Apr
19
Fri
NYC Wittgenstein Workshop presents Nickolas Pappas (CUNY): Plato on the Opposite of Philosophy @ New School, rm D1106
Apr 19 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

The New York City Wittgenstein Workshop has the following workshops scheduled for this semester and more planned workshops to be announced soon.

All workshops are on Fridays from 4 to 6 pm in room D1106.

2/22 — Zed Adams (the New School) — History of the digital/analogue distinction in philosophy
4/19 — Nickolas Pappas (CUNY) — “Plato on the Opposite of Philosophy”
4/26 — Larry Jackson
5/03 — Nuno Venturinha (Nova University of Lisbon) — “Autobiographical Writing, Self-knowledge, and the Religious Point of View.”
5/10 —  Pierre-Jean Renaudi (Lyon)

May
11
Wed
Free Will Workshop: Implications from Physics and Metaphysics @ Rutgers & Zoom
May 11 – May 12 all-day

Free Will
Implications from Physics and Metaphysics

The workshop will be hybrid, and anyone interested can participate through Zoom, although there will be limited spots for in-person participants. If you are interested in attending in-person, please reply to this email or write to loewer@philosophy.rutgers.edu.


Barry Loewer (loewer@philosophy.rutgers.edu) Assistant: Diego Arana (diego.arana@rutgers.edu)
Program (All times are EST)

Zoom Link: https://tinyurl.com/freewillzoom

iCal: https://tinyurl.com/freewillical


May 11
10:00am Peter van Inwagen (Notre Dame, Duke)
Ginet’s Principle: Our freedom is the freedom to add to the
given past.
11:30am John Perry (Stanford)
Causation, Entailment and Freedom
3:00pm Barry Loewer (Rutgers)
The Consequence Argument Meets the Mentaculus
4:30pm Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille, UWO)
Free will: Back to Reichenbach


May 12
10:00am Kadri Vihvelin (USC)
Why We can’t Change the Past
11:30am Valia Allori (NIU)
Freedom from the Quantum?
3:00pm Tim O’Connor (Indiana, Baylor)
Top-Down and Indeterministic Agency: Why?
4:30pm Jessica Wilson (Toronto)
Two Routes to the Emergence of Free Will

Sep
8
Thu
The Madness of Philosophy & the Limitations of Human Moderation in Plato’s Phaedrus”. Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR) @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Sep 8 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

 

Feb
23
Thu
Thinking About Death in Plato’s Euthydemus. @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Feb 23 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Book discussion on Gwenda-lin Grewal’s, Thinking About Death in Plato’s Euthydemus. A Close Reading and New Translation (OUP 2022)

 

Speakers:

Gwenda-lin Grewal (NSSR)
Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
Nicholas Pappas (CUNY)

 

Thinking of Death places Plato’s Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy’s fate arrives in the form of Socrates’ encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal’s close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair’s back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy’s tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito’s implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city’s sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader’s access to the dialogue’s mysteries.

Apr
15
Sat
Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experiences Conference @ Center for Philosophy of Religions, Rutgers
Apr 15 – Apr 16 all-day

The Center for Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University is pleased to host an in-person, working-papers conference on the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experience. We are seeking abstracts (150-350 words) from those interested in participating. The tentative date is 15-16 April 2023. And the deadline for submission is 28 February 2023. Participants with accepted submissions will be given hotel accommodations and a modest honorarium to help defray travel costs.

Theme

The overall theme of the workshop is the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experiences. Philosophers of religion frequently assign religious experiences important epistemic roles, such as justifying religious beliefs. But religious experiences of the kind philosophers are interested in are also studied in other fields as well, such as psychology and religious studies. However, the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences are presumably not independent; studying them together is likely to be insightful in various ways. To that end, we are interested in bringing together scholars working on the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences. Potential topics include:

·       The nature of religious experiences

·       Taxonomies of religious experiences

·       Potential psychological mechanisms and accounts of religious experience

·       The relation between perception and religious experiences

·       The epistemology of religious experience

·       The interactions between the psychology and epistemology of religious experience

·       The relation of cognitive science of religion to religious experience

Any proposed papers on these topics, or similar ones, are welcome. Papers exploring interdisciplinary approaches are also welcome.

Instructions

Please submit an abstract (150-350 words), long abstract (350-650 words), or full paper to Timothy Perrine at tp654@scarletmail.rutgers.edu. Submission should be prepared for blind review. In a separate document please provide your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and contact information. Submission deadline is 28 February; acceptances will be decided by 5 March; and the workshop will be held 15-16 April.

Mar
29
Fri
Political Concepts Graduate Conference @ New School tbd
Mar 29 – Mar 30 all-day

Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon began as a multidisciplinary, web-based journal in which an assemblage of contributions focused on a single concept with the express intention of re-situating its meaning in the field of political discourse. By reflecting on what has remained unquestioned or unthought in that concept, this all-around collection of essays seeks to open pathways for another future—one that is not already determined and ill-fated.

From this forum for engaged scholarship, a succession of academic conferences have sprung as a space for conversation and constructive debate, including its Graduate Conference at the New School for Social Research organized by students of the Departments of Anthropology, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology. Political Concepts invites graduate students from all fields of study to participate in our upcoming conference in Spring 2024. Held at NSSR over March 29-30, the conference will serve as a workshop of ideas on the multiplicity of powers, structures, problems, and orientations that shape our collective life.

Because Political Concepts does not predetermine what does or does not count as political, the conference welcomes essays that fashion new political concepts or demonstrate how concepts deserve to be taken as politically significant. Papers should be dedicated to a single political concept, like an encyclopedia entry, but the analysis of the concept does not have to abide to traditional approaches. Some of the concepts contended with in previous years’ vibrant conferences included abolition, survival, catastrophe, resentment, money, dependence, trans, imaginary, and solidarity. Other examples can be found in the published papers on the Political Concepts website.

Abstracts should be no longer than 750 words in a pdf format, and prepared for blind review, so please ensure that your abstract is free from any identifying personal details. Please title your abstract with your concept. Abstracts must be submitted through this google form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfyVC0H0LSpcyJ3QpcbAvZjEkcUYoS-TCp0kPc6ObTg4YFSiQ/viewform) by December 7, 2023 EST. Any inquiries can be sent to politicalconceptsNSSR@gmail.com.

Applicants must be advanced graduate students and their concept must be a central part of a longer term project in order to be accepted. Results will be informed in January.