chignell (Princeton University)
“Kant’s Theoretical Argument for a Future Life”
Commentator: Jochen Bojanowski (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Saturday, November 16
9:30–10:00 Check–in and Coffee
10:00–12:00 Søren Kierkegaard
Speaker: Clare Carlisle (King’s College London)
“Close to Death: Kierkegaard on Im/mortality and Philosophy”
Commentator: John J. Davenport (Fordham University)
12:00–2:00 Lunch Break
2:00–4:00 Martin Heidegger
Speaker: Mark A. Wrathall (Oxford University)
“Heidegger and the Possibility of Death”
Commentator: Sean Kelly (Harvard University)
4:00–4:30 Coffee Break
4:30–6:30 Contemporary
Speaker: Michael Cholbi (University of Edinburgh)
“Immortal Lives and the Varieties of Agency”
Commentator: Ben Bradley (Syracuse University)
6:30–7:30 Reception
Don Garrett, Anja Jauernig, John Richardson,
Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Philosophy.
For a decade, 1993-2003, Jacques Derrida taught at New York University as Global Distinguished Professor. During those years he gave seminars on important topics of his later work: testimony, hospitality and hostility, perjury and pardon, and the death penalty, Shakespeare’s calculative grid and racism. They represent for many the most sustained and considered engagement by deconstruction with political questions. Most of these seminars have now been posthumously published, both in French and in English translation. Commemorating the twentieth anniversary of Derrida’s death in 2004, the Departments of Comparative Literature teams up with the Maison Française and Department of German, which hosted Derrida when he came to NYU. On 21 November 2024 the Maison in conjunction with the two departments invites scholars of Derrida’s work to speak at a one-day conference devoted to the topics of Derrida’s New York teaching.
Full schedule coming soon!