Conference Schedule
10AM Teddy Seidenfeld – Conditional Probability, Conditionalization, and Total Evidence
11AM Eleonora Cresto – Beyond Indeterminate Utilities. The Case of Neurotic Cake-Cutting
11:20AM Ignacio Ojea Quintana – Unawareness and Levi’s Consensus as Common Ground
11:40AM Rush Stewart – Uncertainty, Equality, Fraternity
1PM Nils-Eric Sahlin – Levi’s Decision Theory: Lessons Learned
1:45PM Wilfried Sieg – Scientific Theories as Set-Theoretic Predicates?
2:45PM Panel Discussion – Learning from Levi
Abstracts available in attached documents under “Supporting material.”
Memorial
A memorial service will be held at 5PM at St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus. Reception to follow on the 7th floor of Philosophy Hall.
Ian Hacking wrote that probability is a Janus-faced concept with one face looking toward the world and the other toward the mind. The face looking toward the world is central to laws and explanations in physics (especially quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics) and the special sciences. The face looking toward the mind is central to epistemology and decision theory. This conference concerns both aspects and especially their relation to each other. What is probability that it possesses both aspects? This three-day conference will focus on answering this and related questions.
There is no registration fee and attendance is open to all; however, RSVP is required. Please RSVP here before Oct 15, if you plan to attend. All are welcome!
General information is available here.
Conference Organizers
Barry Loewer (Rutgers)
Denise Dykstra (Rutgers)
Invited Participants
David Albert (Columbia)
Valia Allori (NIU)
Katie Elliott (UCLA)
Ned Hall (Harvard)
Carl Hoefer (Barcelona)
Jenann Ismael (Columbia)
Christopher Meacham (Amherst)
Wayne Myrvold (Western)
Richard Pettigrew (Bristol)
Jack Spencer (MIT)
Schedule Overview
(A detailed schedule is available here.)
Thursday, October 24
- 3:00 – 6:00: Metaphysics of Objective Probability: Ned Hall (Harvard); Jenann Ismael (Columbia).
Friday, October 25
- 9:00 – 9:50: Breakfast in the philosophy department
- 9:50 – 10:00: Welcome & Introductory Remarks (Barry Loewer)
- 10:00 – 1:00: Chance: Katie Elliott (UCLA); Christopher Meacham (Amherst).
- 1:00 – 2:30: Lunch
- 2:30 – 5:30: Probabilities in the Special Sciences: Carl Hoefer (Barcelona); Wayne Myrvold (Western Ontario).
Saturday, October 26
- 9:00 – 10:00: Breakfast in the philosophy department
- 10:00 – 1:00: Chance-Credence Principles: Richard Pettigrew (Bristol); Jack Spencer (MIT).
- 1:00 – 2:30: Lunch
- 2:30 – 5:30: Typicality and the Statistical Postulate: David Albert (Columbia); Valia Allori (NIU).
Please contact the conference organizers (LawsAndChanceProject@gmail.com) if you have any questions.
Recently, a group of scholars has challenged the moral legitimacy of Confucian democracy from a liberal philosophical standpoint. According to these scholars, including political liberals and moderate perfectionists, any attempt to create a Confucian democratic theory inevitably confronts a dilemma—let us call this the pluralism dilemma—with the following two horns: (a) a free society is characterized by the plurality of mutually incompatible, often conflicting, moral, philosophical, and religious doctrines that guide an individual’s conception of the good life and a truly democratic theory is required to accommodate as many reasonable conceptions of the good and comprehensive doctrines as possible and (b) a Confucian democratic theory gives a privileged normative standing to Confucianism over other competing comprehensive doctrines. This paper defends Confucian democracy against this pluralism challenge by articulating its political purpose and constitutional structure, which are commonly dismissed in the critics’ analytical frameworks.
With responses from: OMAR DAHBOUR (Hunter College & Graduate Center, CUNY)
The Fall dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar:
September 20 – Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University)
October 11 – Richard Kim (Loyola University, Chicago
November 8 – Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
December 6 – Paul R. Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
More details (such as titles, abstracts, and respondents) to follow. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Baruch College
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Director, Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
https://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
For over a hundred years econometricians, epidemiologists, educational sociologists and other non-experimental scientists have used asymmetric correlational patterns to infer directed causal structures. It is odd, to say the least, that no philosophical theories of causation cast any light on why these techniques work. Why do the directed causal structures line up with the asymmetric correlational patterns? Judea Pearl says that the correspondence is a “gift from the gods”. Metaphysics owes us a better answer. I shall attempt to sketch the outline of one.
Logic and Metaphysics Workshop
Feb 3 Hartry Field, NYU
Feb 10 Melissa Fusco, Columbia
Feb 17 GC CLOSED NO MEETING
Feb 24 Dongwoo Kim, GC
Mar 2 Alex Citikin, Metropolitan Telecommunications
Mar 9 Antonella Mallozzi, Providence
Mar 16 David Papineau, GC
Mar 23 Jenn McDonald, GC
Mar 30 Mircea Dimitru, Bucharest
Apr 6 ? Eoin Moore, GC
Apr 13 SPRING RECESS NO MEETING
Apr 20 Michał Godziszewski, Munich
Apr 27 Michael Glanzberg, Rutgers
May 4 Matteo Zichetti, Bristol
May 11 Lisa Warenski,GC
May 18 PROBABLY NO MEETING
Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science
Spring 2020 Schedule:
Anthony Aguirre (UCSC) – “Entropy in long-lived genuinely closed quantum systems”
6:30-8:30pm Tuesday Feb 4; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place), 3rd floor seminar room.
David Papineau (King’s College London & CUNY) – “The Nature of Representation”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday March 3; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Jim Holt (Author of Why Does the World Exist?) – “Here, Now, Photon: Why Newton was closer to EM than Maudlin is”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 7; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech)
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 28; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Presents: Li Zehou on the ‘Deep Structures of Confucianism’
Lead Presenter: Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
Discussants: Robert A. Carleo III (East China Normal University), Emma Buchtel (Hong Kong Education University)
ABSTRACT: Contemporary Chinese intellectual Li Zehou’s cross-cultural methodology blends traditional Confucian thought with thinkers such as Kant and Marx. This seminar addresses the question of culture and its role in Li’s thought. Li has made several claims about how a settled cultural tradition influences the subjects within it. One such claim concerns the existence of ‘deep structures’ of Confucianism, as outlined in this preparatory reading. The idea is that culture, history, and social practice (collectively, a tradition) shape human psychology (including the formation of concepts, emotions, and values) in ways not always apparent to the subject. Within the Chinese tradition, Confucianism constitutes such a deep structure, and its effects cannot be captured by textual studies alone, nor studies of material culture. Rather, the deep structure is articulated in terms of an emergent shared subjectivity. Such traditions can evolve and ultimately dissolve; nevertheless, their effects are deep-rooted. This seminar meeting will aim to identify the parameters of Li’s ambitious theoretical framework and its plausibility, and to explore connections with current work in related fields, such as cultural and empirical psychology.
DATE: March 25, 2022
TIME: 6:30 – 8:00 pm EST
This seminar will take place via Zoom (please scroll down for the full invitation). Below you will find the link to join the meeting. Here is an instruction manual to help you familiarize yourself with the program. In addition to familiarizing yourself with the program’s basic functions, there are two things we ask you to do before the meeting can start. First, you will need to sign in by typing your name in the chat. Subsequently, we will have to agree on the privacy policy for the meeting. The privacy policy provided by the Columbia University Seminars Office will be read aloud. To indicate your agreement, you will raise your virtual Zoom hand in the Participants panel. In the manual, you will find step-by-step instructions of how to sign in and to raise your hand.
Note Regarding Donations: Due to COVID-19, donations are only accepted through Columbia University’s secure online giving form, Giving to Columbia.
Accessibility Statement: Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. The University Seminars participants with dis- abilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or disability@columbia.edu. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. On campus, seminar participants with disabilities should alert a Public Safety Officer if they need assistance accessing campus.
PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/comparative-philosophy/
With responses from Timothy Connolly (East Stroudsburg University)
ABSTRACT: Recent philosophical discussions on compassion focus on the value and the nature of compassion as an emotion. Ancient Asian philosophical traditions such as Confucianism and Buddhism, however, emphasize compassion as a character trait that should be nurtured. This paper examines the insights drawn from these traditions to help inform the nurturing of compassion. For example, is empathy a necessary tool? What is the role of love and care? Does self-reflection contribute to the process?
Dinner will be kindly offered by the Columbia University Seminars.
RSVP is required for dinner. Please email Lucilla with eating requirements at lm3335@columbia.edu.
What is an appropriate response to humiliating treatments such as insults? This question is not only relevant to today’s discourse but has also piqued the curiosity of thinkers in classical Chinese philosophy. The Warring States period debate regarding whether one’s inner sense of shame can shield one from insulting situations and from experiencing shame is frequently presented as a one-sided narrative that focuses on the Confucian texts. Meanwhile, the views of their rival thinkers, such as the Daoist, legalist, or much-neglected Songzi (3rd century BCE), are rarely the focus of attention. This paper brings Songzi, a key player in the debate of emotions as responses to external triggers, into the picture and restores the historical intellectual discourse over the topic of what constitutes an appropriate response to humiliating situations such as insults. More importantly, I point out the philosophical significance of this debate, namely how Songzi prompts Xunzi to respond to an ambiguity within the Confucian doctrine: The early Confucians appear to think that an individual’s internal virtues can isolate and shield one from hostile external stimuli while also maintaining that the external environment impacts one’s moral cultivation and moral life in significant ways. Xunzi’s strategic move, I argue, is to give credit to both an inner sense of shame and the function of external stimuli in inducing negative emotions, thus making an important philosophical concession compared to Confucius and Mencius.
With responses from Nalei Chen (New York University)
- September 15 – Jing Hu (Concordia)
- October 13 – Bill Waldron (Middlebury)
- October 27 – David Wong (Duke)
- December 1 – Stephen Angle (Wesleyan)
The speaker will be Prof. Lewis Gordon of the University of Connecticut, on “From Harlem to the World: Philosophy from a Center of the Black World with Questions for the 21st Century.” Gordon will talk about worldliness and public aspects of philosophy, placing them in the context of Harlem both at City College and the public world of Africana philosophy from Du Bois to Malcolm X to contemporaries such as Nathalie Etoke. He will conclude with a set of questions for 21st century philosophy to consider.
Lewis R. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa; and Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He co-edits the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs, the Rowman & Littlefield book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) and Fear of Black Consciousness (hardcover, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022; in the UK, London: Penguin Books, 2022), Picador paperback 2023. He is the 2022 recipient of the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association.