Mar
22
Tue
Jonardon Ganeri (Toronto) Can theater teach us about what it’s like to be someone else? @ Zoom
Mar 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

How can we know what it’s like to be someone else? Classical Indian philosophers found the answer in theater, arguing that it’s not just a form of entertainment, but a source of knowledge of other minds. In this talk, I’ll explore how this theme is developed in Śrī Śaṅkuka (c. 850 CE) and examine the reasons his views were rejected in the later tradition. I’ll argue that those reasons are unsound, and that we can see why by turning to contemporary studies of the relationship between knowledge and luck.

Jonardon Ganeri is the Bimal. K. Matilal Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a philosopher whose work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His books include Attention, Not Self (2017), a study of early Buddhist theories of attention; The Concealed Art of the Soul (2012), an analysis of the idea of a search for one’s true self; Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves (2020), an analysis of Fernando Pessoa’s philosophy of self; and Inwardness: An Outsiders’ Guide (2021), a review of the concept of inwardness in literature, film, poetry, and philosophy across cultures. He joined the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2015, and won the Infosys Prize in the Humanities the same year, the only philosopher to do so.

This series is curated and co-presented by Brooklyn Public Philosophers, aka Ian Olasov.

Mar
24
Fri
Śrīharṣa on the Indefinability of Knowledge. Nilanjan Das (U Toronto) @ Faculty House, Columbia
Mar 24 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

In Sanskrit epistemology, philosophers are preoccupied with the notion of pramā. A pramā, roughly, is a mental event of learning or knowledge-acquisition. Call any such mental event a knowledge-event. In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the 12th century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa argued that knowledge-events are indefinable. Any satisfactory (and therefore non-circular) definition of knowledge-events will have to include an anti-luck condition that doesn’t appeal back to the notion of learning or knowledge-acquisition itself. But there is no such anti-luck condition. What is novel about Śrīharṣa’s argument is that it is motivated by his commitment to a certain “knowledge first” approach to epistemology: the view that knowledge-events are epistemically prior to other non-factive mental states and events. On this view, when we are trying to determine whether an agent has undergone a knowledge-event, we don’t initially ascribe to them some other non-factive mental event, and then check if that event meets some further conditions (like truth or reliability) necessary for it to count as a knowledge-event; rather, we treat certain mental events by default as knowledge-events until a defeater comes along.  Surprisingly, Śrīharṣa argues that this kind of “knowledge first” epistemology should give us reason to doubt whether our ordinary attributions of knowledge-events are reliably tracking any sui generis psychological kind. In this talk, I reconstruct Śrīharṣa’s position.

With responses from Rosanna Picascia (Swarthmore College)

RSVP is required for dinner. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.

 

Oct
4
Wed
Philosophy of the City—Brooklyn. 10th Anniversary Conference @ tba
Oct 4 – Oct 6 all-day

Keynote Speakers: Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut), Michael Nagenborg (Twente University), and Paula Cristina Pereira (Universidade do Porto)


The Philosophy of the City Research Group (POTC RG) is a global community of scholars dedicated to understanding the city and urban affairs. We invite you to join us for our tenth-anniversary conference.

Presentations on any philosophical issue about cities are welcome.  Some topics include urban aesthetics, housing, local governance, conceptualizing cities, policy, infrastructure, distribution, recognition, urban technologies, nonhuman considerations, water issues, feeding the city, street art, energy, mobility, city life, urban culture, justice, the city in philosophy’s history, discrimination, public space, immigration, examining specific cities, urban expansion, and defining the city.

For individual submissions, provide abstracts of 300 words. For panels of 3-4, each abstract should be 200 words. The submission portal is available here. Deadline: May 1, 2023.

We are pleased to offer a Graduate Student Presentation Award of 300 USD and refunded registration ($50) to be given at the concluding ceremony. To be eligible, indicate a desire for consideration at the end of the submission. All participants are encouraged to submit revised versions of presentations to the Philosophy of the City Journal.

A special panel featuring Shane Epting, Michael Menser, and guests will discuss philosophy of the city’s progress, and possible future directions will be announced. For more information and questions, visit The Philosophy of the City Research Group’s website.