Since Confucianism is an intergenerational phenomenon, it should have unique insights into ethical issues surrounding our obligations to future generations. In the first part of this discussion, I examine two contemporary Confucian perspectives on intergenerational ethics. Proponents of Confucian Role Ethics have developed an interpretation of xiao 孝 as “intergenerational reverence” that binds the community together over time by reference to shared cultural models and evolving ethical values. The Chinese thinker Jiang Qing in turn argues for a political constitution in which the state depends not just on the will of presently existing citizens, but also serves to preserve and transmit the values of the past for the sake of future generations. While both interpretations share in common a critique of Western individualism and rights-based ethical framework, Jiang’s account of Confucian intergenerationality rests on the authority of tradition, whereas Confucian Role Ethics prioritizes the uniqueness of the situation at hand. In the second half of the discussion, I develop an alternative Confucian approach that is aligned with virtue ethics. On this view, our present virtue is the point of departure for understanding our relations with the past and future. I examine passages in early Confucian texts that suggest a notion of intergenerational virtue, which brings together various dispositions to see our own flourishing as linked with both past and future generations.
With a response from:
Susan Blake (Bard College)
Neuroprediction, the use of neuroscientific data to predict human behavior, can sound like science fiction. But with the advent of neuroimaging and the continuing rapid development of other non-invasive brain measurements, neuroprediction is increasingly a real-world phenomenon.
Deep philosophical, legal, and neuroscientific questions arise regarding the use of these methods to predict behavior. Like all scientific tools, whether or not these technologies are used responsibly depends on who uses them. For instance, recent research illustrates the potential use of neuroprediction to assess an individual’s risk of (re-)engaging in antisocial conduct in forensic contexts. While the use of brain-based data may add predictive value to existing risk assessment tools, at the same time, the use (or misuse) of neuroprediction in courtrooms may imply violations of individual rights and liberties under the pretext of enhancing public safety. In addition to these legal implications, neuroprediction presents several technological and neuroscientific challenges. The non-invasive measures currently available are only indirect measures of cognitive activity. Understanding the conceptual, ethical, and legal dimensions surrounding the use of neuroprediction technologies helps crystallize the issues at hand and potentially provides moral guidance for those who wish to capitalize on these new tools as their prevalence and specificity continue to advance.
In this seminar, four experts from neuroscience, law, and philosophy will discuss recent findings in neuroprediction research, the predictive power of brain-based evidence compared to behavioral evidence, as well as the ethical and legal concerns emerging from the entrance of neuroprediction in the courts of law.
Speakers:
Arielle Baskin-Sommers, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Yale University
Martha Farah, Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences, University of Pennsylvania
Kent Kiehl, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of New Mexico
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics, Duke University
Discussant:
Jeffrey A. Fagan, Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law and Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia University
Moderator:
Federica Coppola, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
STEFAN BERNARD BAUMRIN was a husband, father, philosopher, lawyer, colleague, teacher, and friend. As a professional philosopher, Baumrin wrote sparingly, but incisively, on moral and political philosophy, medical ethics, the history of philosophy, and on matters of both theoretical and practical import. We, his students, colleagues, and most importantly friends, celebrate his memory with this symposium on his philosophy.
THE PROGRAM
Welcome
Professors David Rosenthal and Manfred Philipp
Session I
I. “Baumrin’s Hobbes”: Rosamond Rhodes
II. “A possibility for Moore’s Faulty Fallacy” Mark Sheehan
Discussion
Break (Light Refreshments)
Session II
I.“Baumrin on Autonomy” Katherine Mendis
II. “‘Physician, Stay Thy Hand!’ Revisited” Kyle Ferguson
III. “Our Immorality” Joseph S. Biehl
Discussion
Farewell
PARTICIPANTS
DAVID ROSENTHAL, PhD, is professor of philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center, and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Concentration in Cognitive Science there. He taught at Lehman College from 1971 to 2009. He works mainly in philosophy of mind.
MANFRED PHILIPP, PhD, is professor emeritus at the CUNY Graduate Center and at Lehman College. He was Chair of CUNY’s University Faculty Senate, and member of the CUNY Board of Trustees and of the CUNY Research Foundation Board of Directors. He was President of the CUNY Academy for the Humanities & Sciences, Board President of the Fulbright Association in Washington, and President of the US Alumni Association for the German Academic Exchange Service. At Lehman College he was a Department Chair and Chapter Chair of the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. He currently serves as a Trustee of the Belle Zeller Scholarship Fund for CUNY.
ROSAMOND RHODES, PhD, is Professor of Medical Education and Director of Bioethics Education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Professor of Bioethics and Associate Director of the Clarkson-Mount Sinai Bioethics Program. She writes on a broad array of issues in bioethics and has published more than 200 papers and chapters. She is co-editor of The Human Microbiome: Ethical, Legal and Social Concerns (Oxford University Press, 2013), The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics (Blackwell, 2007), Medicine and Social Justice: Essays on the Distribution of Health Care (Oxford University Press, first edition 2002; second edition 2012), Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate (Routledge, 1998), and the author of the forthcoming monograph, The Trusted Doctor: Medical Ethics and Professionalism (Oxford University Press, 2019). Professor Rhodes also serves on the editorial board of the journal Hobbes Studies and as Sovereign of the International Hobbes Association (2013-2018).
MARK SHEEHAN, PhD, leads the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Ethics Group and is Oxford BRC Ethics Fellow at the Ethox Centre in the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. He is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Benet’s Hall and a Research Fellow at the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics also in the University of Oxford. He is currently a member of the NICE’s Highly Specialised Technology Evaluation Committee, a member of the Health Research Authority’s National Research Ethics Advisors Panel, a member of the Thames Valley Healthcare Priorities Forum and Co-leader of the Ethical Analysis of Key Concepts GECiP sub-domain in the 100K Genome Project. He was a member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on research in children, a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners Ethics Committee and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics.
KATHERINE MENDIS is a doctoral candidate in the philosophy program at the CUNY Graduate Center and a Clinical Professor of Bioethics at the CUNY School of Medicine, where she serves on the St. Barnabas Hospital Ethics Committee. She has also been an Ethics Fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for several years. She founded and for many years administered the CUNY Graduate Center Philosophy Program’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament pool, in which Stefan Baumrin was the only faculty participant.
KYLE FERGUSON is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. He also teaches philosophy at Hunter College, CUNY, and medical ethics at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He will soon defend his dissertation, “Metaethical Intentionalism and the Intersubjectivity of Morals,” a project he began with Stefan Baumrin and is completing under the supervision of Jesse Prinz. This summer, he begins a postdoctoral fellowship at the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine.
JOSEPH S. BIEHL, PhD, is the founder and Executive Director of the Gotham Philosophical Society, Inc., a non-profit organization that uses philosophy to transform the civil, political, and educational institutions of New York City. Through its youth program, Young Philosophers of New York, it encourages elementary, middle, high school students to think critically, imaginatively, and normatively about their lives and the city they call home. Stefan Baumrin, who supervised Biehl’s dissertation, “The Ways of Wrongdoing: The Cognitivist’s Conundrum,” served on the Gotham Philosophical Society’s Board of Directors. Dr. Biehl is the co-editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of the City (Routledge, 2019).
Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy, the Morningside Institute, and the Thomistic Institute invite graduate students in philosophy, theology/religious studies, literature, and related disciplines to submit papers for “The Moral Imagination of the Novel.” The conference will examine the ways in which individual novels and the novel as a literary genre can be understood both to depict the search for moral, philosophical, and religious truth and to engage in this very search themselves. Is the novel a realistic or idealistic genre? Can novels expand our sense of moral possibilities? Can they contract them?
The conference will begin with four twenty-minute graduate student papers on Friday, October 4, followed by talks that day and the next from faculty. Confirmed speakers include:
Paul Elie (Georgetown)
Ann Astell (Notre Dame)
Thomas Pavel (Chicago)
Lauren Kopajtic (Fordham)
Dhananjay Jagannathan (Columbia)
Limited financial assistance is available to defray the cost of travel for student presenters, but students are encouraged to seek funds from their own institutions as well.
One-page proposals should be emailed to Molly Gurdon at mcg2197@columbia.edu by Saturday, August 31 to be considered. Invitations to present papers will be sent by Friday, September 6. Submissions should not contain any identifying information except for a title, but the author’s institution and program, along with the title of their proposed submission, should be noted in the e-mail submission.
Pedagogy of Dignity Workshop
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Workshop Organizer: Christia Mercer
Scholars working under the broad umbrella of New Materialism have offered compelling reappraisals of the ways in which we know, interact with, and exist in the world. This scholarship also intersects with recent work on music and sound, which raises rich sets of questions regarding human agency, material, ethics, aesthetics, embodiment, and the subject/object dichotomy, among other issues.
We invite scholars working in the humanities, arts and sciences to submit proposals for papers and performances that engage with the themes of sound and new materialism, broadly construed. We welcome work that adopts historical, technological, analytical, philosophical, materialist, and creative vantage points, among others. Overall, this conference will direct these diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives towards convergent and critical issues, creating new, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry and generating original research.
The one-day conference will consist of panels that comprise of papers with short reflections by a moderator, as well as an evening concert that includes opportunities for discussion. The concluding concert of work that engages with these themes from creative perspectives will afford attendees with an opportunity to consider and discuss issues concerning sound, material, and agency in a forum that contrasts with, but also complements, our events during the day. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to attend both the daytime and evening portions of the conference.
Proposals are called for:
Paper presentations of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of Q&A.
Artistic presentation of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of discussion
Submission: Proposals of no more than 500 words (300 words for artistic presentation) should be submitted as a PDF by August 14th 2019 to jc5036@columbia.edu
and include “NMAS Submission” in the subject line. If you’re applying for an artistic presentation please include three representative 2 minute audio/video examples. Please also include the title of your proposed paper and anonymize your submission. Include your name, affiliation, and contact information in the body of the email, and also nominate any audio/visual requirements for your paper or performance.
Presented by the Center for Global Ethics & Politics, The Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies
Andrea Sangiovanni, European University Institute
Contact Professor Katja Vogt for more info.
Jacob Soll, in conversation with Pierre Force, John Shovlin, Carl Wennerlind, and Emmanuelle Saada
After two government bailouts of the U.S. economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market: the History of an Idea, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis, and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it—and to develop new economic concepts to face today’s challenges.
Jacob Soll is professor of history and accounting at the University of Southern California. He has been awarded numerous prestigious prizes including two NEH Fellowships, the Jacques Barzun Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2011, the MacArthur Fellowship. He also advises political and financial leaders across the globe to promote accounting standards and financial transparency.
Joining Jacob Soll to discuss his book will be: Pierre Force, Professor of French and History at Columbia; John Shovlin, Professor of History at NYU; and Carl Wennerlind, Professor of History at Barnard College. Emmanuelle Saada, Professor of History and French at Columbia, will moderate the discussion.
This event is co-sponsored by the Maison Française and the Department of History.
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to automate and scale solutions to perennial accessibility challenges (e.g., generating image descriptions for blind users). However, research shows that AI-bias disproportionately impacts people already marginalized based on their race, gender, or disabilities, raising questions about potential impacts in addition to AI’s promise. In this talk, Cynthia Bennett will overview broad concerns at the intersection of AI, disability, and accessibility. She will then share details about one project in this research space that led to guidance on human and AI-generated image descriptions that account for subjective and potentially sensitive descriptors around race, gender, and disability of people in images.