Feb
4
Tue
Castoriadis and the Permutations of the Social Imaginary. Suzi Adams @ Wolff Conference Room, D1103
Feb 4 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

This paper considers Cornelius Castoriadis’s articulation of social imaginary significations with an emphasis on their link to the radical imaginary. Castoriadis wrote on social imaginary significations for more than thirty years, and his understanding of them changed significantly during this time, yet this is not reflected in debates on his work. The paper argues that there are three distinct phases in his reflections. The first phase can be dated 1964-1970. This early phase is characterized by Castoriadis’s break from Marx and subsequent settling of accounts with Marxism. Central to Castoriadis’s critique of Marx was the recognition of history (or: the social-historical) as the domain of meaning and unmotivated creation as the work of the radical imaginary. Importantly, Castoriadis also considered the intertwining of the imaginary with the symbolic, on the one hand, and with social doing, on the other. Castoriadis’s approach in this early phase can be considered phenomenological in the broad sense that Merleau-Ponty gave it in the Phenomenology of Perception. The second phase is dated 1970-1975; that is, the period in which Castoriadis wrote the second part of The Imaginary Institution of Society wherein he announced his turn to ontology. This is his most self-contained and systematic articulation of social imaginary significations. Castoriadis extends and develops his notion of magma in relation to social imaginary significations and emphasizes the social imaginary creation of a world ex nihilo as an ontological creation, whilst the radical imaginary is presented as a part of his emergent general ontology of à-être. The third ‘kaleidoscopic’ phase is dated 1976-1997 and may be understood as a period of consolidation and expansion. Although his basic understanding of social imaginary significations did not dramatically alter (although further developments are visible), his thought went in a myriad of different directions and patterns – hence kaleidoscopic — that nonetheless shaped a wider background against which his elucidation of social imaginaries were configured. His reconsideration of the sacred, the ‘ground power’ of institutions, and the development of a poly-regional ontology of the for-itself were key to this changing background. The paper will conclude with a critical engagement with the implications of the changing permutations of the imaginary element for Castoriadis’s thought.

Dr. Suzi Adams is Senior Lecturer in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Flinders University and permanent External Fellow at the East-Central European Institute for Philosophy, Charles University (Prague). She is a founding co-ordinating editor of the Social Imaginaries refereed journal and book series, and from October-December 2019, was an inaugural Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Hamburg. She has published widely in the social imaginaries field, including most recently Social Imaginaries: Critical Interventions (Eds. Suzi Adams and Jeremy Smith), 2019, Rowman and Littlefield International, London. She is currently writing a monograph entitled Castoriadis and the Imaginary Element (forthcoming with Rowman and Littlefield International).

Oct
26
Wed
How AI Is Changing Artistic Creation @ Online
Oct 26 @ 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm

Generative art made with algorithms has existed since the early days of computing in the 1960s. In recent years, a new strand of generative art has emerged: AI-generated art, which leverages the recent progress of artificial intelligence to create artworks. Unlike old-fashioned generative art, AI-generated art is not produced with an explicit set of programming instructions provided by human artists; instead, it involves training an algorithm on a dataset so that it can later produce artworks (images, music, or video clips) using its own internal parameters that have not been explicitly defined by a human. This process raises fascinating questions at the intersection of computer science, art history, and the philosophy of art. At a superficial level of analysis, AI-generated art seems to offload much of the creative impetus of art production to the machine, requiring minimal intervention from the artist. On closer inspection, however, it involves a novel process of curation at two key stages: upstream in the selection of the dataset on which the algorithm is trained, and downstream in the selection of the outputs that should qualify as artworks. Instead of replacing human artists with computers, AI-generated art can be understood as a new kind of collaboration between mind and machine, both of which contribute to the aesthetic value of the final artwork.

This seminar will bring together AI artists and philosophers to explore the significance of this new mode of art production. It will discuss the implications of AI-generated art for the definition of art, the nature of the relationship between artists and tools, the process of digital curation, and whether AI systems can be as creative as humans.

Event Speakers

Event Information

Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. Registered attendees will receive an event link shortly before the seminar begins.

This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.

The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 853-1612 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.

Jan
28
Sat
Fitting at 80 conference @ CUNY Grad Center rm 3310-B
Jan 28 all-day

A prominent logician Melvin Fitting has turned 80. This hybrid conference is a special event in his honor.

Melvin Fitting was in the departments of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Lehman College. He is now Professor Emeritus. He has authored 11 books and over a hundred research papers with staggering citation figures. In 2012, Melvin Fitting was given the Herbrand Award by the Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE) for distinguished contributions to the field. In 2019, Professor Fitting received a Doctor Honoris Causa (an Honorary Doctorate) from the University of Bucharest.

Greetings, congratulations, photos for posting, and ZOOM link requests could be sent to Sergei Artemov by sartemov@gmail.com or sartemov@gc.cuny.edu.

Conference website https://sartemov.ws.gc.cuny.edu/fitting-at-80/

Program (the times are given in the Eastern Day Time zone EST). In-person location: CUNY Graduate Center, rm. 3310-B.

January 28, Saturday

8:00-8:45 am Arnon Avron (Tel Aviv), “Breaking the Tie: Benacerraf’s Identification Argument Revisited”
8:45-9:30 am Junhua Yu (Beijing), “Exploring Operators on Neighborhood Models”

9:30-9:45 am Break

9:45-10:30 am Sara Negri (Genoa), “Faithful Modal Embedding: From Gödel to Labelled Calculi”
10:30-11:15 am Heinrich Wansing (Bochum), “Remarks on Semantic Information and Logic. From Semantic Tetralateralism to the Pentalattice 65536_5”

11:15-11:30 am Break

11:30 am -12:15 pm Roman Kuznets (Vienna), “On Interpolation”
12:15-1:00 pm Walter Carnielli (Campinas), “Combining KX4 and S4: A logic that encompasses factive and non-factive evidence

1:00-1:15 pm Break

1:15-2:00 pm Eduardo Barrio and Federico Pailos (Buenos Aires), “Meta-classical Non-classical Logics”
2:00-2:45 pm Graham Priest (New York), “Jaśkowski and the Jains: a Fitting Tribute”

2:45-4:00 pm Session of memories and congratulations featuring Sergei Artemov, Anil Nerode, Hiroakira Ono, Melvin Fitting, and others.

Feb
2
Fri
Mental Imagery, Tantric Practice, and the Drama of the Imagination. Davey K. Tomlinson (Villanova) @ Columbia Religion
Feb 2 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

How does the imagination change us? Why should picturing ourselves a certain way have any real effect on what we are? These questions are central to debates in Buddhist tantric literature regarding the generation stage (utpattikrama), wherein practitioners visualize themselves as buddhas ensconsed in magnificent mandala-palaces. For some, this practice is what sets Buddhist tantra apart: through this “yoga of the imagination,” as David Shulman puts it, a practitioner can achieve buddhahood in a single lifetime. And yet, as the Buddhist tantric author Indrabhūti (8th century) argues, a pauper who imagines himself to be a king does not thereby become one—so, in the same way, practitioners who visualize themselves as buddhas will not thereby become buddhas. The mental imagery (ākāra) involved in this practice is just so much unreal fabrication. Why should it have real transformative effects? I’ll consider here how these debates played out in Sanskrit Buddhist tantric texts from the 10th–11th centuries. I’ll focus on early authors in the Kālacakra tradition, who upheld Indrabhūti’s critique of the generation stage, and authors like Ratnākaraśānti, Vāgīśvarakīrti, and Advayavajra (aka Maitrīpa), who each in their own way critiqued mental imagery yet defended the importance and effectiveness of generation-stage practice. In the first part of the paper, I’ll consider arguments against mental imagery as these appear in generation-stage practice texts and the early Kālacakra tradition. In the second part, I’ll turn to why we might think unreal mental imagery can nevertheless have real transformative effects, paying special attention to the ways Buddhist tantric authors writing in Sanskrit take up ideas from the tradition of dramatic theory (nāṭyaśastra) and Sanskrit culture more broadly.

With responses from Thomas Yarnall (Columbia University)

DATE: February 2nd, 2024

TIME: 5:30 pm EST

LOCATION: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University

1150 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027

NOTE ON ENTRY FOR NON-COLUMBIA GUESTS: The door to Philosophy Hall will only open with a Columbia University ID card. If you do not have this card please arrive early where someone will be standing outside until the meeting begins. If you arrive late, you can ask someone walking nearby to let you in or contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu. Please only contact Cole as a final resource so as not to interrupt the talk.

NOTE REGARDING DONATIONS: Due to COVID-19, donations are only accepted through Columbia University’s secure online giving form, Giving to Columbia.

RSVP is required for dinner. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu for further information.

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 WEBSITEhttps://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/comparative-philosophy/

(Please do not reply to this announcement. You may contact the Co-Chairs using the link above.) 

Comparative Philosophy Seminar:

  • January 19 – Alex Watson (Ashoka University)
  • February 2 – Davey Tomlinson (Villanova University)
  • April 5 – Laura Specker (Fordham University)
  • May 3 – Daniel Stephens (University at Buffalo)