In this talk, I will sketch a theory of skill, which puts control at the center of the account. First, I present a definition of skill that integrates several essential features of skill that are often ignored or sidelined on other theories. In the second section, I spell out how we should think of the intentions involved in skilled actions and in the third section, I discuss why deliberate practice and not just experience, repetition, or exposure is required for skill development. In the fourth section, I claim that practice produces control and go on to spell out the notion of control relevant for a theory of skill. In the final section, I briefly outline three kinds of control that develop as a result of practice and which manifest the skillfulness of skilled action. They are strategic control, attention control, and motor control.
Presented by SWIP-Analytic
Thinking Across the Humanities on Valentines’s Day
Tuesday, Feb. 14 of course! 4pm, McShane Center 311
A fun student-faculty roundtable discussion on topics related to love in all of its fabulous variety: erotic love, unrequited love, love and justice, love of friends, love of the Divine, sanctioned and unsanctioned love, personal and political love, and so much more! What insights can we, along with some of our favorite artists and thinkers, offer on love? Come for a roundtable where a small group of faculty and students will jump off with brief prepared remarks, followed by a discussion, food, and fun!
RSVP here
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
Analyzing the Mexican case of collectives of women currently looking for their disappeared relatives due to an escalation of violence related to the so-called War against Drugs that former president Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) started, this essay develops a new conception of politics grounded not only on rational thought but also on affect. These collectives put forward a materialistic, feminist, and performative mode of politics. Publicly lamenting their losses and literally digging bodies out of Mexican land, these women perform and recover the citizenship that the Mexican state has de facto disavowed of them. I propose conceptualizing them as “bad victims” since their taking action does not take away their pain; rather, the public exposure of their lament actually turns them into political agents.
Bio:
Rosaura Martínez Ruiz is Full Professor of Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a member of the National System of Researchers, level III. She was coordinator of the research projects “Philosophers after Freud” and “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis as Critical Borders of the Political.” She is the author of Freud y Derrida: escritura y psique (2013) and Eros: Más allá de la pulsión de muerte (2017). This last book has been translated into English and published by Fordham University Press (2021). She has coordinated several collective books and published articles on the intersection between psychoanalysis and philosophy and on the field of the psychopolitical. In 2017 she was awarded the Research Prize in Humanities by the Mexican Academy of Sciences; in 2019 she was a Fulbright Scholar; in 2021 she received the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz UNAM recognition; and during the Fall 2023 she was the Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University. She is part of the advisory board of the “International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs” coordinated by Judith Butler.
This conference will be hosted in a hybrid format. Accepted presenters can choose to participate in person or virtually. We will provide a limited number of need-based travel awards for graduate students and underfunded scholars who wish to attend in person.
We invite paper and panel submissions from philosophers at all career stages. We highly encourage submissions from current graduate students, as well as recent Ph.D. graduates.
We welcome submissions from Latinx philosophers in any area of philosophy, including (but not limited to) Critical Theory, Epistemology, Ethics, Feminist Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Indigenous Philosophy, Latin American Philosophy, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Race, Philosophy of Science, and Social and Political Philosophy.
In addition, we welcome submissions from non-Latinx philosophers working in Latin American Philosophy or whose work explicitly addresses issues relevant to Latinx and Latin American peoples.
Submission Instructions
Paper submissions require an 800–1000 word extended abstract (excluding notes and bibliography) prepared for anonymous review. The final version of the project should be suitable for a 25-minute presentation.
Panel proposals should be 1000–1500 words (excluding notes and bibliography) and should set out in some detail the focus of the proposed panel. Please only submit proposals if all proposed panelists have confirmed a willingness to attend if selected (either in person or online). Panels should include no more than three panelists and each panelist should plan to present for 20 minutes.
For both paper and panel proposals: submissions should be sent as a PDF file to latinxphilosophyconference@gmail.com. Below the submission title, include a word count and list the primary subfield(s) under which the submission falls, plus 1–3 keywords, e.g., epistemology (testimonial injustice, social epistemology). In a separate PDF file, please include your name(s), paper/panel submission title, academic affiliation (if applicable), career stage (e.g., graduate student, recent PhD graduate, associate professor), email address, preferred mode of attendance (in person or online), and whether you wish to be considered for a need-based travel award.